The Snarkout Boys & the Avocado of Death
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Among the Clark’s clientele was Daniel Pinkwater, the children’s novelist and radio humorist whose 1982 book The Snarkout Boys & the Avocado of Death draws its inspiration from the author’s boyhood in 50s Chicago. Pinkwater’s “Snark” isn’t the mythical creature of Lewis Carroll’s verse; it’s a compression of the words “sneak” and “Clark”–and sneaking off to the Snark after curfew is how the story’s protagonists embark on their goofy adventures. As adapted for the stage by Lifeline Theatre, The Snarkout Boys is a wild and woolly thriller spoof spun from an alienated adolescent’s curiosity and the repulsion he feels for family and school, filtered through the weirdly juxtaposed sci-fi and art films he sees during his late-night “snarkouts.”
Set in “Baconburg” (truly the world’s hog butcher), The Snarkout Boys concerns three kids’ fanciful search for Flipping Hades Terwilliger, a self-proclaimed mad scientist whose efforts to breed a super avocado have drawn the malignant attention of a master criminal. The three heroes are Walter Galt and Winston Bongo, the “snarkout boys,” and their female friend Bentley Saunders Harrison Matthews–aka Rat–whom Walter meets in Blueberry Park, a bughouse square peopled by beatnik soapbox orators and their hipster hecklers. (The park takes its name from the building across the street: Blueberry Library.) Joining the kids in the quest for Flipping (who is Rat’s uncle) are supersleuth Osgood Sigerson and his companion Dr. Ormond Sacker; Winston’s wrestler uncle, the Mighty Gorilla; and Chicken Man, a holdover from Pinkwater’s earlier book Lizard Music. Based on a real-life street entertainer known as Casey Jones, who died in 1974 at the age of 104 after enthralling generations of Chicagoans with his dancing fowl, the magical Chicken Man guides the teen trio through Baconburg’s little-known boroughs, including Lower North Aufzoo, a wackier Wacker described as “the city beneath the city,” and Tintown, a shanty settlement on the west side, where the thickening plot brings the amateur detectives into contact with the oversize vegetable of the title.
