watch Howdy Doody on television. Howdy Doody has forty eight freckles on his face.
It is not a coincidence. No one knows if the boy in the box watched Howdy Doody.
Swanson TV Dinners cost seventy five cents.
Jackie Robinson has retired from baseball because he was traded to the rival Giants. In
a few months, Walter O’Malley will move the Dodgers to Los Angeles. Jackie Robinson
will not be moving to Los Angeles. The boy in the box was wrapped in a plaid blanket.
Baseball is the only antitrust exempt pro sport thanks to a six-to-three decision by the
Supreme Court. Baseball is as American as apple pie. No one knows if the boy found
wrapped in the the plaid blanket, found dead in a box, loved apple pie. Or America. But
he probably did. Everyone loves America in 1957.
The twenty fifth of February is a Monday. The box the boy is found in once held a
basinet from JC Penney’s. In 1957, William M. Batten, then assistant to the president
of JC Penney releases a memo, telling Penney management that if they wish to survive,
they have to change. Research studies show that new policies are needed. They create
new departments for children and men, and credit is offered for the first time. Before, all
sales were cash only. The boy in the box is most likely not a JC Penney publicity stunt.
Eight days before the boy in the box is found, a fire at a home for the elderly in
Warrenton, Missouri kills seventy two people. A few days before the boy in the box is
found, the boy in the box is found by a man checking snare traps. He does not report it
because he doesn’t want the police to take away his snare traps, so the boy in the box
is not found. A day before the boy in the box is found, the boy in the box is found by
a young man. He does not report the finding to the police until the next day. Nobody
wants to be the person that finds the boy in the box, but the boy in the box is eventually
The term “Media Circus” can be used to describe what descends on Philadelphia over
the boy in the box. The boy in the box is identified as a boy gone missing from Camden,
New Jersey by six people. The boy from Camden has grey eyes. The mother of the boy
from Camden is not one of the six. The boy in the box has blue eyes. It is eventually
proven that the boy in the box is not the boy from Camden. There are many pictures
taken of the boy in the box. The dead boy is posed in a chair. The boy in the box has
bruises all over his body. He has also been given a very amateur haircut; there are cuts
all over his neck from it. The haircut is the least of his troubles.
The boy in the box has blond hair to go with his blue eyes. Hitler would have liked
him. No one claims the boy in the box as their son. Ever. The boy in the box is never
identified. He is buried, and the media circus leaves Philadelphia in search of a girl in
a well. The boy in the box is given a new name, “America’s Unknown Child.” America
loves its unknown child. No one ever claims the the boy in the box as their son.
In 1994 a dead boy in a bag is found in Philadelphia, but he’s black, so let’s not talk about it.
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