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Rediscovering Honesty, Equality and Good Clean Fun
Down by the old riverbank in a clean and modest shack is where you’ll find Seckatary Hawkins and the other members of the Fair and Square Club, a group of young boys dedicated to fun, adventure, and fair dealing. Of course, that river winds its way through the printed page; the boys and their club make their home in books both vintage and crisply new, on yellowed sheets of comics, on fondly preserved membership badges, and perhaps in the distance echoes of radio waves long since passed. Seck Hawkins and his friends also reside in the minds and imaginations of real-life Fair and Square Club members and Seckatary fans. They are today as ardent in their appreciation of a fine story, well told, as was anyone in 1918, when Robert F. Schulkers first introduced Seckatary Hawkins in the pages of the Cincinnati Enquirer.
 So who the heck is Seck? Nine-year-old Seckatary Hawkins is the somewhat portly secretary and unofficial leader of the Fair and Square Club, and the book series of the same name are the chronicles of his exploits. As a boy of unflagging strength of character, he’s a natural fit for the Club. With its ideals of equality and honesty, and rules requiring that members never lie, always try their hardest, and always tell their mothers where they are, the Fair and Square Club may seem like a breeding ground for Mr. Milquetoasts to be. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Seckatary Hawkins series proves that a story needn’t be rife with sex and violence to be exciting. Cuban treasure, dog-stealing rivals, canoe sabotage, and complex material maneuvering brought to bear on snowball fights are but a few of the high-energy endeavors to be found in the Hawkins stories.
 On a dare from his editor at the Cincinnati Enquirer, Robert F. Schulkers published a Hawkins story in the Enquirer and many more newspapers every single week between 1918 and 1935. He was also one of the first entertainers to take advantage of the then cutting-edge medium of radio, broadcasting his Seckatary and other stories, and at some points performing entire stories by himself, enacting as many as seventeen characters’ voices. A Seckatary comic series ran in the 20’s and 30’s. And as Fair and Square Clubs were made a reality and boys, girls, and adults from around the country and even the world enrolled in droves, counting among their number of film stars such as Richard Eagan and Jackie Coogan of “The Kid” fame, the popularity of Seck and his gang was undeniable. The epitome of clean fun at a time when pulp fiction and the lurid themes it entailed were spreading among readers both old and young, the Seckatary Hawkins series never faltered, and remained both upstanding and entertaining.
However, now information about Seck and his creator are freely available, as are reprinted books, thanks to another Schulkers. Randy Schulkers, a resident of Powhatan County, is grandson to Robert F. Schulkers, and a lifelong devotee of his grandfather’s work. Randy maintains the website http://www.seckatary.com/ , a repository of information about the book series, the radio broadcasts and assorted Seckatary paraphernalia. There is information about the Fair and Square Club rules, motto, philosophy, and how to join it, an RFS (as Schulkers the webmaster fondly refers to Schulkers the author) biography, and a special section on one very famous Fair and Square Club member.
Somehow unconvinced by the promise of clean fun, of childhood innocence combined with activity and adventure? For those who might need just a little extra push, perhaps a recommendation from someone they respect, Schulkers of Powhatan has a serious trump card: Harper Lee is among the members of the Fair and Square Club.
Yes, that Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, widely regarded as one of the best novels ever written. Not only is Lee a member, she’s an active member and wrote an online note to all of the club members. Quite the rare treat, since, as Schulkers rather mildly puts it, Lee is “a private person.” Beyond the just-plain-awesomeness of Lee being a contributing Fair and Square Club member, To Kill a Mockingbird itself has love for the Club and the Seckatary Hawkins books, referencing the series twice in her book, including the finale.
Dill, the visiting boy, challenges Scout to touch Boo Radley’s house, betting two Tom Swifts against a Gray Ghost (one of the Seckatary titles) that Jem would not do it. The very end of To Kill a Mockingbird refers to the same story, and uses the book and the upright virtues and egalitarian philosophy of Seckatary Hawkins and the Fair and Square Club to highlight the message of its own story, as Atticus reads the story to his daughter Scout:
‘H’mm,’ he said. ‘The Gray Ghost, by Seckatary Hawkins. Chapter One…’
I willed myself to stay awake, but the rain was so soft and the room was so warm and his voice was so deep and his knee was so snug that I slept….’Heard every word you said’, I muttered…wasn’t asleep at all. ‘s about a ship an’ Three-Fingered Fred ‘n’ Stoner’s Boy…’…’Yeah, an’ they all thought it was Stoner’s Boy messin’ up their clubhouse an’ throwin’ ink all over it an’…’…’An they chased him ‘n’ never could catch him ‘cause they didn’t know what he looked like, an’ Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things...Atticus, he was real nice…’
His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me.
‘Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.’
He turned out the light and went into Jem’s room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.”
Read the complete article in our January/February 2011 print edition.
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