RFS has said his father's old stories and songs were the first stimulus for these Seckatary Hawkins stories.

About 150,000 Seck Hawkins books were printed in the 11 titles. Wonderful mystery stories of juvenile to pre-adolescent boys club adventures 1918 through the 1930's. The boys in the club stories are composites of his friends and neighbors during RFS childhood. The circumstances are sometimes true, sometimes imagined and ingrained with some stories his dad told him. Setting is a semi-fictional Kentucky River bank - near southern Covington. Watertown, or Cincinnati, was "up river". Pelham was in the Newport, KY area.

Why a fat boy? We don't really know. RFS was never fat in his childhood and was a fit figure of a man when the stories were written. He reported that his father was "portly" and could well have been the model because he had all the other heroic attributes and lived near the Licking river before RFS did (actually during the Civil War). Or, perhaps he was complimenting some childhood friend or sibling or relative who reflected the heroic attributes of Hawkins. Certainly RFS could have guessed that he would acquire a potbelly in his old age just like his father. But, the effect seems wonderful for the stories and the children who read them. The resultant moral message effect is multiplied by using a fat boy as the true-to-life central figure who has average, yet honorable abilities and insights and who succeeds through deductive perseverance and fair play. Other oblique advantages can be inferred from this phenomenon that elevate the universal image of any common boy (or girl) and promote a sentiment toward fair play for, among, and by all children. As Seck says, "...there are no hopelessly bad boys, only boys that have been injured or bent some way in their youth and had no one to straighten them up and keep them on the right path as they grew". All children have the inalienable right and the innate ability to do better and to succeed at anything if they just try, try again.

What the heck is a Seck? - His job as secretary to publisher W F Wiley at the Enquirer may have been some spark of this origin. The "Seckatary" mis-spelling was written to have come about when the club was formed and the boys were about 6 years old. They couldn't spell too well, and so the name stuck. It was meant to reflect a young, childish mis-spelling of "secretary", of course. The name was meant to give a greater ease of identifying characteristics to the stories through a common mis-spelling of words tendency that the majority of average young target readers were imagined to have had.

The Snow Fort was the first Seck Hawkins story printed in the Cincinnati Enquirer on Sunday 2/3/1918, LITTLE CORNER FOR LITTLE PEOPLE page, titled "Johnny's Snow Fortress". In 1922, it was reprinted in Volume 1, number 1 of the 1922 bi-weekly Seckatary Hawkins magazine serials published by H & S Pogue's department stores. It was not titled The Snow Fort, or Johnny's Snow Fortress in this magazine, but simply "The First Hawkins Story", but it continued to be known as "The Snow Fort". Sunday editor H N Hildreth suggested doing a story on the gang every Sunday. Which he did, although very busy with work as assistant to J Herman Thuman -music and drama critic. RFS was also local correspondent for The Musical Courier.

On 2/17/18, the first extract of the Seckatary Hawkins club diary was printed. The stories ran 17 years - to 1935 in the Enquirer. The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran them 1923 till 1942 (record for a series of 31 years in print). At the high point, 10 million newspapers each day were delivered to anxious readers in many towns and cities in the USA containing Seckatary Hawkins stories. Daily comic strips as well as the Sunday magazine stories were obviously of high interest in those days.

RFS used the mis-spelled name "Rejiment" for the first clubhouse name. Similar technique was observed in other later stories that became nationally popular in movies, and later on TV, where mis-spellings and mirror image lettering was done for humorous or childlike effect. What would have happened if Seck's works were "discovered" by Hollywood instead? Or maybe they did borrow some of the RFS ideas? The vocabulary and tone was set to reflect realistic juvenile - adolescent speech, much of it in the Northern Kentucky - Southern Ohio vernacular. Slang words of local and foreign characters are intelligently added in pleasant phonetic style. We notice a strong increase of this phonetic usage in new, successful author's styles from the 1920's through the 1960's. (e.g. To Kill A Mockingbird which uses Seckatary Hawkins as the ending moral comparison).

Chapters were kept purposely short in length due to the relatively short juvenile attention span. Everything is pleasantly presented and written from the standpoint of the youth, which helps create that "identifying" phenomenon that is not always common in young readers. Likewise, the adult reader is transported back to the pleasures and anxieties of his childhood days and the resulting catharsis has been reported, time and time again, to be "most pleasant". It is easy to pick up the story line after even the lengthiest absence from any of the books. It must be remembered that the presentation is in an easy-worded format that may seem quite slow to the mature reader, but fits perfectly with the adolescent or child's level of understanding.

The River:

Is not entirely real, it was a composite of the Ohio and Licking rivers in Kentucky. RFS grew up along the smaller Licking River that does run from the larger Ohio River nearby. The stories required different sizes of river to accommodate the various situations the boys would find themselves in. There is reference in Ching Toy and Herman that the smaller river runs into the larger stream at Watertown. Of more than casual coincidence is the fact that Julia B Darnell's father grew up on the Kentucky (not the larger Ohio) river further south at Versailles, Woodford county, where RFS made a 1913 photo record of a river cliff area with a hidden cave. The cave was so well hidden that he could not find it during that trip; however, I believe it laid the seeds of the story. Mr. Darnell, a "hot ticket" in his youth, could tell quite a lively tale. On a lucky guess, on 5/18/99 I found the Cliff Cave on Clifton Pike, Highway 1964, at Clifton, KY, with Charlie Darnell's niece, Susan E Darnell Robertson. We have photos of my wife, Bonnie at the mouth of the cave - she was the only one small enough to fit, but wouldn't go all the way in since there were too many spiders. Fortunately she was wearing gray and made the photo rather "Gray Ghostly".

Where did he get the Hawkins name?

One popular report is: When they were first married, Robert and Julia B spent much time with his mother-in-laws sister, Julia "Jewel" (or "Jule") Buckley who married Omer Hawkins where he got the stimulation for the Seckatary Hawkins name. Robert had the greatest respect for Omer and Jule.

However, there are other Hawkins's in the Darnell line - In 1850, Katherine Hawkins married Aaron H. Darnell JR, the first Pastor of the Millville church (great-grandson of the famous Aaron Darnell who founded Frankfurt, Kentucky. Of interest to some readers may be the fact that Katherine Hawkins' and Aaron's son was Judge Isham Randolph Darnell, great grandson of William Randolph and Mary Isham of Turkey Island, Virginia. (the early founders of the William & Mary college and grand parents of President Thomas Jefferson). Aaron's father was Isham Keith Hawkins; and grandfather was William Strother Hawkins, a pioneer of Woodford County and an American Revolutionary soldier. The great-great grandfather was Captain Moses Hawkins of Orange City (or county), VA. Robert and Julia B' had been married only about 3 years when the Seckatary Hawkins name was publicly born in the February 3, 1918, Cincinnati Enquirer feature story article, "The Snow Fort"; but that could have been time for him to make the name connection with all the family ancestors. Since he took such an ardent interest in the Darnell-Buckley heritage, it most surely came to his attention.

"Which we did":

The signature phrase served to announce to the reader that there was more to come, but also that everything would be OK. In this manner, the child reader would not be overly frightened about the outcome of any adventure or intrigue. The child could safely keep his bedtime appointment when his mother called, and not worry that he was missing something. Likewise, the reader would not have to wait and worry too much till tomorrow to find out if the boys accomplished one adventurous thing or another. We see this as an ingenious understanding of the juvenile attention span. We feel that it heightened the intrigue for the reader who did not want to be frightened out of his wits, but enjoyed more the challenge of finding out the " How" and "When" and "Why" of a mystery. But Seck does not underestimate his readers, it is common fact that the hero can't get killed or the game is over. In the 70's, kid's tagged this fate-tempting desire "hang ten". In the 80's it was " awesome", in the 90's anything less than full video action and lots of unsightly gore was sissy. Personally, I wish we could go back to the small town innocence and safe harbor feeling that seems lost to many children today.

In the 3/3/1918 Enquirer newspaper article, "Johnny's Snow Fortress" - section on page 8, we see the origin of the "Which we did" statement mixed in the second to the last paragraph; and in the 1922 Seckatary Hawkins first magazine story, The Rejiment, Volume 1 number 2, we first see "Which we did" at the ending of chapter II = "Each Boy put in a Dime", cutting out many words from the originally printed story to cleverly end the chapter with his signature phrase.

Also seen in the second installment of the newspaper, The Rejiment 3/18/1918. It is used in the body text of other early stories, but this is the first time it ends a chapter. It became a trademark phrase in Seck culture. It is reported that about 1926, RFS was convinced to drop the phrase because it seemed to dampen the suspense endings. He did not permanently follow these suggestions as we can see, except that The Cazanova Treasure does not use it at all. (A few other rare instances)

In The Red Runners, pub.1922, we first notice the phrase in chapter V - The Woodchoppers. It ends almost each chapter in every book thereafter. Exceptions are Cazanova Treasure, the first published work in 1921, which did not utilize the phrase at all. It is missing in Stoner's Boy I, and XXVII; Gray Ghost IV, XXVII; and, paraphrased for effect in VII as "Which It Did", and the last chapter XXXIII uses "Which We Never Did". It is missing in Red Runners VII, VIII, IX, X, XI. It is missing in Stormie I, VII, XXVII; and paraphrased to end the story as, "Which We Never Did". It is missing in Ching Toy XXVI.

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