Jan Berenstain - Down a Sunny Dirt Road: An Autobiography

Berenstain, Stan, 1923-2005

Berenstain, Jan, 1923

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ONCE UPON A TIME, in a first-year drawing class at thePhiladelphia Museum Schoolof Industrial Art, a "lantern-jawedexotic" named Stan openly admiredthe work of a shy, blue-eyed girlnamed Janice. It was kismetandit heralded the birth of one ofthe great collaborations in all ofchildren's literature.

In the alternating voices of Stanand then Jan, this enormouslyreadable account first tells of theearly years before they met, andreaders will be struck by the similar-ities between two young peopleof such markedly different back-grounds. Both begin to draw almostbefore they learn to walk. Both lovegoing to the movies and to galleries.Both love to read. Both are art edi-tors of their high school yearbooks!Is it any wonder that when theymeet they fall madly in love?

No sooner are they togetherthan World War II drives themapart. We learn of Stan's stint as amedical artist at an Army maxillo-facial hospital and Jan's as a real-life"Rosie the Riveter" on the swingshift.

After the war, they are married,and the two narrative voices mergebeautifully into one as we follow therise of Team Berenstain from car-tooning for The Saturday EveningPost and Colliers to writing It's Allin the Family, a kind of print sitcomfor McCall's magazine, to that firstfateful meeting with Theodor Geisel(aka Dr. Seuss), the editor-in-chief of

(Continued on back flap)

J BIO BERENSTAINBerenstain, StanDown a sunny dirt road

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Printed in USA

Stan & Jan Berenstain

DOWN A W] DIRT ROIJ

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

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Stan & Jan Berenstain

DOWN A SUNNY DOg

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

EARLY STAN

Jan and I were headed downtown to my parents' fiftieth-anniversary party at the Barclay Hotel in Center City, Philadelphia.Jan's parents had been married for more than fifty years. Jan and Iwould go on to achieve a fifty-year marriage as well.

Perhaps researchers will identify a long-marriage gene some-day. It will probably be located a couple of notches up the doublehelix from the early-memory gene.

I had been told I would be expected to "say a few words" atthe celebration. There's nothing like a trip to your parents' fiftiethand the pressure of having to "say a few words" to trigger mem-ory. But what to say? I'd have to be very careful. It would be anemotional affair, and I hate to see a grown man cryespecially ifit's me.

A scheme came to meone I thought I could handle. It cameto me as a vista of addresses: 5656 Pentridge, 5514 Ridgewood,5410 Chestnut, 7163 Marsden, 4239 Frankfordall the places I'dlived in Philadelphia back to when I was a fat-kneed little kid rid-ing a tricycle out in front of my grandmother Nelly's Army andNavy Store on Frankford Avenue....

It was 1927 and I was four years old. Nelly's Armyand Navy Store stood under the "el," the elevated trainstructure that dominated Frankford Avenue. The WillysKnight Agency was on one side. (The Willys Knight wasthe snub-nosed little car that they gave away at themovies like dishes, which were the usual movie giveaway.)Vitacollona's Shoe Repair Shop was on the other side, andup the street were Torpy's (the florist), Bockman's OysterHouse, and the corner firehouse, where I frequently madea pest of myself and where I was allowed to pet the cat.

EARLY STAN

Stan riding his tricyclein the small squareacross from hisgrandmother's Armyand Navy Store.The "el," the WillysKnight Agency, andunemployed peopleon park benches inbackground.

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Nelly, my widowed paternal grandmother, lived behind the

Stan's parents, Roseand Harry Berenstain.

store.

My mother, Rose, my father, Harry, and I lived over the store.My father, who was seldom home, traveled as a member of a store-opening crew for Sears, Roebuck.

Up on the third floor was a sickroom where a wraithlikewoman lay abed. She was my maternal grandmother.

Though I was only four, I had the run of the store, which mymother managed, and the block from the Willys Knight Agency upto the firehouse. Behind the store was a yard where my motherhung clothes out to dry on a long clothesline supported by notchedpoles called clothes props. They were very long, and it seemed tome that if you could lash eight or ten of them together, you couldknock up against the sky.

But even the most logical and well-thought-out theories mustbe put aside when serious doubt is eventually cast upon them.

At five, I was in the store drawing a catI was in my catperiod at the timewhen I heard a hue and cry. I ran outside. Peo-ple were pointing up at the sky. I looked up. Crossing whatwas visible of the sky through the elevated train structure wasa long, slim, silver cigar. "It's a zeppelin," explained the