Book Review: Philip Gulley’s I Love You, Miss Huddleston: And Other Inappropriate Longings of My Indiana Childhood

I think every childhood has its moments of hilarity. One just has to find those moments and embellish. The stories that emerge may not be 100% fact but they are certainly true with respect to the feeling of nostalgia created. Although, Philip Gulley admits that his stories may have been * slightly * altered in his memoir, I Love You, Miss Huddleston: And Other Inappropriate Longings of My Indiana Childhood, he creates a hilarious account of childhood that harkens the reader back to a better time or, at the very least, a time a very long time ago.

Growing up in Indiana can scar anybody; I know this first hand. There are certain things that are just uniquely Indiana. For instance, Philip rides his bike everywhere. I mean, he takes weekend trips with just his bike and canned stew. His mother is perfectly agreeable to this situation, but refuses to allow Philip to ride his bike on Main Street in the small Indiana town of Danville where he lives. This sort of logic need not make sense to anyone except mothers in Indiana. Reading this reminded me of my own mother who, if I was out, insisted I call at 11pm, not to tell her where I was or tell her when I would be home or anything like that, just to talk for a few minutes. All I can figure is that she liked to know I was still alive before she went to bed.

Philip gets into all sorts of silly trouble that children today have never even imagined. One infamous favorite of mine involved a mannequin and an arthritic, deaf dog that belonged to the sheriff. The sheriff apparently didn’t know the dog was practically infirm because he continued to threaten to sic the dog on various miscreants.  In the memoir, Philip had sidekicks in crime with names like Suds. This reader got confused and thought, for a while, that Suds was a dog. His antics, aside from speaking, were rather jocular like I imagine a dog of Gulley would behave. I think Suds would have enjoyed his portrayal as a dog. By the way, do people who grow up being called Suds continue to be called Peanut in adulthood? Or do they ever get sick of being confused with the family dog?

The characters in this book are hysterical because you know they are real (at least in part). For instance, Gulley’s father, a bug spray salesman, trades crates of bug spray for vacations in the cradle of hell and was born into a family that has the worst taste in cars. But Philip is really the funniest character in the book: Philip is convinced that he is really a Jewish orphan and doesn’t belong in this Catholic family. Gulley, now a Quaker pastor, claims he only started going to the Quaker church because it was full of cute girls. Philip’s viewpoint in as an adult looking back on childhood expresses what adults think about their childhood. Who didn’t feel like they were disconnected from their family? Who didn’t have a ridiculous amount of hormones raging through their body? And more. I could go on and on…but I will let you read the book.

My only criticism would be that Miss Huddleston takes up so little of the book. She appears somewhere in the middle and while Gulley’s love is clearly pure and eternal, Miss Huddleston disappears a few pages later and is never mentioned again. Poor Miss Huddleston.

Philip Gulley will speak at the Warren County Public Library on Thursday, October 15 at 6:00 p.m.  For more information, contact Jayne Pelaski at jaynep@warrenpl.org or call 270-781-4882.

Kara Ripley is a librarian at the Warren County Public Library in Bowling Green, Kentucky. She earned her BA in English and Philosophy and her Masters in Library Science from Indiana University. Kara lives with her husband Matt, and spends most of her time reading and/or knitting.