Hey, kids! What time is it?

Sometimes, on a rainy Saturday morning like we had today, I can get caught up in a search that leads to arcane knowledge. The Internet makes it so much easier: First I click on this, which leads to clicking on that, which takes me clicking much farther afield until I'm into something that bears no relationship whatsoever to what I originally set out to learn.

This morning my journey led me from whether "how do you do" should be hyphenated when it's used to describe a tangled mess, to whether it would be better to use "how-de-do," to what relationship there might be between the phrase and the name of the puppet who was so popular on TV when I was a kid.

That's when I found out that Howdy Doody's original name was Elmer.

Who knew?

I wondered if he was first known as Elmer Doody.

But that's not the case at all.

According to the TVparty website, "The Howdy Doody Show," like many other programs from the early days of television, first started on radio. Bob Smith was host of a program in New York City. He occasionally included (and voiced) a cornpone character named Elmer, who greeted people with the words "Well, howdy doody." Picked to lead a children's program on the NBC Eastern TV network, Smith became Buffalo Bob and brought Elmer with him, turning him into a puppet and renaming him Howdy Doody.

A star was born.

I also  discovered a few more fascinating tidbits of Howdy Doody trivia.

The puppet-makers created three Howdys. Backstage, the one used for close-ups was called Howdy Doody. The one for long shots was called Double Doody. And the one for photo ops (with no strings, as in the photo above) was called Photo Doody.

Those of us who are of a certain age remember that the redheaded puppet had lots of freckles. But I never imagined that somebody would actually count them.

The Funtrivia website says there were 48, representing the 48 states then in the U.S.A.

Who says there's nothing to do on a rainy Saturday morning?