Paul Henson was a biologist for the U. S. Department of Agriculture, which operated a research station in Leland. Betty was a stay-at-home mother to the new baby and his older brother, Paul Jr. The second-born son was by nature shy and quietly inquisitive, a clever child who enjoyed the adoring attention of his maternal grandmother, known as “Dear,” while his mother doted on Paul Jr.1 A family photograph, taken when Jim Henson was perhaps ten, shows him kneeling in front of a coiled garden hose. He is wrapped in what appears to be a light blanket or bed sheet, with a makeshift turban atop his head. While tooting on a wooden flute, the boy is casting a hypnotic spell on the hose, convincingly propped off the grass to appear as a cobra. The young Jimmy Henson was already trying his hand at illusion and sight gags.2 On sweltering summer days in Leland, Jimmy and a group of boys would meet at the Broad Street Bridge over Deer Creek, dangling their bare feet off the side or playing along the creek bend just beyond Leland Elementary School in a slightly downriver setting straight out of Mark Twain.
