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Private Notes
It's the first day of school, and Spanky and Alfalfa have cooked up a scheme to be sent home. Spanky fixes up Alfalfa with a phony toothache by blowing up a balloon in his mouth to create the illusion of swelling. But the new teacher has overheard their scheme. She sends them home, but only after letting them know about the ice cream that's on its way to the classroom.
The toothache miraculously disappears, but the balloon gets caught in Alfalfa's throat. The teacher wants him to sing a song, which he does, complete with a high-pitched squeak every time he inhales.
Spanky has a plan to get some firecrackers away from Buckwheat and Porky so that he and Alfalfa can set them off. They disguise themselves as a man (with Spanky on Alfalfa's shoulders) and intimidate the two younger boys. Recess is over before they can light off the firecrackers, so Alfalfa puts them in his back pocket. Inside, he volunteers to recite "The Charge of the Light Brigade." As Porky focuses a magnifying glass on Alfalfa's back pocket, the poem receives some added special effects when the firecrackers go off.
Unable to get the local kids to pay a penny to see the gang's performance of ""Romeo and Juliet,"" Alfalfa gets them in by letting them pay as they exit if they like the show. As the show gets underway, Darla storms out, unable to tolerate Alfalfa's onion breath. After Spanky stalls off the crowd with his ""old act,"" the play continues with Buckwheat in the role of Juliet.
As school lets out, Spanky and Alfalfa send Buckwheat and Porky back into the building to deposit a phony doctor's note on the teacher's desk, so that they can skip school the next day and go to the circus. As the teacher's leaving, she tells the boys that she's taking the whole class to the circus. When they run back to the building to retrieve the notes, the little kids are just closing the doors, which are now locked. They show up that night to break into the school and get the note back. Stormy weather, a power outage, and various other spooky happenings, send all four boys - and the janitor - running for their lives.
Spanky is an orphan shining shoes on a riverboat traveling down the Mississippi River during the Civil War. After being joined by Buckwheat, who's been separated from the other slaves, Spanky meets up again with Marshall Valient, who is about to leave for the war. Spanky and the other kids must stay behind and protect the women, so they form an army and fight a battle against some Yankees.
There's a class reunion going on at Adams Street Grammar School, so the gang puts on a special show, Follies-style.
There's a new bully in town named Butch, and to save time, he'll just lick the toughest guy in the school rather than the whole class. Through a mishap, Alfalfa finds himself volunteered, but Spanky stalls Butch in order to organize a boxing match. Alfalfa is hopelessly outmatched in the ring, but fortunately, Buckwheat and Porky come to his rescue by conking Butch in the head from behind a curtain.
It's Valentine's Day, and the boys decide they don't want anything to do with it, forming ""The He-Man Woman-Haters' Club."" Almost immediately, Darla passes by and winks at Alfalfa, who drops the club like a hot potato and follows her for a picnic lunch. While Alfalfa pushes Darla on the swing, Spanky and Buckwheat replace the cheese in Alfalfa's sandwich with bar soap, and the cream in the cream puffs with liquid soap. Not wanting to offend Darla, Alfalfa eats all of it. In the classroom, he is summoned to sing a song for the class, which is punctuated with bubbles from Alfalfa's mouth.
Butch and Woim steal Buckwheat and Porky's marbles and smear tomatoes in their faces, so the two younger boys go to Spanky and Alfalfa, who are running a protection agency. After Alfalfa's failed attempt to intimidate the two bullies, Spanky brings in plan two: pelting the bullies with tomatoes. This leads to a chase that ends in the local ballet school. Inside, Spanky and Alfalfa disguise themselves as ballerinas and find themselves in the dance recital. Not to be outdone, Butch and Woim switch clothes with a couple of the boys in the recital and engage in a rough dance sequence with Alfalfa.
The boys overhear the teacher requesting a week-long closure of the school so she can attend her sister's wedding. The superintendent of schools says that nothing short of an epidemic would accomplish that. The boys decide to create an epidemic, and inflate rubber balls under their shirts to give themselves fat stomachs, and paint spots around their eyes. Meanwhile, Waldo finds out that, in light of the students' exemplary grades, the superintendent will make an exception and close the school. He sends Porky to deliver a note to the boys, but Spanky doesn't have the patience to wait for Porky to remember which pocket it's in. The boys go to a doctor to be diagnosed, not realizing he's a veterinary doctor. He examines Buckwheat first, behind a closed door, leaving Spanky and Alfalfa to overhear details about monkey serums and the like. When the doctor leaves, they go in for Buckwheat, only to find a monkey sitting there.
Spanky and Alfalfa are finding themselves with very little free time, as they have to babysit their infant siblings. They decide, with Buckwheat and Porky, to run away. As they arrive in a small town, they notice that the owners of the local bakery are feeding stray dogs. Spanky and Alfalfa ask for some treats for their dog, but only get dog biscuits. Buckwheat and Porky then walk right in with another dog, who turns out to belong to the proprietors. Playing along, the kindly folks give the two boys every treat they request for the dog. As the boys are all eating cake and cream puffs, the proprietors overhear them talking about being runaways. It's decided that the boys must be taught a lesson, so the man dresses as a local sheriff and arrests the boys, putting them in striped prison outfits.
The boys are treating Darla's father to repeated renditions of ""Home, Sweet Home,"" delivered with a liberal dose of cacophony. But it's getting late, and as they open the door to leave, it suddenly starts to rain. Mrs. Hood will sleep with Darla, while the four boys will share Mr. Hood's bed. It doesn't take long for him to leave for the living room couch, where he covers himself with a bearskin rug and dreams of the four boys as miniature devils poking him with pitchforks.
