The 14 Year-Old Porn Peddler

As I start in on this it is about 9:30 on Sunday morning, so naturally my thinking turns to porn. Pornography practically oozes off the internet. I can Google “nude women” and see all kinds of bare stuff. If I’m particular, I can use the three words “stacked nude women” and get a monitor full of busty females, some posing, and some in action. It’s very easy. Too easy.

I’m 61 years old. Back when I was 13 and getting my first taste of porn, things were not so simple. A kid had to work for his pictures of naked girls. And even with work the pictures were usually lousy. Back in the day, the cream of the porn crop was Playboy. The girlie photos were airbrushed and sort of semi-real, but at least the models were attractive. The trouble was; Playboys were generally not out on the local pharmacy’s magazine rack where they would be accessible to the young, curious, newly pubescent guy, but rather up by the watchful eyes of the store's cashier. The magazines that were available on the racks were such dubious publications as Stag, and For Men Only. These were really cheap mags with grainy black and white photos of slightly overweight women displaying chubby legs and cleavage, but not much more. An adolescent boy had to develop a keen imagination to become enlivened by a Stag Magazine.

Just about my 14th birthday, I was walking down an alley when I came upon a trashcan containing about a dozen slightly worn Playboys. I felt as though God had sent me a pictorial treasure chest. I hurried the publications home and hid them in a box placed up in our garage’s rafters. Now and then over the following days I would climb a ladder, visit my stash, and leave the garage with a Playboy hidden under a shirt. I would show it to a friend and we would analyze the smiling, unclothed foldout. I eventually sold the entire library to an older kid for, as I recall, a whopping $3. I had never made so much money at one time. Now these years later I can honestly say that one of my earliest and most successful business ventures was in the peddling of pornography. Contrary to how others might label me, I have never thought of myself as particularly perverted or depraved. You see, I figure it was business, that’s all, just business.           

The Reaper

Well, it is 2013. I escaped 2012 alive and in good health. Not everyone I know who is my age did escape. One of them, Steve Sheridan, I knew back in elementary school when we were kids. He died in 2012 of leukemia at the age of 61. I am sorry Steve died but to be honest, I prefer he experience death as opposed to my experiencing it. I do not like the notion of death, which paradoxically, is why I’m writing this blog entry.

A couple of years ago another elementary school classmate died. His name was Bob Arnold. Bob and I occasionally got into trouble together back when we were kids. We were in the same Cub Scout den. A couple of times I visited his house for Scout meetings. He was perhaps the best cusser at Glenmont Elementary School during the early 1960s. When I saw in some online obituaries that Bob had died, I really felt saddened.

I kind of imagine all of my contemporaries lining up once annually about this time of year with The Grim Reaper walking down the line and putting his hand on a couple of shoulders, thereby selecting them for expiration during the forthcoming year. With every passing year the black-cloaked guy takes a few more of us than he did the year before. That is just the way it is with aging. There are things that can be done to make a person look less attractive to The Reaper, things such as a healthy diet and exercise, but in the end if Mr. Death wants you, you will feel his hand upon your shoulder.

I’d like to think The Reaper will once again pass me by for 2013, but of course I will not know for sure until I raise my champagne glass on December 31^st at 11:59 PM, assuming I will be here to raise it. Of course come next January the utterly pointless worry starts all over again. But I’ll tell you what; next year I won’t mention it, that is, given the chance.          

Mom's Birthday Candle

My mother was born on December 14^th 1918. One Saturday morning in early December 1961 my 7 year-old sister and I decided we needed to buy my mother a birthday present. We asked my mom for some money to buy her a gift and she reluctantly gave us $3 or $4. As luck would have it, my father had planned to do some Christmas shopping that day at Lazarus Department Store, located in downtown Columbus. With money in hand, my sister and I went along.

At the Lazarus front doors, we kids split up from my dad, promising to meet him later at some predetermined location. Over the next half hour or so the two of us explored a number of different store departments in search of the perfect birthday present for my mom. We looked at baseball gloves, ballet slippers, even cheap cuckoo clocks, but we found nothing that we both thought my mother would like. Then, like a miracle, my sister and I came upon an approximately four foot-tall, electric Christmas candle made of heavy-duty plastic. Down the side of the candle in big yellow letters was the word NOEL. We just knew my mother would love it.

We hid the candle in the garage until we could wrap it, complete with stick-on bow. A few days later, on my mother’s birthday, we presented her with our fabulous gift. To our utter shock, frustration surfaced upon my mom’s face the instant the candle was wrestled free of the wrapping paper. “This is not an appropriate gift for someone’s birthday,” she grumbled. She then pushed it away as she shook her head in agitation. I remember it like it was yesterday. My sister and I were crestfallen.

Over the years the candle became known as “Mom’s Birthday Candle”. It was never referred to as “The Christmas Candle”, or “The Noel Candle”. Never. The oversized candle with the light bulb inside the big, yellow, plastic flame was simply “Mom’s Birthday Candle”. And every Christmas for almost 50 years it could be found brightening my Mom’s porch. Now and then over the various holiday seasons my mother would journey outside to wipe off the candle with a rag, or replace a burned-out light bulb. And if the weather turned really foul, she would bring the candle inside to safety.

One December several years ago, a few months before my mother died, I was carrying the candle through the living room, bound for the front porch. Along the way I traveled by my mother as she relaxed in her favorite chair. “Time to set-out your birthday candle,” I said casually.

“I remember the first time I saw that candle,” my mother quietly stated. “I was angry.”

I stopped and turned towards her. “Yeah, I remember. Believe me, I remember.”

“It wasn’t just that you bought me a big, plastic candle, it’s that you used my money to buy it.”

“It was a dumb gift,” I admitted with a shrug and a grin.

“At first I thought it was the stupidest gift in the world,” my mother remarked, “but I’ve received a lot of birthday presents in my life, and the truth is, very few have come to mean more to me than that big candle. So maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t such a stupid gift after all.”

Mom, wherever you are, I just want you to know; this holiday season your birthday candle will be glowing.

My Old West

In about a month or so I’ll be flying to Las Vegas. I’m starting to make reservations and so forth. I’ll spend a day or two in Vegas and then travel around that general region of the country for about a week. I’ll go to Death Valley, which is great in the wintertime, and visit other assorted sites in the region. Other than an evening or so of gambling in Vegas, I would be uninterested in going out west if I had not grown up on various TV Westerns.

As a kid I watched all the TV western shows, and there were a lot of them; The Cisco Kid, Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, and Maverick to name just a few. I watched The Roy Rogers Show too, but I did not enjoy that program as much as some of the others. First, I did not like the way Roy dressed. He was just too immaculate to be a real cowboy. He wore those beautiful, fancy, unscuffed boots. Tucked into the boots were the leg bottoms of a pair of somewhat effeminate, tight, stretch pants. His shirts would make Liberace proud. They were way too colorful and fancy, and they were often adored with this girly leather fringe. Around Roy’s neck could be found a kerchief. Although I was watching Roy in black and white, I had this strange feeling that the kerchief was some shade of lavender. His hat was painfully impeccable.

I remember one early episode where in the finale Roy rode his “golden palomino” Trigger across the countryside in pursuit of a horseback bank robber. When Roy finally captured and subdued the robber after firing a couple of shots from his way-too-shiny sixgun, the town sheriff arrived driving something like a ’52 Dodge DeSoto. Up to the moment the sheriff came on the scene there was nary an indication that the story was taking place in the mid-20^th Century, if it in fact was. I mean, maybe it was a sci-fi episode with the sheriff and his automobile arriving from the future via a time machine. When these inconsistencies happened -and I was to learn that they often did on that show- I always assumed that Roy was simply way behind the times and had refused to mess with automobile technology, opting instead for the old-fashion horse. Thirty years later my father unknowingly supported this theory with his refusal to acknowledge the advent of the computer.

Anyway, despite my opinion of Roy, I’m going to be heading to the West, if not exactly the Old West. In order to follow the correct trail, I’ll be hooking up my GPS to a rented car with heated seats and cruise control. I’m sure that all these highfalutin gizmos will have Roy turning over in his grave. Okay Roy, I might be a tenderfoot, but at least I’m not afraid of get a little dirt on my pants. And by the way, those will be men's pants. 

Run Silent, Run Deep

Yesterday I watched a movie on TV titled Run Silent, Run Deep, a WWII submarine movie. The film was released in 1958 and starred Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster. I have seen the movie about three or four times in my life. I first saw it in 1958 with my father. I was 7 years-old at the time. We went to a theater in downtown Columbus, Ohio to view it. I’m not sure which particular theater however. There were about four of them in operation in downtown Columbus at the time.

Truth is; I remember nothing more than seeing the movie in a big, downtown theater with my dad in the seat next to me. I don’t remember if I had popcorn, or a soda. My father was one cheap guy but I’m going to guess that if he was going to take the trouble to take the two of us to a downtown movie theater to see a movie, he would be willing to spring for popcorn. He might have even coughed up the money for a Coke for me.

My father and I never did much together when I was a boy growing up. We never played catch nor did he shoot hoops with me on our driveway basketball court. I don’t think he ever helped me with my homework. But we went to a couple of Jets minor league baseball games, and four movies. As a family we went to perhaps a dozen or so flicks, but as for just my father and I, there were a total of four. I remember the names of each. The last one was in 1967, The Blue Max. It featured the sultry Ursula Andress, and the film had some adult themes, even some partial nudity. I was 16 then and consequently was very entertained. I’m sure my dad was entertained too.

I wish I could tell my father that I not only just saw Run Silent, Run Deep on television, but that I remember him and me seeing it at the theater 54 years ago. But my father died over 20 years ago, so I can’t. But I know what my father would say. He would look at me for a few seconds, murmur something like “Really? Huh,” and then in an indifferent manner, state that he couldn’t really remember. Ironically, my father did not run silent, run deep, especially in matters of retrospection.

It might seem kind of odd, but there is something mildly amusing about having a sudden desire to tell a departed love one something, something that would not in any way interest that deceased person. But the reality is; I know that my father simply would not care about the activities of one isolated evening in 1958.

I can only reassure myself with the belief that we both liked the movie all those years ago. And I'm pretty sure we did.