16th Post "THE PAST IS MYSELF"

Photo: December 1953, The first issue of Playboy Magazine

DECEMBER, 1953
(We Owned Marilyn)

Not everything was as religiously pristine as it may have appeared on the surface, in the Chicago Christian High School environs. One song, especially, stands out in my mind:

“We are the Christian Boys
We play with Tinker Toys
And beat up little boys,
We are the Christian Boys”

The area was named Englewood, on the South Side of Chicago, and Marquette Road, (67th Street) intersected with Halsted Street; the North West Corner of the intersection embodied a neighborhood pharmacy. A magical place to purchase a Chocolate Coke, Vanilla Coke, Cherry Coke, Cherry Smash and view the magazine rack which was crammed full, to my adolescent eyes, of every type of magazine on the planet.

Down in the Yellow Creek Valley, no citizen heard of “Cheesecake”, you put cheese on crackers, but not in a cake.

The nearest thing to naked lady magazines, back in the 1940s, was the lingerie section of the Sears Roebuck Catalog, with its slick pages full of corsets, slips and bras with sizes from A to DD.

My cousin and I had no idea what those letters represented back in those days. But we “paged” through the catalog when the adults weren’t looking.

Mrs. Addie Adams, the old cripple grandmother, departed this life in 1966 at the age of ninety one. After the family exited the “gathering room” in the funeral home, I was alone with the casket and the body. I lifted the veil, bent over her cold face, and kissed her on the forehead, doing my own silent weeping and saying “Goodbye Mother”. She instilled in me, only the positive and good, I felt she really loved me, I know I loved her.

Mrs. Addie always remembered my birthday and Christmas with a card and a piece of paper money to add some jingle to my pocket. These little gifts were kept secret from my parents, because had they been aware of my receiving money, it would have gone into their coffers and not jingle in my pocket.

Usually, I could make a little money, on the side by “odd ball” employment. Walking down an alley, hearing a voice hollering, “Hey kid, wanna make five bucks”, “Hey, youse wanna make a coupla dollars”?

Always there was a piano to help move to a second or third floor apartment or some other lifting job where the fellow needed help. These types of tasks were good for jingle to feed a craving like chocolate éclairs, chocolate cokes or some other treat that would appeal to an adolescent appetite.

My dwelling place was in the sixty seven hundred block of Emerald Avenue, one street East of Halsted Street. Between Emerald Avenue and Halsted, an alley paralleled in a Northerly and Southerly direction. On the Southeast corner of 67th Street and the alley lived a classmate of mine, Louis Vloedman. Louie, as I called him, could have passed, visually, as a twin brother to his own father, they were an absolute “look alike”. Louie was a lover.

I think Louie had a crush on every girl in high school, at least to hear him expound, the listener would be inclined to believe he did.

Louie knew much about a lot of things, especially animal husbandry in the homo sapiens‘ species. Louie even knew what cup sizes A through DD were all about, I learned from Louie, they were not the sizes of coffee mugs.

I had lived, prior to my teen age years on a farm, I knew all about cows “finding” calves, mares with “new” foals, roosters and hens with baby chicks, hogs with litters of piglets, and I knew what had happened before the babies were born. But when Louie told me, in the eighth grade, that my mother and father “did it”, I could not believe what I was hearing.

The people I lived with, in the same house, just two rooms away from where I slept, they were “doing it”? When were they “doing it“? At night? In the daytime? Louie shocked me, my brain reeled from having been exposed to this deplorable news. Not my parents, they would never do such a thing! Absolute naivety!

In the eighth grade at Englewood Christian School, Louie fell in love with Patricia Carr, at least he talked a lot about her, In Chicago Christian High, Louie fell in love with one of our classmates, Donna Lewis.

Donna was struck down by the devastating disease, “bulbar polio”. When Donna passed away, Louie was devastated. He became withdrawn and said he could never love again as he had loved Donna. I don’t know if Louie ever told Donna about his feelings or not, but he did fall in love again, with Sally Smith, a girl he met on a church sponsored hay ride. Louie married Sally.

Usually when the crippled old grandmother would send me a Christmas Card with the paper money stashed inside, I would use most of it to buy some simple present for my mother and father for Christmas. Maybe a box of Andes’ Candies from the store on Halsted Street for her and a handkerchief from the drug store on the corner for him; just whatever could be afforded from the bill in the card.

December, 1953 was different from other visits to the drug store on the corner of Halsted Street and Marquette Road. In the magazine rack, among the publications of Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Field and Stream and other established periodicals, was an entirely new publication never before seen with my eyes.

A magazine cover with a price tag of fifty cents, a study in black and white of a well known celebrity with her left arm raised as though waving to me and a smile spread across her face. To the right of the famous celebrity facing me, appeared a box with the message:

FIRST TIME
In any magazine
FULL COLOR
The famous
MARILYN
MONROE
NUDE

Also the cover informed the viewer, this was the first issue.

WOW! Marilyn Monroe, and with no clothes on! Did I have enough jingle to buy her? Wait ‘til I tell Louie what I found, I’ll bet he will be surprised!

Did I have enough jingle in my pocket from the paper money the old cripple grandmother had sent me? Why did I go and buy those presents for Floyd and Mary Lee? Eagerly I checked the jingle and mercy be to High Heaven, thank God and Angels, and Jesus and everyone connected with magic, I had just enough jingle to make Marilyn my very own.

Was I ever lucky to have seen her before sitting on the soda fountain stool and ordering a ten cent chocolate coke. I could afford her, now Marilyn would be mine.

I kept Marilyn hid between the box springs and mattress of my bed, realizing the possibilities of Marilyn being discovered sleeping with me, should Mary Lee and Floyd come into the room to “rotate and turn over” the mattress. I knew my sharing Marilyn with Louie was of paramount importance, especially if she were to survive in the Victorian Standards of my environment. After all, Louie was a man of the world, he knew cup sizes and who was “doing it”. Louie had better hiding places and could protect Marilyn.

Louie was more excited than I could have imagined him to be. He stuffed Marilyn down inside his shirt for perfect concealment while performing the clandestine act of sneaking her into his own place of abode. Marilyn would be safe with Louie.

Somewhere in time Marilyn became a part of life that goes away from us. Louie had a cousin, Emil DelMastro living next door to him. Emil attended Parker High School and Louie shared Marilyn with Emil and probably most of Parker High School. Emil, who was not the brightest star in the universe, claimed he lost our prize.

But for a period of time in December, 1953 through February, 1954, Marilyn was ours.

Not everything was crystal clear and pristine as appearance would leave the uninitiated to believe, in the Chicago Christian High environs, after all, “We were the Christian Boys”!

Oh! That was the first and last copy of “Playboy” I ever purchased, too bad it wasn’t archived, what an investment, fifty cents in 1953 to over five thousand dollars in today’s market. Oh well, as my friend and fellow classmate Dutch Huizinga remarks with his marvelous and descriptive aviation vocabulary, “Don’t look back at the runway behind you”!

Thanks Mrs. Addie, wherever you may be, for having made funds available for your grandson and Louie to have owned Marilyn.