I suppose most boys (and girls too) can remember where and when they learned about the "Birds and the Bees!" I'm sure it's getting easier now as schools are delving into this subject at a much earlier age than when I attended. In fact, other than talking about Frogs and Snakes, we didn't get into the subject of reproduction or procreation in depth. It just was something that they seemed to "hustle" through when they got to that chapter. I guess they felt it was best if they let the parents handle that chore.
My parents didn't talk too much about such things in front of my brother and me. In fact, I don't ever remember the subject being brought up. I'm sure I probably asked them where I came from when I was small but whatever they told me didn't "stick" and I've forgetten what it was. I'm sure Dad said "Go ask your Mother," and she probably retaliated with "Go ask your Father!" At any rate I didn't learn these things from either of them.
I did discover that there was a definite difference between boys and girls (at least physically) when I was about six or seven years old. This I found out from some of the girls in the neighborhood when I noticed they weren't equipped to write their names in the snow when they used the bathroom outdoors. Aside from that and the fact that they didn't like Frogs and Snakes much, I never paid it much mind. We certainly didn't talk about it a lot.
Things pretty much went along like this for several years until I got to the seventh grade and started playing basketball in the afternoons. In those days at CCHS, there were no school buses and our parents only had one family car. There was not a lot of "carpoolin" as we know of today. Lots of times if you stayed after school for activities (or detention hall), you walked home. This was the case when I learned the "Facts of Life."
I spent a lot of my early boyhood years growing up with some close friends in our neighborhood. There was a group of us that were pretty much the same age and shared common interests such as shooting BB guns, spending time at the City Swimming Pool or just "hanging out." We did everything together including playing basketball (or baseball) after school. This meant we usually walked home together. Such was the case with Freddy Byars and myself. We both enjoyed a friendly (or not so friendly) game of "hoops" so we always played after we got out of school. It was common place to go up to the gym on Saturday mornings and play basketball for the better part of the day, then walk home.
It was during one of these walks home that the subject came up. I don't remember if I brought it up or if Freddy did. All I remember was that we had engaged in the subject while we were still on school property because Freddy got to the "meat of the matter" somewhere near the corner of West 3rd and Walnut Streets, on the sidewalk that ran beside Paul Stucker's house. He didn't "sugar coat" things and proceeded to tell me exactly how I went from being an "idea" to an actual human being. I didn't know whether to believe him or not. "What are you talking about?" I asked him. "My parents never even saw each other nekkid, much less went through this stuff you're telling me!" "It's true," he went on to say. "Mom's got this book she hid in the drawer beside her bed. I was lookin' for a magnifying glass and came upon it. It had this 'mushy' picture of a man and woman on the cover so I opened it up. I begin readin' and sure enough, it happened just like I told you." I began feeling sorta "faint," but had to know more. "I got this cousin who's older than us and he told me that's how it happened," he went on to say. I knew his cousin and knew he was one of the smartest guys I had ever met, so it had to be true. "Holy-Moly," I went on to say, "Ol' Mom and Dad sure did a good job of hidin' this!"
I guess we must have stopped in front of the Stucker's house and talked about this for quite a while because I remember it was starting to get dark. We got onto another subject but I remember that every time we got together for awhile after that, I'd ask more questions. That was my first lesson in the "Birds and the Bees!"
The following summer when school finally "turned out" for the year, all of us boys in the neighborhood would usually assemble down at the city park We spent long active days playing baseball, riding our bikes, and lazy afternoons up at the swimmin' pool. Occasionally the subject would come up. There were about seven or eight of us that hung out together and between the group we usually had an answer when "sex" came up. I'll never forget the day when a friend of ours from over on the west side of town approached us and told us he and his little sister (she was about twelve years old at the time) had entered into a business. He said she was willing to show her "private parts" to us for a dollar. It was to be a quick "flash." (Their business was that the sister got fifty cents and her brother got the other fifty cents). Show time would be the following Friday morning, behind a shed behind their house near Ryan Hill.
Man, I never worked so hard to come up with a dollar. I sold soda pop bottles (to Red Casebier over at Casebier's grocery), picked up candy wrappers around the swimming pool and mowed our yard. By mid-week I had my dollar and so did the rest of the boys in our group. On Friday morning, we assembled at the city park with our dollars in our pockets. Our friend from the other side of town rode his bicycle down to the city park and collected our dollars. Our group had grown to about ten guys by now. He told us he would take a fifteen minute head start to go prepare his sister. They'd meet us behind the shed. We hung around the park, mostly tossing rocks in the creek to pass the time. In fifteen minutes we boarded our bicycles and headed "west." To avoid traffic, we rode down Whitmer Street (which was gravel and dirt in those days) to "A" Street (now Mittie K. Render Avenue) down by the fairgrounds, turned down "A" to Legion Blvd, then entered Reservoir Ave. down by Wilbur Morris's feed mill. From there it was only a few blocks to our destination.
When we arrived, we were greeted by our friend and his sister. She told us to go behind the shed and she'd go inside and would open the door in the back. We'd get a quick look and once she shut the door, the program was over....no questions or press conferences. We were pretty nervous because there were houses on the streets behind us and if one of the neighbors was looking out the window or something, they could possibly spot us. We took that chance.
Pretty soon, as we were assembled in a tight group in the back, nervous as we could be, the door swung open and there she stood with a towel in front of her. Quickly she dropped the towel, stood there for about three or four seconds and then picked it up and shut the door. Show over. It was like a trip to Disney World. We couldn't even come up with the words to describe what we had seen. All of us in a daze, we simply rode our bikes back to the park and gathered down by the creek, tossed rocks and replayed the action. I sorta felt guilty but didn't, as I knew this was a "once in a lifetime" chance (which it wasn't of course, as we discovered the "hootchy-kootchy" show at the fair a couple of years later).
To this day, if I see that lady in town I still wonder if she remembers her "peep show" and if she remembers who attended. Of course, since her brother was so enterprising, I'm sure that's not the only performance she gave. There were probably a hundred of us altogether that summer. She still lives around here and she probably receives this blog so hopefully she's forgotten about this part of her past (in fact, she's a good citizen of our community now).
As I grew older, got married and began raising my own sons, I was always aprehensive about the subject of sex and how to explain it to them when the proper time came around. As with my parents, I didn't have to. When I sat each of them down to explain the "Birds and Bees" to them, I found out they already knew an awful lot. The oldest learned it just like I did, from a friend and each of the others learned it from their older siblings. It was never much of an issue around our house.
Now I have granddaughters. Thank God, I won't be called upon to explain any of this to them and I can guarantee you that my wife and my daughter-in-law will see to it that they never hear my version of the facts. They'll learn it like all little girls did (however that was). I'm also grateful that they don't have a brother to put them in the business of "show n' tell" like my old friend did...I'd hate to "knock a knot" on his head!
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