My Grandmommy Waters liked pornography……..well, actually it was more along the lines of mildly titillating journalism, but to my daddy it was smut. My older sister and I were avid readers even then, and a visit to Grandmommy’s house brought us into contact with the “wilder” side of life. She allowed us to read her True Romance and True Story magazines, much to Daddy’s dismay. I am not exactly sure of Mom’s opinion of our choice of enlightenment, but Daddy said no, and to Mom that was the end of it. We were preteen, nearly ready to burst onto the world with our adolescent fantasies of love and lust. And he was attempting to reign us in, control our wanton urges, through any means he had available. In Grandmommy we had an comrade, a partner in broadening our choice of reading material and exposure to worldly activities.
To be honest here, these magazines were mild, not by any means could they be considered pornographic. There were no naked pictures lounging against tangled sheets, no sexual language or body parts mentioned, it was all implication and suggestion, an allusion to what could possibly be happening and not what actually was. But to my Daddy, they were trash and not fit subjects for our reading pleasure. So we grew sneaky, as all children do at some point or time. After a visit to Grandmommy’s house, it because a clandestine mission to hide our booty from the clutches of both Daddy and the prying (and tattling) band of little sisters we possessed.
A favorite hiding place for our secret cache of loot was an old hollow tree deep in the woods on the back side of our little farm. The magazines were protected no matter what form the weather took in the deep cavernous insides. During the summer, we would slip off for a few hours of reading enjoyment with no one being the wiser. But come winter, and the changing weather, we had to resort to concealing them closer to the house, since our excursions were somewhat curtailed during the colder and more inclement months. At the rear of the house was the outhouse, attached to the shed in our back yard. The outhouse was hidden from the view of the back door and the perfect place to read our treasures of literary perversity in private bliss and solitude. It was a simple matter to store our scandalous reading material under the eaves and between the rafters of the shed. Perfect in fact, for they couldn’t be seen from the inside of the shed by Daddy and were once again protected from the weather. Easy enough to protect our stash and still be within hollering distance if the need should arise for quick divertive action. With no one the wiser.
Unfortunately it was not always a simple thing to climb on top of the outhouse for me, being vertically challenged as I was. My sister had it easier, being somewhat ape legged and armed as she was blessed with height. Usually I went first, more from need than seniority. Climb up on the dog pen attached to the back of the outhouse and use the post as a stepping stool to reach the roof. If that failed, a boost in the seat of my pants by my taller (and therefore luckier) sister usually accomplished the goal. Once perched atop the tin roof ( scaldingly hot on bare naked legs on sunny summer days), we would creep up the roof to the edge of the shed and sit down to enjoy a bit or scholarly pursuit. If we were lucky and had timed it correctly, the sun would have sunk low enough to provide a bit of shade to protect our fannies from the heat generated off the tin. And if it hadn’t…..a extra book, one not being scrutinized at that moment, made an excellent cushion for sitting on. We had all the bases covered, or so we thought…
Although reading should be a relaxing and pleasurable pastime, this wasn’t always the case for us, unfortunately. There was always the chance, with three younger sisters living there, that someone would have to have use of the outhouse at any moment. When that happened, we had to flatten our bodies down on that roof, no matter the temperature of the tin. Absolutely no movement or even deep breathing or we would be discovered. And Discovery was a thing to avoid at all costs, since our littler sister were seriously prone to tattling for any indiscretion on our part.
My last remembered jaunt into the realms of literary oblivion upon the roof of the outhouse ended badly, as one might imagine. There we were, immersed up to our eyeballs in lustful adventure, when suddenly the back screen door slammed, signaling the approach of either Mom or the terrible three, ready to interrupt our solitude and serenity. For some reason, no subversive movement, such as flattening on my belly and holding my breath came to mind ---- I panicked. I jumped off the back of the roof and landed flat on the ground….
The outhouse backed up to a field, overgrown with weeds, some taller than my head. While we played and romped in the tall grass and weeds, evidently we hadn’t scoped it all out, because there, exactly where I landed, was an old board, complete with a protruding and rusty nail. And pointing up, of course. And, as you have probably surmised, I landed on it. The nail was HUGE, so long it went through my entire foot. Well, almost. I hit the ground running, so to speak, because when I landed on that nail, I never slowed down, but kept running, yelling wildly, straight to Mom who had, indeed, just walked out the back door. Vicki was hot on my heels, in shock most likely because she had no idea what had happened, only that I was flying across the grass and screaming as if I had been snake-bitten. To tell the truth, I didn’t know at that moment that I hadn’t. I had no idea what I had landed on when I nose-dived off the roof.
After the requisite Doctor visit for a Tetanus shot and a bandage big enough to make it seem my foot had been decapitated, we came home. Sad to say, Doctor Willard wasn’t even surprised to see Mom bring one of us girls in to see him with some major catastrophe. We tended to be accident prone to say the least. It was a terrible time for me, crawling across the floor when Mom had a cake in the oven (so as not to make it “fall”) and being stuck in the house while my sisters got to roam and play. Even harder to accept was that my foot didn’t heal, the top of my foot, which the nail failed to penetrate completely, became infected and had to be lanced. That was possibly the worst punishment I could have gotten.
While I don’t exactly remember what became of our clandestine reading material, I can positively state that I still love smutty journalism, those trashy romances, where the guy is impossibly handsome and virile and the women are so gorgeous and indescribably sensual the men can’t resist them. And to this day, my Daddy has a problem with my choices in literary fulfillment. I used to share them with Mom, much to his dismay. He would ask, as I walked though with a sack full for Mom‘s enjoyment, is that more trash you are bring in here and I would answer, Daddy----it’s safe sex.
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