male equipment. To display it under present circumstances was a quite different matter, but they gamely did: unbuttoned the flies of their corduroy knickers and (avoiding each other’s eye, but not a glance at each other’s business) fished out their limp, pink-and-cream-colored little—
“ Penises ,” Ruth Ellen Prosper declared, looking from one to the other with an expression of mild disgust. “ Pricks . Dicks . Cocks . Now skin ’em back.”
Do what ? Ned Prosper evidently understood what his sister meant, and boldly obliged. Can it have been that George Newett at age nine remained unaware of the operation (never mind the names) of foreskin, prepuce, glans penis? Unlikely; but on a similarly wintry day nearly seven decades later, what he remembers is his having been too mortified to do more than stand there, pinching his penis between right-hand thumb and forefinger practically in Ruthie’s face and wiping his suddenly sniffly nose with his left (on which—distinctly!—he caught the scent of her private parts from when their roles had been reversed) until, “If you’re so set on seeing it,” Brother challenged Sister, “peel him back yourself.” Which to G. I. Newett’s fascinated appall she daintily did: exposed for her close-up scrutiny what a dozen years later the then college-age pals, laughing and shaking their heads at the recollection over mugs of frat-house beer, would call “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” 2 and then dismissing it with a finger-flick and a brisk, “Okay, you pass.”
“Do I have to come up there and find that Christmas stuff myself?” Mr. Prosper inquired up the stairwell.
“No need, Dad. We’ve got our hands on it right now.”
So where am I? Ah, yes: at G.I.N.’s worktable all these winters later, making note of at least three more items from this early season of his and (the late!) Ned Prosper’s story, out of the many prompted by that recent solstice-vision:
For starters, their early discovery of books as a source of extracurricular and sometimes even curricular pleasure. Those “Big Little Books,” e.g.: hardcovers the size of half a brick, text on their left-hand 3” × 4” pages, black-and-white illustrations on their right, retailing the adventures of Dick Tracy, Tailspin Tommy, Tom Mix, Terry and the Pirates. Also a larger, radically abridged and expurgated edition of The Arabian Nights , handsomely illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. Plus innumerable comic books, more pictures than text, whose literally colorful depictions of Superman, Batman, and the rest drove Big Little Books off the market. And, as the pair graduated cross-creek from Bridgetown Elementary to Stratford Junior High and at Ned’s parents’ urging frequented the Avon County Public Library, the shelves of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan and Victor Appleton’s Tom Swift novels. Stories, stories, stories! Much as they enjoyed watching Saturday-afternoon double features at Stratford’s Globe Theater and listening to radio serials like The Shadow (“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows . . . ”), in those pre-television, pre-video-game days it was stories “told” in printed words that most appealed to them—the silent, privileged transaction between Author and individual
Reader (the boys regularly swapped books, but never read aloud to each other). Good old print: a shared early addiction that by their college years would become—unreservedly for Ned, halfhopefully for his sidekick—a calling, a true vocation ....
Second, Ned’s habit already by sixth grade of proposing something—an illicit dive off the Matahannock Bridge, maybe—then saying, unless Gee said it first, “On second thought, we’ll be in hot water if Ruthie squeals on us,” and deciding finally, “On third thought, that damn water’s too cold today: Let’s go splash Ruthie and her friends instead.” Or, on a wartime waste-paper-collection drive with fellow members of
“ Penises ,” Ruth Ellen Prosper declared, looking from one to the other with an expression of mild disgust. “ Pricks . Dicks . Cocks . Now skin ’em back.”
Do what ? Ned Prosper evidently understood what his sister meant, and boldly obliged. Can it have been that George Newett at age nine remained unaware of the operation (never mind the names) of foreskin, prepuce, glans penis? Unlikely; but on a similarly wintry day nearly seven decades later, what he remembers is his having been too mortified to do more than stand there, pinching his penis between right-hand thumb and forefinger practically in Ruthie’s face and wiping his suddenly sniffly nose with his left (on which—distinctly!—he caught the scent of her private parts from when their roles had been reversed) until, “If you’re so set on seeing it,” Brother challenged Sister, “peel him back yourself.” Which to G. I. Newett’s fascinated appall she daintily did: exposed for her close-up scrutiny what a dozen years later the then college-age pals, laughing and shaking their heads at the recollection over mugs of frat-house beer, would call “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” 2 and then dismissing it with a finger-flick and a brisk, “Okay, you pass.”
“Do I have to come up there and find that Christmas stuff myself?” Mr. Prosper inquired up the stairwell.
“No need, Dad. We’ve got our hands on it right now.”
So where am I? Ah, yes: at G.I.N.’s worktable all these winters later, making note of at least three more items from this early season of his and (the late!) Ned Prosper’s story, out of the many prompted by that recent solstice-vision:
For starters, their early discovery of books as a source of extracurricular and sometimes even curricular pleasure. Those “Big Little Books,” e.g.: hardcovers the size of half a brick, text on their left-hand 3” × 4” pages, black-and-white illustrations on their right, retailing the adventures of Dick Tracy, Tailspin Tommy, Tom Mix, Terry and the Pirates. Also a larger, radically abridged and expurgated edition of The Arabian Nights , handsomely illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. Plus innumerable comic books, more pictures than text, whose literally colorful depictions of Superman, Batman, and the rest drove Big Little Books off the market. And, as the pair graduated cross-creek from Bridgetown Elementary to Stratford Junior High and at Ned’s parents’ urging frequented the Avon County Public Library, the shelves of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan and Victor Appleton’s Tom Swift novels. Stories, stories, stories! Much as they enjoyed watching Saturday-afternoon double features at Stratford’s Globe Theater and listening to radio serials like The Shadow (“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows . . . ”), in those pre-television, pre-video-game days it was stories “told” in printed words that most appealed to them—the silent, privileged transaction between Author and individual
Reader (the boys regularly swapped books, but never read aloud to each other). Good old print: a shared early addiction that by their college years would become—unreservedly for Ned, halfhopefully for his sidekick—a calling, a true vocation ....
Second, Ned’s habit already by sixth grade of proposing something—an illicit dive off the Matahannock Bridge, maybe—then saying, unless Gee said it first, “On second thought, we’ll be in hot water if Ruthie squeals on us,” and deciding finally, “On third thought, that damn water’s too cold today: Let’s go splash Ruthie and her friends instead.” Or, on a wartime waste-paper-collection drive with fellow members of
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