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Learning about girls

It amazes young people when those of my elder status recall things youngsters believe we have forgotten, or worse never knew about and don’t even understand. This difference is exaggerated by the fact young people have never been old, and are simply not qualified to pronounce judgment on the elderly. For example, though I recall it with nostalgic melancholy for the better part I haven’t forgotten what it was to be a young boy learning about girls.

When I was a boy living in Little Oklahoma (Southeast Bakersfield), there was no TV with so-called “children’s programming” where so much of sex and violence is drummed into the minds of children on a daily basis. Children didn’t live under the threat of a nuclear holocaust, we trusted our leaders and children had heroes back then to depend upon to save the day, those like the Lone Ranger, the Phantom, Superman, and we had our churches where faith in God and America were a part of childhood instruction and growing up. In those days gone by many were the simple pleasures of childhood, things like shooting marbles, building balsa and tissue model airplanes, exchanging comic books with friends, boys played shoot ‘em up games with cap guns and girls played with dolls. It was a simple order of things, the way things were supposed to be.

But in the process of childhood, the distinguishing physical characteristics defining the roles of girls and boys is also the way things are supposed to be just as Sam Clemens and Harper Lee so well described them. And no matter the era or the passing of time girls and boys eventually have to confront the things that make them what they are in respect to the opposite sex.

This most fascinating of subjects reminds me of a neighbor girl, Becky Williams. I remember meeting her when I was only about seven and she must have been about the same age. What happened with Becky came about because of comic books. While I enjoyed comic books, I loved reading the National Geographic. My maternal grandparents had a wonderful collection of them, many quite old. They had beautifully engraved covers, always with a striking picture on the front. They were in neat rows in display bookcases, their bright and colorful yellow spines showing proudly. The cases were those beautiful ones that had glass doors you lifted up and slid back into the case to get to the books.

I would lie on the floor of the parlor and pour over the articles, the pictures, and even some of the advertisements. The Parker Fountain Pen and Packard ads with gold highlights were especially attractive, reflecting in the soft glow of coal oil lamps or dim electric lights. And grandma was always there in her rocking chair with a book to keep me company.

There were wonderful worlds of adventure in the Geographic’s and I never tired of traveling to them in imagination. And there were fascinating things in science and astronomy to further fire my imagination and curiosity about so many things. Strange animals, reptiles, fish, and insects of all manners were pictured and described, and fascinating black men and women in Africa that wore hardly any clothes and lived where the adventures of Tarzan, and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle took place. I would become absorbed in the stories of safaris going into unexplored jungles; discovering wonders of that Dark Continent and I wished I could go with these intrepid and brave adventurers.

And there was the magnificent set of the World Encyclopedia to which I had constant resource. I never tired of reading in this set of large, handsomely bound books; so much to answer questions and excite my curiosity and imagination. My readings in science were greatly enhanced by having a microscope, magnifying glass, and chemistry set. These were birthday and Christmas presents and I made full use of them. I spent hours collecting various specimens, insects and vegetation, preparing slides and peering through magnifying glass or microscope at the wonders of God’s intricate creation.

There was an abundance of insects around our place. The iridescent bottle flies with their beautiful colors of green, yellow, and red, the black and white striped beetles and horseflies; spiders of all kinds were fascinating. The small, armored, gray rolypolies (some people called them sow bugs. But I liked that name rolypoly) were abundant as well. My brother Ronnie and I enjoyed the way the little creatures would roll themselves into a tight, protected ball like miniature armadillos when touched. Then a slight flick of the finger would send them scooting like a tiny, gray marble.

And there was a natural fascination as well with black widows identified by their shining black and bulbous bodies and their iridescent red hourglass designed to strike terror in both children and adults. We were warned repeatedly of these and the violin, or brown recluse, spider. Before grandad installed indoor plumbing, Ronnie and I learned early on to lift the hinged seat of the privy and take a stick to discomfit and clear any resident arachnids and cobwebs, and then slam it down as an extra measure of precaution. And there was the bag of powdered lye inside as well. When you did your business, you had to throw in a scoop of this to discourage flies, keep down the maggot population and disinfect.

If anything could explode, had a venomous bite or was dangerous in any way, it had an automatic attraction and fascination to young minds. I inadvertently discovered that if you had a sheet of single shot caps in the back pocket of your overalls and slid on the floor, the caps would ignite from friction. Lost a good pair of overalls that way.

A small, fresh leaf would disclose movement of liquid through its veins under my microscope. Plants were, indeed, living things. Since we had an abundance of birds and fowl, feathers of all kinds went under the microscope as well. I imagined myself exploring jungles and collecting wonderful and exotic creatures, insects and plants, just like those men and women in the Geographic articles.

During WWII, I would dream of discovering miraculous properties of materials with my chemistry set, things that I just knew would help win the war. Explosives held a particular fascination for me. I had very quickly progressed beyond juvenile things like fingerprint powder, invisible ink, and material that would slowly burn when applied to toilet paper and ignited. Or in a flash like gunpowder; like cologne, or cigarette lighter fluid.

Of course, some of this knowledge and experimentation had to be gained and done rather surreptitiously. I was usually aware of what would have been approved or not if I asked questions or for help about certain things. So I tried to avoid incriminating questions or asking for help that was bound to provoke a negative response by the surrounding adults. And such questions I already knew the answer to I didn’t have to ask.

But about Becky. One evening while I was lying on the floor in the parlor reading there was a knock at the door, and when I went to see who it was it was Becky. I had loaned her a couple of my comic books earlier that day. She handed me the comics and said, “Thank you, Donnie.” Then she had kissed me quickly on the cheek and ran off into the night.

I stood there dumbfounded, not knowing what to make of such bizarre behavior! But I tried to avoid Becky from then on. Girls. Huh. Strange creatures. It didn’t occur to me to resort to my microscope and chemistry set to find an answer to such incomprehensible workings of the female mind.

It took some time before that world of intrigue distinguishing between girls and boys began to make its demands on my attention. There were still things before me like playing Post Office and Spin the bottle, and like Tom Sawyer to begin the time honored ritual of trying to impress girls. But you know folks, way back then there was the mystery and intrigue of romance to the process, something in far too many cases being denied to girls and boys today.

Kids should be shooting marbles not each other

That is the title of an article I wrote last September excerpted from my novel Donnie and Jean, an angel’s story about two children circa WWII Bakersfield, but it came to me the subject needed a broader emphasis in light of things like increasing gang violence in America. Considering all that has happened since I was a kid shooting marbles and the world children live in today, children have lost much more than the simple games using marbles I recall as a child.

It isn’t that a marble used in a slingshot can’t do a lot of damage as some of you may be old enough to remember, but that was not their intended purpose to children of a bygone Norman Rockwell era. After all, you didn’t waste marbles in such a fashion back then when a penny was real money and your marble collection was real wealth. Adding to the real value of marbles during that era was the sheer beauty of some of these wonders of the glassmaker’s artistry, and any kid of stature among their peers was a connoisseur of marbles.

In my reverie of a kinder and gentler America I used to know, I recall the love I had for shooting marbles and I wonder why kids don’t play marbles any more? As a child in Little Oklahoma (Southeast Bakersfield) I lived for shooting marbles. Any child worth his salt, to be acceptable in our company, had to have a good collection of aggies, glassies, puries, boulders, and stripies. A couple of steelies had to be included as well. One had to be on the lookout for doughies, only used by unscrupulous cheaters.

How many of you remember the incantation while playing rings: “Here’s the river ‘n’ here’s the snake; here’s where y’ make y’r big mistake” while kneeling in the dirt, drawing the appropriate symbols to foil your opponent’s shot? We never knew if such incantations really worked, but if you wanted to keep your credentials as a serious marble player you had to make the effort. Like, do any of you remember throwing a marble over your left shoulder in order to find a lost one? Losing a marble was one of the hazards of playing chase. And perhaps you are old enough to remember parents or other adults telling you playing for “keeps” was wrong if not downright sinful, a form of gambling; which, of course, made playing keeps all the more enticing.

In order to give you an idea of how accomplished I was playing marbles, I came in second in the Bakersfield Championship of 1943. Yes, there really was a citywide championship for playing marbles. Such was the innocence of the times that a city could have a marble-playing championship for children while the world was plunged into war. But it is the purview of us oldsters to be the raconteurs of once upon a time in America, though the stories may often sound to children today like they took place in a galaxy far, far away.

This championship was held early on a Saturday morning, and my grandfather drove me over to where the games were to take place. I don’t recall why grandad knew I was a contender for such a championship, but that just goes to show grownups are often aware of things children don’t think they know anything about, or don’t value some of the things children do (I know it doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes grownups are smarter than kids think they are). However, upon arrival one thing that suddenly struck me about this being serious business rather than just an event for kids playing marbles was the principal of my school, Mt. Vernon Elementary, was there. This was astounding to me since kids my age at the time didn’t think of teachers, let alone a principal, being real people. They were kind of like alien creatures one saw only at school, never in real life. And when the last bell sounded for the school day they disappeared to some nether region only to reappear once more during regular school hours.

But here was the principal of my school on a Saturday morning in real life as opposed to school life. Suddenly this was not going to be a game for children to enjoy, but some kind of really serious business I couldn’t comprehend. With over a hundred other children in attendance, glancing around I gathered most of them were having the same problem I was having grasping the significance of the event.

Addressing all us children, the principal explained the rules to be followed. They were rather complex compared to what we were used to, since we all understood the rules such as no fudging by which we played marbles. But grownups had made up these rules we were to follow; and they were quite strict as well as complex. Using large dividers made of wood lathes the adults drew big rings in the earth, perfect circles four-feet in diameter. In the center of the large rings a number of marbles were arranged in two very precise rows the shape of a plus sign. Also, unlike being the diverse mixture we kids used all these marbles for this event were the same dark, nearly black color. We were used to such marbles being used for Chinese checkers, but not playing marbles.

The rules required us to knock out all the marbles until only one marble was left in the center of the ring. But the rules also required both the shooter and last remaining target marble being knocked out of the ring together. Finally, after about two hours of eliminating contenders only one other boy and I were left to compete. By this time we were both so tired it was becoming more of an endurance contest, and it was only a matter of who made the last shot without their shooter being left in the ring after knocking the remaining target marble out of the center of the ring. My last shot was good knocking the last marble out of the ring, but my shooter didn’t exit the ring with the target marble and the other boy won.

While I was much too young to understand at the time, there was something that bothered me about the whole affair of this event. There was the matter of it taking on such serious dimensions by the presence of the principal of the school and other adults standing over us doing the officiating. Then there were those large, perfect circles being drawn in the earth using a mechanical device for precision. There were the strict rules, many of which were foreign to us as children. When we played rings we simply drew a circle in the dirt with a stick, and the circles were nowhere near as large as those at this event. We never arranged marbles in any formal geometric design, but usually only a few in a group to be shot out of the circle. In short, we children knew what our rules of the game were and didn’t need grownups to make the rules or officiate for us.

There was something else I came to realize long after this event. I wasn’t disappointed about losing to the other boy; I wasn’t disappointed about coming in number two in the Bakersfield marble championship. No matter the seriousness imparted by the adults to the whole affair, we children still understood we were only playing a game. But despite this, the adults with their strict and numerous rules and large perfect circles made with a mechanical device, all the marbles being the same color placed with geometric precision and adults standing over and watching us so carefully all the while had made it serious business rather than just a game to be enjoyed. Adults had made playing a game something else than what we as children engaged in left to ourselves.

We know the stories today, how adults have become so demanding of children that they excel in various games. The Little League has become “business” rather than kids being able to enjoy playing baseball, the kids now have adults demanding games be taken seriously rather than being played for fun. Winning is the name of the game today. It’s too bad I couldn’t explain to grandad what bothered me about the marble championship event; but he seemed to understand and was proud of me coming in second. And maybe this is one of many reasons kids are now shooting each other rather than shooting marbles. Just as it takes adults to teach kids how to hate others simply because they are “different,” it takes adults to take the fun out of games children should enjoy as nothing more than games.

Sure, there is a whole lot more to the story, things like what made a marble collection and shooting marbles important to kids back then rather than the games children play and the things they value today. But what has not changed is the need of children for people like my grandfather who seemed to understand what was bothering me without my being able to explain it to him, who was proud of me coming in second. I have no doubt grandad understood the need of competition, the need to compete in the serious affairs of life. But he also understood the difference between games children should be able to enjoy and the serious affairs of life that all too soon make their impact and demands upon children.