A recipe for youthful mischief
1. A shelf full of Playboy Magazines.
Our next door neighbor kept a beautiful house and garden. Picture worthy. He had high redwood walls surrounding his plot providing a high level of privacy for his family. My guess is he had to build the redwood fences due to his living next to our chaotic home. I am pretty sure this was the case.Within his redwood walls he had a lush garden which he kept excellent care of. I knew the garden area well because when he would go on vacation, he employed me to tend the vegetation. This was mostly watering the roses and other plants during the scorching Arizona summer.
I did my job well. He often commented on his return how flowery and green I had kept the garden. But there was more than roses to interest me in that backyard. On his patio, in the redwood shelving he had back there, was a generous supply of back-issue Playboy magazines. In an era with no WWW to tempt young teens like me, his stack of Playboys were a rich playground of enticements. I have nothing but praise for the rich lure of the female anatomy that I was able to view indiscriminately.
2. The businesses across the alley.
Behind our house on Amelia street there was an alley for the garbage trucks to negotiate. And across the alley from our house was a row of small businesses that fronted Indian School Road. Our favorite was an Indian trinket store. But there were also some apartments, a paint store, a bike shop, and medical supplies business, among others. The only one that had a private parking lot was the medical supplies business. The parking lot was right across from the back gate to our house.The businesses were one story. My brothers and I had long discovered the various ways from the alley we could gain access to the roofs of the businesses. From there it was easy to lob water balloons down upon cars passing on Indian School.
3. Teenage boys.
To this day, whenever I hear someone wondering why a teenage boy does some act of mischief I am amazed. To me, the why is obvious. If there is something mischievous that can be done. it will probably be done. There are very few shackles on the strange urges that a teenage mind might come up with. Not only was I capable of coming up with strange plots, I had little natural resistance to actually acting them out.That teenage boys survive to adulthood is an amazing thing. That more are not incarcerated is even more amazing.
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And so it was. The mischievous urge came one day when the neighbor was on vacation. Looking at one glorious centerfold and the seed was quickly planted within my small little mind. The thought or urge came from that deep dark place that all teenage urges come from, the source still a mystery.
So, I ripped the October centerfold out, found some strong, lasting glue in my Stepfather's supplies, and the adventure was on.
Climbing to the roof of the Medical Supplies place, I pasted the centerfold high on the wall overlooking the parking lot behind our house. From below, she looked good enough to command all the asphalt that her eyes partook.
It was several weeks that went by before someone even tried to remove her from the cement brick wall. But when they did, they were only partially successful. And by some miracle of glue science, the best parts of Ms. October proved the most difficult to remove. Some of the choicest parts of her hung there for many many years after.
That no one suspected any of the four teenage boys that lived across the alley was somewhat strange. But no one was ever fingered for the caper, until now the culprit was never identified.
Teenage friends and my brothers never dreamed it had been me. They flocked to view the results of the mischief, but I kept silent and no one ever asked. If my closet voyeur neighbor recognized his endowed art hanging from the wall, he too never mentioned it.
1 year later, as I could not resist the similar 'call'....I added a second awesome centerfold to the explicit gallery. By the same miracle as the first, the workers at the medical supply company could only remove some of the picture, again leaving most of the very best parts from a teenage boy point of view. There were now two amazing examples of airbrushed female anatomy resident upon the crude walls of the parking lot.
I never did add to this endowed collection. And only now do I admit to this inexplicable act of teenage defiance. I am thinking that the limitations of the long arm of the law do not reach out 40 years. But if they do, no doubt I deserve the consequences.
Cheers, nca
p.s. I checked and the centerfolds are no longer there, some 40 + years later. I half expected them to be. The picture above is the actual wall where they posted. Now, there is a 6 ft cement wall to keep modern riffraff out.
