Where the 'boys are

I grabbed the basket on the downstairs landing.  It was about half full with paper – The Kansas City Star, the Wall Street Journal, plus assorted flyers, direct-mail pieces and other paper products that somehow had gained entry.

Paper drives were our duty.

And I dumped its contents in the recycling bin.  Trash day!  We may be rampant consumers at our house, but we know how to separate plastic, aluminum, cardboard, newsprint and other items from mere trash.

As I did my weekly duty, though, I remembered recycling on a much bigger scale, before it was so cool to recycle, before giant recycling bins dotted our landscape like green elephants – when, as a Boy Scout, we used to hold paper drives in our St. Louis suburb.

It was always on a Sunday at 2 p.m., so enough time to go home and change clothes after church. We’d gather at the big semi trailer parked in the church lot, divide the boys up among the dads and their cars, and head out to our assigned territories.

In most cases station wagons were required, though some dads had pickups.

We had a station wagon, and those afternoons were pure bliss.  Once we reached our appointed area, Dad would put down the tailgate.  And we’d sit perched on the gate, our legs dangling over the side, our feet just inches above the pavement.  Dad would drive slowly, sure.  But by being there, so exposed, taking a risk that he’d hit a bump and we’d fly off like rocks in a slingshot … why, that was death-defying, exhilarating.

Of course there was work to be done.  Along the road, residents had stacked bags of newspapers and magazines. So we’d stop, hop out, grab the bags, toss them into the back, re-board the tailgate for a short trip, then repeat it all again.

On a good day we’d have to make three trips back to the trailer, the papers so high and deep that they’d pushed us tailgate boys to the brink.

Tailgating was one glorious thing.  But when you were an older Scout, there was a second job available to you.  To work “the truck.”

That was a coveted job.  I couldn’t figure out why, though.  At least at first.  You stood inside the hot, dusty trailer as boys and dads tossed bundles up to you. Then you had to either carry them or toss them as far back as the stack would allow.

It was dirty work, and it could get dangerous. Sometimes three or four cars would unload at once and bundles would zing right and left and straight at you … a fusillade of fat bullets that could separate head from body if you weren’t alert.

So I didn’t care much for the job, until I worked up there once with a guy named Ringworm. Not his real name … his real name was Scott.  But we all were given nicknames in Scouts.  Mine was Doodles.  Can’t recall why. (Sometimes it was simply Weave.) The coolest nickname belonged to Snake, an older Scout who had turned his abode into a reptile house that was the envy of the best zoos.  I was pleased with Doodles, though ... happy that I didn’t get stuck with something nasty like Ringworm.

Anyway, Ringworm was the son of an oral surgeon, very well spoken, very proper in demeanor, very smart.  He wore thick glasses.  He was kind of odd. But we all were a tiny bit off then, so I liked him a lot.

Ringworm favored the magazine bundles.

So on this day Ringworm and ol’ Doodles had trailer duty, and I noticed that Ringworm was giving each bundle thrown our way a careful eye.  The newspaper bundles tied with string were the exception. He could care less about those.

It was the magazine bundles that interested him.  He’d see one coming, shove me aside to catch it, riff through the edges, then toss it to the back. 

On a few occasions, there’d also be grocery bags of magazines taped shut.  You could tell they were magazines because of their heft. It was spooky, but Ringworm knew those were coming before they flew in the door. He was always ready for them.

I didn’t think much about Ringworm’s odd behavior at the time. I was just trying to survive. Until his shout.

“Ah ha!!”  He had pealed back the corner of a taped sack.

I glanced back.  “What?!” I yelled, my shoulders hunched, bundles whizzing by my head.

“Found some!!”

Then he quickly laid the sack down in the trailer’s corner. And cordial, soft-spoken Ringworm suddenly became a Scout possessed, embers glowing from his sweat-filled eyes.

He looked at me.

“That’s mine,” he said, his voice dark, his eyes narrowing. Then almost a hiss: “Don’t touch it.”

Back then I was a bit slow in the ways of the world.  I couldn’t quite figure out what had just happened.  Today, looking back, Ringworm was behaving like Tolkien’s Gollom. The sack was his Ring.

“My precioussss ...”

Then I heard one of the dads mutter something about “boys.”

And it hit me … not a bundle, but awareness. Like the dawn of a new day … a startling revelation, a youngster’s epiphany.  It was a moment that would change my life forever.

Playboys.

No wonder the older guys wanted this job, to breathe the dust, to risk decapitation.

I was such an idiot.

I’d mainly just heard about ‘em.  Yes, my friend Tommy up the street once showed me a torn-out centerfold that he’d pulled from his back pocket, the slick paper horribly wrinkled, the photo barely discernible. (Oh, bad pun.)

But I’d never seen a complete Playboy.

That would change … quickly.  Let’s just say that me and Ringworm, best buddies outside the trailer, had now turned into fierce rivals inside. Like hockey players, we hip-checked and shoulder-bumped and almost landed a few punches as we fought for suspicious bundles.

The fact was, the packages were rare finds … precioussss.

But eventually I got mine.  I don’t think Mom and Dad ever knew, but I managed to sneak them home.  There was a great hiding spot in the attic, behind a loose board that held back insulation.

And there they sat for years.  Miss February, June and July, a couple of Octobers and many more.  And I’ll be honest with you … I didn’t keep them for the articles.

One day late in high school I threw them away. A sign of maturity, I guess.  But I didn’t recycle them. Like I said, except for paper drives, you didn’t recycle back then. I stuffed them in a sack and put them at the bottom of a trash can.

I still feel guilty about it all.  Not about reading the Playboys ... are you kidding?  No, I feel bad that I didn’t bundle ‘em up for those eagle-eyed Scouts working trailer duty, those that followed me with their own paper drives.

That would have been recycling – the Ringworm way.