FanStory.com - The Peacock Brothersby T B Botts

For eighteen years I lived in the same house on Belmont street in Marion, Ohio. It was a middle class neighborhood, with lots of kids around to play with. In the winter we went sledding down the hill. In the summer we rode bikes and played hide-and- go-seek until it was time to go home. There was nothing special about it. It was like thousands of other neighborhoods in America in the fifties and sixties.

About four or five houses down from me there was a two story house with a metal sign hanging on a post out front that said Peacock Bros. Plumbing and Heating. On my way home I would frequently jump up and whack it with my hand or a stick, if one was handy. The plumbing company was located behind the house in an unpainted concrete block building with ivy growing over almost the entire building, giving it a bit of a medieval look. The back of the business had several overhead doors that were accessed via the alleyway that ran between Belmont and the next street over.

Trucks bearing the company logo frequently came barreling down the alleyway, spewing loose gravel and leaving a cloud of dust that would hang in the air for several minutes before settling on fences and prized rose bushes in people's backyards.

If none of my friends were out and around, I often found myself walking down the alley looking for pop bottles that I could turn in for a few cents. Mac's Trading Post was at the end of the alley and was strategically located across the street from the high school. Kids would drink their soda as they walked down the alley, and inevitably would deposit the bottles in the weeds. That was fine with me. It provided me with a steady income to purchase snacks.

I happened to be walking down the alley one day and found myself in the vicinity of Peacock Brothers. The men who ran the company knew my dad from the years when he worked for a plumbing supply house and they recognized me, though they never called me by my name, just his.

I'm not sure how it happened, but I guess one of the men invited me into the employee lounge one day for a Coke. There happened to be a huge red Coke machine that looked to be about the size of a refrigerator. It was pretty simple in design. There was a slot to put in your coin, a lever that you pushed down and a hole in the bottom where a small bottle of Coca-cola magically appeared. The best part of this particular machine was that it only took a nickel for a bottle of pop. I could easily afford that after just a few minutes of scouring the alley.

I sat at the table and talked with one of the owners until he left. I noticed that there were a few magazines laying about, so I picked one up. P- L-A- Y- B-O- Y. It had a picture on the front with a lady wearing a pair of rabbit ears and a costume.

"Hmm. Playboy. What's this about?"

I soon found out. It was certainly entertaining. The only time I'd ever seen a woman's breast was when Helen Eaton down the street stood in her doorway nursing her newborn daughter and talking to a bunch of the neighbor ladies. Not nearly as exciting. Nonetheless, I was too young to fully appreciate what was before me. I was actually more interested in grabbing up one of the Whirlpool boxes that was behind the shop to play with.

When a washing machine or dryer was installed, Peacock Brothers would bring the box back with them to dispose of. With one end already opened, it was a minor thing to pull the big staples in the other end, opening it up. I would then scramble inside and start crawling down the alleyway inside the box. I envisioned myself in an army tank. In reality, I probably looked more like a hamster running in a cage.

Occasionally, I and a few of my friends would get in a fight with the kids across the alley, the Gebby boys. They were an ornery lot, mean spirited. I once got hit in the cheek with a dart when I was about three because I walked in front of them while they were playing darts outside. I never forgot that.

Usually the hostilities only lasted for an afternoon. We would go to the Peacock Bros. and get a washing machine box or two, cut some holes in the sides to crawl into and proceed up the street to the Kurtz's backyard. They had a huge pear tree that provided us with plenty of ammo. We would hang out in the back yard lobbing pears at the Gebbys and then run into the box while they threw them back, bouncing harmlessly off our fort with resounding thuds. After an hour or so of this, the pears were usually pretty mushy and unusable as weaponry. An unspoken truce was declared and we would pick up the pieces of pears littering the yard and dismantle the boxes before dad got home.

Several years later, the Gebbys had moved and tossing pears and playing in boxes had become a thing of the past. One day I found myself near the Kurtz's garage. Their oldest son, Keith, had returned from California, having adopted a beatnik lifestyle. My friends and I were passing by and since the door was open, we looked in on him. He fancied himself an artist and had moved his easel and box of paints and brushes into his parent's garage. He had a canvas on the easel with a picture of a nude that he was painting. Beside him was an open Playboy. That in itself was pretty interesting, but what really got our engines revved up was the stack of magazines he had tossed on the ground outside. Holy cats! This was an adolescent boy's dream come true. He said we could have them and we didn't waste any time spiriting them away to the upstairs loft of Snyder's barn. For awhile we made frequent trips to the loft, until one day we arrived to find that our treasures had been stolen. Pirates! I suspect some of the older boys in the neighborhood must have taken our stash. Needless to say, our innocence had been shattered. We never looked at a woman the same way again. We were on our way to the lust filled life of teens, always searching, but seldom finding a new source of entertainment.