AUTHOR’S NOTES

If “Sears Catalog, page 602” means nothing to you, you weren’t paying attention back in 1974. If you weren’t born yet, just google “Sears Page 602.”

Page 602 advertised men’s underwear with the model’s you-know-what hanging out. The Sept. 21, 1975, Knoxville News-Sentinel headlined, “602 Sets Off Catalog Rush.”

“A look at page 602 of the Sears, Roebuck & Co. Fall catalog has made some undershorts shoppers think the huge mail-order operation was striking up a rivalry with Playgirl magazine. Not so, a spokesman for Sears says. The picture on page 602 shows a handsome man modeling a T-shirt and high-waisted boxer shorts. Anyone who thinks they’re seeing more than they should is mistaken, says Sears. ‘The subject in question is actually a flaw which happened by water, grease or dirt being on the plate. It didn’t pick up ink,’ a spokesperson said. She denied reports that Sears was facing unprecedented demands for the catalog.”

The evening news in Knoxville is music for Nashville. Written by Dallas Corey and recorded by the Grand Ole Opry’s resonant Jack Barlow. Add banjo and Nashville waitresses for backup and sing along. “The Man on Page 602” soared into Country’s Top 30. Some of the lines:

“Look and see; you’ll agree.
. “He’s got personality.

. “In the Fall and Winter Catalog on page six-hundred two,
. “I see this advertisement that makes me come unglued.

. “The picture’s got me out of sorts ‘causes I don’t understand,
. “Are they advertising boxer shorts or are they trying to sell them man?

Unfortunately for American music in general, however, this was also the era of Disco.

CASTAWAY

“I’d almost given up trying to clasp my scantily-clothed body to the overturned lifeboat. Only when the swells lifted me to the wave crest, did I see the island, green against the blue of the sea. It was the vision of the island that kept my free hand holding my cello, the only other thing floating after the shipwreck. Cast upon the sand of this uncharted strand, like a leaf of seaweed lost in the vast expanse of ocean, I was a castaway!”

Bobbi thought that this was a nice beginning. The really fun part would be how she encounters a castaway Lieutenant from the HMS Conqueror. Their island would of course be tropical and have parrots.

To write about finding breadfruit, etc., she’d need to go to the library. Was it “coconut”, or “cocoanut”? She’d given most of her thought to how the Lieutenant would look. How to say big penis without using certain words. Maybe “ready manhood” or “unsatiated desire.”

It was unfortunate that she had to write about boring things for English, Central American immigrants, for example.

Her girlfriends loved her plots when she read them at sleepovers, and she’d end up with ten more ideas. They thought that rather than being a shipwreck, it should be more modern, say a plane crash. Be a stewardess on a jet carrying the Beatles before they broke up and be cast away with Paul.

Actually, her friends decided, Paul should be unconscious in the surf and she’d drag him to safety. She’d have to tear off his trousers to bind the wound and use her blouse to make a bandage. Then they’d make a baby, get rescued and form a new band. Though some of their classmates might have more personal tales, Bobbi’s best friends still found solace in speculation.

Despite setbacks, Bobbi’s heroines never-failingly preserved themselves until willing and passionate surrender. They combined the attributes of resourcefulness and intelligence. Bobbi saw how to put odd things together, say chocolate and cherry pie recipes. Quite tasty. Bobbi’s heroines tended to be smart, intellect being an attribute appreciated by the right sort of lovers. She used bimbos for literary contrast.

Bobbi liked climax. As her friends were infatuated with the term’s common use, she had to explain that “climax” in fiction requires bringing events to a crucial point. Bobbi’s heroines always achieved climax by both definitions.

Modern maidens, unfortunately, had scant possibility of being castaway on a desert island with a Beatle. So what’s a 14-year-old to do? It’s not like she had pimples or was six feet tall. There just wasn’t the 14-year-old guy at her school that her heroines would go for.

SEARS FALL AND WINTER CATALOG

Bobbi’s friends spirited the catalog to their rooms before their folks sorted the mail. There it was, right on page 602, like everybody said Telephones were busy, but girls talk all the time anyway.

Bobbi had seen a picture of a penis at Nancy’s, but didn’t actually see this one for several days, the catalog being too fat for anyone to sneak to school, and nobody dared tear out the page.

It was at Karen’s sleepover that the girls voted 4-1 that it was the real thing. Sandra had seen her brother’s and she was in the 1.

Actually, Bobbi had seen her own dad’s, but she didn’t announce it. It had been on a Saturday and she’d come home early from Beth’s because Beth had to go to her grandparents and her parents apparently hadn’t heard her. There’d been on their bed and her mother was touching it and it was gigantic. Bobbi had skedaddled before they saw her.

The one on page 602 was sticking below the cuff, curious to Bobbi’s girlfriends because everybody knows that boners stick straight out. They’d learned in Health about reproduction. Their book — which they had to leave in the classroom — had a diagram of male genitalia, but to no particular scale.

As they were pretty sure that sperm resembled whipped cream, nothing was funnier than sneaking down to the kitchen late at night, finding putting a dab of it on a banana and daring each other to take a bite.

Those who studied page 602 knew that the times, they were still a-changin’. They might live far from Haight Ashbury where the hippies were, but things were going to change even in the Midwest.

Bobbi hoped that love stories might at least help a reader (well, maybe just the author) figure out something about the topic. “All you need is love,” to quote the song.

Bobbi studied her competition. “Shirts, Boxers and Briefs in a luxury blend of 50% Kodel polyester and 50% combed cotton. Assorted print PERMA-PREST Boxer Shorts: Full cut. No roll elastic waist. No ironing necessary if machine washed, warm; tumble dried. No color choice.” The model had the right length of hair over his ears.

The “no roll elastic waist” might be something good for her story if she knew enough not to sound stupid.

GEOFFREY

Of the boys in her class, Geoffrey’s noteworthy feature was that of blending. Never the best or the worst. In style, just not the first with it. In the band, but not first chair trumpet. He, too, liked English, but didn’t have what Bobbi considered her greatest asset. Not all writers have imagination.

Geoffrey’s best quality, in Bobbi’s eyes, was that he didn’t have a girlfriend. As she didn’t have a boyfriend, their parallel lives sort of paired up, perhaps.

“Well, then you make the move,” suggested Nancy, but it was better to navigate known terrain: the yearbook staff, drama, the poster for the school dance.

“Thing is,” Geoffrey told Bobbi, regarding the latter. “I maybe can make it kinda’ psychedelic, but they might think it’s about drugs or something.”

“So we just say ‘Disco Disco Disco’ a bunch of times,” her suggestion.

“You’ll be there?” he wondered. She fidgeted with her glasses. “Haven’t decided. You?”

“Pretty busy. Think I should start the D here?”

A dare hit her, but not too much of one. “You know, I’ve got a poster idea, sort of one anyway.” Did boys know about page 602 as well, she wondered.

“Like?”

“Like putting something on the poster that might be a number, but might just be a design.”

Geoffrey was concentrating on his D. “Why a number?”

“To see if we can, like how ‘bout,” she decided to say it, “six-o-two.”

Geoffrey looked up from his felt pen. She knew that he caught it.

“You know about it, right?” Bobbi tried to sound unfazed, a penis being the subject.

Geoffrey fidgeted. “Who doesn’t?”

“We thought maybe the boys didn’t,” Bobbi admitted.

“Like we’re blind? Maybe the 6 down here inside the o?” as if art were the issue.

“We’re fried if they find out,” she backed off.

“The curly-cues just came out that way, we say,”

“Maybe down in this corner,” bending over to let him see down her sweater, but he didn’t.

When she resurrected her castaway story, maybe Paul would be wearing something like those boxers when she pulled him to shore. That sort of fabric and all. As the author, she’d know the size of his cock (better word to be found), but as the character, she’d discover this slowly in nursing him back to health, maybe brushing it accidentally at first. She wouldn’t let it hang down, though. When she leaned over to give him a drink from a coconut, he’d see her breasts. To help him sit up, he’d lean against her.

Bobbi’s friend Karen invented the game Catalog Strip Tease, an idea for one, anyway. A boy uses the underwear pictures to guess what a girl has on. She does the same for him. Then they have to show enough to prove the other’s guess wrong. If the guess is correct, that person has to give it to the one who guessed.

There’d be an accuracy allowance, if your bra is padded and he points to one that isn’t, it’s still OK. The girls saw difficulties, however. If he points to a style that pushes you out, but yours doesn’t, but the cups are themselves the same, how would you call it? It wouldn’t be fair because you can’t really hide your bra style anyway. How about panties? There weren’t that many styles, but there were tons of colors. Would saying colored ones be enough? Same for boxers?

Discussion turned to hippies who get naked at concerts. Sandra had a picture of a body-painted girl. Almost naked, anyway. She said that the way they do it was for a boy to paint a girl and then have sex to get the paint on him in reverse.

Bobbi composed a storyline. She and the man on 602 play Catalog Strip Tease. She has on her best bra, the one that helps. She looks at his boxers. Oh no, does he realize? The others are coming! They hide behind a wall and make out. He unhooks her bra, but she keeps it on. Then he lays her back, always kissing her. She’s not sure if she should mention her panties, or just leave her reader to know that they’d have had to come off before ... and then she’d have to choose her words perfectly.

BLUEGRASS MUSIC

The lanky, already-balding in his late 20s, Assistant Manager of Sears Home Furnishings, Mapletree Center, Lincoln NE, always carried a second business card, “Geoffrey Paulson, Guitar, The Bellicose Buzzards, Bluegrass without Saxophones.” It wasn’t as much to snag a paying gig as it was to evoke a reaction from people who knew him in his Sears shirts. The Buzzards were more fun than retail, he’d freely admit. He never met a manager that imagined differently.

Geoffrey had happily given up trumpet after high school and only later discovered his passion for rhythm. As good as he flat-picked, he earned his keep by his steady beat under a fiddle that sometimes dragged and a banjo that preferred acceleration. The Buzzards weren’t destined for Nashville, but Lincoln, Nebraska liked their enthusiasm. Country music has room for Sears managers. Country also has room for saxophones, of course, but not as bluegrass.

Hosting the American Folk Music Association’s 1990 Convention in Lincoln was a chance for the locals. Pickers in bands like the Buzzards could rub shoulders with players who’d actually quit their day jobs. Three strangers pass in the hotel hallway, eye one another’s cases, and viola, an impromptu “Old Home Place”. Geoffrey would be there every possible minute.

And then there was the Potluck Extravaganza. Sign up, indicate your instruments, pay $5 and the organizers randomly construct the bands. Forty-five minutes to introduce yourself and figure out two tunes. Then on stage. Winning band gets all the entry fees. Country simple.