Black Holes, Used Cigarettes, Pisshill Olympics

BLACK HOLES, SECOND-HAND CIGARETTE BUTTS, AND THE PISS-HILL OLYMPICS

Being born in the Great Depression is often thought to be a source of poverty, social trauma and a very poor start in life. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Jobs were scarce, money was always in short supply and the birth rate was much reduced. Fewer births led to fewer people competing for available jobs in the 1950’s. However, the Great Depression did make entertainment a do-it-yourself activity, especially for boys. Fortunately, the social worriers, micro-management of children by parents, and regimented entertainment activities for kid did not exist. The usual, and excellent, policy by parents was benevolent neglect. We loved the chance to do our own thing. We made our own entertainment which leads to the topics of Black Holes, Second-Hand Cigarette Butts and especially the Piss Hill Olympics.
The accepted wisdom says that Black Holes (celestial variety) were discovered in the relatively recent past. However, Depression kids discovered Black Holes years before 1950! Allow me to explain. Black Holes do not allow even light to escape from the hole. There is nothing as black (hence no light) as a piss hole in a snow bank.
A short way from our homes, at the bottom of a down grade hill, in a small valley, was the Dead Horse Woods. The Dead Horse Woods was a group of scrubby trees, roughly in a circle, that, by legend, was the result of a dead horse being buried (or dying) there. The legend must be true because every boy believed and repeated the legend. At various times of the year, especially in winter, the Dead Horse Woods was a gathering place for the Depression Era boys. You can think of it as a substitute for a pool hall in more recent times. The usual ritual was to build a fire and then roast some apples obtained from Crocker’s or Quinn’s orchard. The hot roasted (burned ?) apples were eaten and then after a short discussion of school, girls, and teachers, it was time to put the fire out. We were all serious Boy Scouts, so putting the fire out was rigid policy. The simplest way to put the fire out was to pee on it. There was usually four of us (all brothers and cousins ) so the volume needed to extinguish the embers was available. You have no idea of the explosion of steam (loaded with piss fragrance ) and ash when four boys are all peeing on a fire at the same time. Additionally, in the winter, some attention was paid to making piss holes in the snow bank. If you were careful to keep a steady stream, you could make a hole in the snow that was quite small in diameter. Now, when ambient light is bounced around in a small diameter piss hole in a snow bank, the light waves get trapped in the white, refracting, random snow pack. Any light present gets lost in the snow particles and never finds its way back out of the piss hole. Thus, the discovery of Black Holes that even light cannot escape from. We never published the finding in a scientific journal, but it makes an interesting bit of physics I think. We also experimented with making messages in the snow, but the volume of piss was usually not sufficient after putting out the fire. Messages like Merry Christmas, were attempted but we usually ran out of piss volume too soon. Merry Xmas was possible however.
Warm weather was the occasion for many other activities. One of them was to hunt for cigarette butts under the bleacher stands by the softball diamonds in Kindleberger park. This was in WWII time, so the butts were usually smoked down to just a nub. We collected the butts, picked out the big ones (long ones) and tried our first attempts at grown-up smoking. It wasn’t too bad. The warm weather dried out the butts so that we could light them and smoke whatever tobacco remained. Once in a while we found a cigar butt, but those were usually too chewed up to be much use. When the cigarette butt hunt ended we took to smoking orchard weed, a dried, hollow, grass stem about 4 or 5 inches long. One end of the hollow weed stem was lit and the other end puffed on like it was a cigarette. Have you ever inhaled smoke and fire from the lit end of a dried, hollow bit of orchard grass. No? You have not lived yet! In summary, we were smoking grass, smoke and fire many years before it became popular in the drug culture. Thus, so far, we were way ahead of our time in discovering Black Holes and smoking “weed”.
Virginia Ave. was a dirt road in the thirties, but eventually it was asphalted (black-topped) which brings us to the Piss Hill Olympics. The black-topped roads were all graded so that the rain would run off to the side and not make puddles. The Virginia Ave. hill was the venue of the Piss Hill Olympics. All of us, usually four, would line up across the road at the top of the hill and then pee to see who could make the piss run down the hill the farthest. Now, the center position in the road was the best because if careful attention was paid to where the stream was directed, it was easier to make the piss run down the hill the longest distance. The guys on the left and right flanks had the problem of their streams running to the side of the road too soon and not going very far down the hill. However, all was not lost. With enough volume and force, the guys on the flanks could make their pee stream intercept the center stream and join with it. Since all nature wants to go the lowest energy state, the combined streams would re-direct the center-of-the-road stream so that both steams were headed down, but to the side of the road. The winner, if the center stream could be intercepted, was usually the one who did not have his stream intercepted. There were four of us, so the redirected center and two flank streams often allowed the forth pisser to claim victory. The stream would get about a quarter way down the hill before it dried out enough to stop running. We never kept track of the record, but I am sure that it was at least 30 feet. The one with the biggest bladder and pee volume had a distinct advantage but it was not possible to make some kind of handicap allowance, so the Piss Hill Olympic competition was always a “scratch league”.
The clothes situation was another great leveler of kids. Today’s Goodwill and Salvation Army stores did not exist but there were rummage sales put on by church groups and community fund raising efforts. The standard boys pants were either bib overalls or rummage sale knickers that the elastic that held up the knees was worn out. Picture the golf knickers of the 1920’s and you get the idea. The knickers were tough corduroy that never wore out. It was the elastic in the knees that wore out. We dragged the corduroy knickers in the gravel to wear them out, but no luck. The light weight modern fabrics did not exist yet. Shirts were a mix of pullovers or button downs. We did not know that we were supposed to be discontented with life and any disadvantages in life had no effect because nobody told us that our station in life was the fault of society and needed correcting. It did not need correcting. Those who were trying to destabilize society are the ones who needed correcting.
Popular wisdom says that poverty is the cause of social ills. Don’t believe it!! If poverty was the cause of social problems, then children in the Great Depression should have been the worst of any ever seen. Instead, the children of the 1920’s and 1930’s to about 1940 are the ones who came of age in the 1950’s and formed the greatest peace time expansion in United States history. The children born from the 1940’s to the 1950’s grew up in solid homes, with two parents ( mother and father), were well educated and had relatively few social problems. That lack-nothing cohort is also the one that gave birth to the Me-Generation of the 1960’s. It is not poverty that causes social ills and it is not throwing money at such problems that will solve those social ills. The problem is the lack of responsibility by parents and leaders. The comic strip writer Kelley who said “ We have met the enemy and they are us” was correct.
Older Wiser