May 17, 2018
Volume 48 - No. 20
By Pete Peterson
I distinctively remember the first time I read Playboy Magazine.
Huddled beneath the steps leading to the basement coal bin, my flash light casting dark shadows on the wall, I devoured this forbidden fruit eagerly. Obtaining such a plum publication had not been easy. I’d bribed a cab driver into buying a copy by promising him the centerfold Playmate of the Month. I was 14, a freshman in high school. I don’t remember the cover, the The The Paper Paper -- 760.747.7119 760.747.7119
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photographs or even the Playmate’s name, but I do remember the impact that magazine had on me and countless other young men over the next thirty-odd years. In those faintly musky smelling pages I acquired invaluable information on topics of intense interest to me, an orphan boy: How to select and knot the correct tie, choose and use the proper shaving gear, make shoes last longer. And yes, it always came back to ‘them’ – those alien creatures called girls – how to talk to them, treat them and yes, court them, that made Playboy the center of my reading world.
Limited Contact Between Sexes
In most families at that time, any activity involving men and women other than prayer, or as depicted in national magazines, admiring the latest shiny car, was a sin, worthy of a paddling and visit from the local priest or pastor. In my dank cubby hole, I gleaned information that privileged young men learned from their college-educated fathers and other family members.
Over the years Playboy taught me how to entertain, from choosing the right appetizers, stir the perfect martini, select the proper wines, and
cook the right steak - secret information the high-school dropouts in my family had no need to know. Playboy became my life-style manual. I was not alone. In September 1957 over 700,000 newsstand copies were sold. The Man -The Revolution
There was a man behind this publishing success. A man born to religiously Puritanical parents in Chicago, Illinois, in the heart of the Great Depression in1926. His philosophy would change how America had sex over the next half-
Hugh Hefner - See Page 2