When I was growing up, my father worked selling used auto parts. He may very well still do that. The shop he worked in was different from a lot of the places in that business in the 70’s. The showroom was clean and shiny with stacks of tires and hubcaps arranged artfully.The back where all the parts were, or in the shop, or the graveyard of cars in the pick-a-part lot was the typical greasy and dusty.
Whenever we came to see my dad, his boss would call out, “Helloooo boys!” which we loved because we weren’t boys. This was a world ruled by men.
The only women were draped on the hoods of the car calendars in the front office and in the stacks of porn in the shop. Now, looking back, it concerns me slightly that someone brought his porn in to work. Seems like an unusual place to find the time to appreciate it.
I could be making this up, but I have a memory of my sisters and I in 1977/78 spending the day at my dad’s work for some reason and finding one of the Playboys. We sat there like it was story time, us all of eight, six and five years old, flipping through the pictures and giggling.
Thank god it wasn’t Hustler.
