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At the beginning of the summer of 1952 I had just turned seventeen and my father had no intention of letting me spend the bulk of the summer playing with my toys and whacking myself off as I had previous summers. From a practical standpoint, the fact that I would be headed for college in a year and a half, having some hard cash in the bank to cover my incidental living expenses would be a real plus. Although my father was a manager for an absentee owner company and my step mom also worked, our family income wasn't all that great. Without a doubt I would be on a tight budget and what ever I could contribute to cover my expenses would benefit everyone.

About three weeks before the end of my junior year Dad informed me that he had gotten permission to form a tree / brush trimming crew for the summer. He had already lined up a teacher and two graduating seniors from the high school in the neighboring town as foreman and workers, and along with me we were to spend the summer clearing utility lines and right of ways. In exchange for our sweat we students would receive a whole dollar an hour. The job would provide a marked improvement in my financial situation since I was subsisting on a five bucks a week allowance which had to cover five lunches at a restaurant down town on school days just for starters. On weeks when there were less than five school days I got proportionally less. During the summer months I didn't get any allowance.

Dad didn't bother waiting for me to ask permission to wear long pants on my first job. The Sunday night before I was to start he let me know that I was going to have a good out in the sun job making it the ideal situation for the coolness and easy mobility of my short pants. He also suggested I would be wise to include in my attire knee socks and my high top hiking boots that I had nearly outgrown to protect my legs since we would often be working off the road in dense brush. Needless to say I was less than enthused with his edict to say the least; but I figured if my coworkers or the foreman had a problem with my inappropriate youthful attire they could complain to my father who was our boss.

Bright and early the following morning I rode into work with dad. I walked over to the garage and supply depot where the regular maintenance employees were getting their materials and tools ready to head out. The rest of the summer brush trimming crew hadn't arrived so I went over and talked to the maintenance supervisor. All the men were aware of my 'preference' for shorts pants so I didn't get any flack or wise ass comments, just a lot of knowing stares. The fact that my father was the boss might have had something to do with the total lack of ridicule, however.

The supervisor and I rounded up brush and tree trimming tools that our crew would need and loaded them into the broken down truck that we were being given to use. While we were about this, the teacher and the two other kids for the crew showed up in his car. They immediately spotted me and as the supervisor and I walked over to greet them I was surprised that boys at least didn't show any disdain or hurriedly whisper in each other's ear. I figured my dad had clued our foreman in and he had warned the boys that the geek in the scout shorts and knee socks was the boss's son. We introduced ourselves and after a brief orientation from the supervisor our newly formed brush and tree trimming crew headed out on our first assignment.

Because even squeezing three in the cab of the pre WW2 Dodge pickup would have been tight, my coworkers jumped in the truck bed to ride to the point where we were to start working. The foreman, whose name was Lawrence, and I rode in the cab. He didn't waste any time before he questioned me as to why I was wearing shorts on a job that would by it's nature be rough on legs. I told him straight out that I liked wearing shorts, my father and I had some disagreement about it, and now it was my Dad's edict that I wear shorts all summer long.

Needless to say I didn't go into all the details. I figured he could relate to the explanation I had given him and he could pass it on to the others so I hopefully wouldn't have to deal with any verbal or physical unpleasantness for the next ten weeks we would be working together. I also found out that he and the other two boys were in scouting and if it weren't for the excessive scrapes and cuts he thought we would sustain, he would be inclined that shorts would be great for the crew to wear.

Lew, as we called our foreman, was right about our legs getting a workout. Fortunately for me, a year of rough play in the sun had really toughened my hide. The entire first day I think my coworkers preoccupation revolved around when would my bare knees sport first blood. That first eight hour day of my working career seemed to last forever. When we finally headed back my legs were dirty, scraped, but non bloody.

The boys, Greg and Tom, said they actually did like wearing shorts, but the stigma and ridicule boys our age often received from our peers as well as some adults had effectively curtailed their bare kneed activities to scout related events. Greg hinted that he might give shorts a try if it looked like I wasn't getting my legs cut up too bad.

For the most part, even though we were trimming trees, we were working out in the hot sun. It was laborious work because we had to haul all the trimmings away. We didn't have the luxury of a brush chipper so we often had to drag the cut foliage some distance or pile it in the back of the truck. We were all drenched in our sweat by ten in the morning and my moisture overloaded scout neckerchief was soaked town to the tips of the triangular cloth that dangling halfway down my chest.

By Wednesday night I still didn't have any sign of bloody boo-boos on my legs, however Greg had managed to snag the leg of his pants that morning and put a three inch rip in them and a bit of an oozy gash in his leg. If he had been wearing shorts he still would have bloodied his leg but he wouldn't have torn his pants.

I was totally surprised the next morning when Lew and the crew as I called them arrived and I saw that Greg was sporting the pants he had been wearing the previous day; neatly truncated, hemmed, and hanging about half way down his nicely muscled thighs. The boots he had been wearing came about half way up his calf and the remaining area was covered with fairly heavy khaki stockings that were turned down several times to form a  two inch wide roll just below his knees. WOW did he look sexy. Now if he was only wearing nice baggy full cut shorts instead of his cut down 'longies' I could get gooey just looking at him

The white skin of his legs was in sharp contrast to the sunburned reddish brown of his face and arms. Since his pants had been longies and weren't especially full cut in the legs, I figured it would be a tight squeeze for him to retrieve his stem and take a piss out of the legs of his new shorts, as I had readily demonstrated since our first day on the job. He would have looked a lot better had he been wearing his scout shorts, but I figured since he was still active in scouting he wouldn't want to dirty and chance ripping up his uniform pants.

I was dying to know where he had picked up the knee socks. They looked just like those the British Tommys had worn in North Africa in WW2. I wondered if he had khaki knee length shorts to go along with them. Knee socks do not hold up well when you are walking in brush and heavy weeds because they tend to get snagged and ripped and I hated to see his sexy socks getting ruined. From that first day I toyed with the idea of asking him if he would sell them to me or any others he might have. I would certainly get a lot more 'enjoyment' out of them then I suspected he did. I still had nearly three dozen pairs of the old scout stockings I had gotten a year earlier that I could give him to wear in exchange.

Greg wore his cut-offs the rest of the week. He did get his tender legs scratched up a bit and I challenged him to be man enough to stick it out. The following Monday he showed up wearing a different pair of cut-offs, like the first pair, probably school pants that he had about outgrown.

Fortunately I had been active in the scouts since the previous fall. During our lunch break Greg was sitting next to me and pulled the ample hem of my shorts toward him as he asked me where I had gotten the old style scout shorts. His question really surprised me and without really thinking about any long term ramifications I explained how I had gotten a lifetime supply for pennies on the dollar. Such a deal. How could I go wrong. This was why I was wearing them in an admittedly inappropriate work environment.

Tom and Lew were also a party to the conversation as Greg pressed me further; indicating that even if they were free and had been given them, what motivated me to regress back to young boy hood and endure the negative comments and innuendoes, not to mention the physical abuse to my legs. I had to do some really fast talking and I had little doubt they suspected I might have an identity or even a sexual problem in regards wearing short pants, or else I was a lot less mature than my age would indicate.

Both Greg and Tom were about a year older then me and had just graduated from high school. They had both been active in athletics and I quickly got the impression they were both all American boys like my friend Bob; except I had little doubt that they did not have any attraction for other boys as he did. As a result of the conversation with Greg I felt it would be most unwise to question him about the knee socks or whether he had army shorts to go with them. I did discover in subsequent weeks that he had several pair of the socks because snag holes that inevitably formed disappeared for a few weeks before reappearing again on a subsequent Monday morning.

I had little doubt they would both know what to do with a bunch of balloons and would probably enjoy doing it. But to even hint I had any interest in the rubber toys, especially since they knew I had an obvious unusual liking for little boys pants, would have been suicidal.

Unlike Bob, the boys were about my size and build and I know I really would have enjoyed playing balloon pop with them because I wouldn't have felt intimidated. But either they were true blue American straight, or unwilling to risk exposure themselves, because neither gave any indication of harboring any unusual sexual interests. Actually, conversations of a sexual nature didn't come up at all, even though Tom had mentioned he had a steady girl friend.

By the end of the second week Greg and I were good naturally chiding Tom about his long pants. Tom was adamant that shorts were inappropriate for our work environment, which was true, and we both looked kind of silly wearing them and sporting skinned legs as a result. Even Lew got into the act one day and hinted that Tom might be 'chicken' which really got Tom's hackles up. He never did 'bare up', but Lew's jibes caused Greg to commit to wearing his cut off shorts for the duration of the job.

Occasionally either Greg or I would manage to skin up our knees or legs and draw blood. I noticed that Tom seemed to have added interest in our bare legs immediately after such occurrences. Tom's dad was a big wig in the fire department and apparently as a result Tom had received some professional first aid training. I didn't get the feeling, however, that this was his primary motivation for immediately volunteering to patch us up. He unquestionably enjoyed feeling our legs, playing with our skin, smearing the sticky blood around and getting it on his hands. I found out later that he was an avid 'Bambi killer' and really enjoyed gutting out deer and getting the blood and guts all over himself. Perhaps I should have suggested he try and blow up deer lungs like balloons and see if he could bust them. Some of the FFA boys in school told me they liked to do that when they butchered sheep or cows. Yucch!

It was in mid July, when reconnoitering ahead, I spotted four really tired balloons trapped by their strings on some low branches. I made a point of holding back until the others spotted them so I could see how they responded to the helpless toys. Tom spotted them first and immediately let us know what he had come across. Aside from that he essentially acted as if they didn't exist, but I noticed he kept his eye on them. Their location near the ground did not involve our trimming work, so if we were to interact with them at all it would have to be a conscious effort. Our work quickly moved us past them and I noticed Greg was eyeing them up as well. I felt both the boys were also checking to see if I would make any move for them. None of us were willing to admit that we would like to run over and bust them. I'm sure none of us would have hesitated for a moment if we had been alone. It began to look like all those tempting rubber bags would survive for another day.

I was about to move on when Lew jolted me awake as he called out to us, "Hey. Don't you big boys know what to do with some old balloons?" as he walked over and untangled them from the branch.

Oh my. I could sense things were suddenly going to get very interesting. The boys and I were standing near each other as he brought them over and said, "Here, who want's to finish them off?"

Wow my dick sprang to life before I even had time to think about quelling it.

Lew offered the balloons to Tom and Greg who were standing next to each other. They looked embarrassed as Greg suddenly responded with a grin, "Let Henery here bust 'em. In those baggy shorts of his he looks like a little kid that would really love to pop them."

Man they were right on that point. I sure as hell hoped that was just a fun comment and not something they seriously suspected. One thing was certain. If I didn't get my tool under control quickly any doubt they might have had would be removed.

Lew looked at me and as he started over he commented, "Looks like your buddies here are afraid to bust balloons. Do you like to pop them?"

I think Tom and Greg would have loved to finish them off but were too embarrassed to display the enjoyment they would get from popping little children's toys. I couldn't resist commenting that I had no problem popping balloons and I would be glad to get rid of them. I expected Lew to hand me all four, but as he stepped up he tore just one loose and handed it to me. Then he turned and walked a few steps back to the other two and handed each of them a balloon as well. He still had the last one clamped in his left hand. The Lew said, "OK. Now one, two, three, rub."

With that he squashed the balloon with his other hand and began rubbing it vigorously. The oxidized rubber screamed for about ten seconds until it ripped with a tired POOF.

The other two laughed and started rubbing their balloons as well. I noticed that the thin string that tied the balloons off had been wrapped many times tightly around the neck before being knotted. As the boys started working on their balloons I got the neck and the knot in between my teeth and was able to tear the string at the point where it was tied. The string was then free to unwrap off the neck. The balloon still remained inflated because the neck rubber was tightly stuck together at the point where the wraps of the string had compressed it. I pulled outward gently on the sides of the neck and it suddenly opened up. I let the stale air escape as the rubber bag relaxed into a thin limp sack about five inches in diameter.

By this time the boys had busted their balloons and the three of them were just staring at me. Tom quipped, "Lookey here. Our little boy is going to take his pretty balloon home to play with it later."

Man would I have ever loved to. The balloons had probably been outdoors at least a couple of days and the rubber smelled heavenly. Lew gave me a funny look that seemed to say to me 'you really do like balloons, don't you'?

I smiled at them and started blowing away. I figured the rubber was pretty well oxidized and the balloon probably wouldn't get much bigger than when Lew had handed it to me. My coworkers watched intently as the rubber bag expanded bigger and bigger. The rubber was really tired so there wasn't any real pressure required to blow the air in. To my surprise the balloon made it to more than twelve inches before it gave up with a respectable POOF. Lew was all smiles as he quipped, "Way to go. Now there's a kid that really likes to bust balloons."

Right on Lew baby, I thought.

We resumed work and for the next several minutes I managed to keep away from the others until I got things under control down below. Fortunately my goo didn't stain through the scout shorts. I spent the rest of the afternoon analyzing the limited responses of my coworkers and wondering if I could have done anything differently to get them less inhibited regarding our balloon play.

The next day Lew and Tom were off with the truck some half mile away to dump a load of brush we had cut. Greg and I were sitting on a bank next to the road goofing off as we tended to do when Lew was out of sight. Out of the blue Greg said, "You really did enjoy blowing that balloon up yesterday until it burst, didn't you?"

Wow was this an opening or what?

I looked at Greg and replied, "You bet I did. I love busting balloons like that. I like to see how big they will get before they bust. I always liked playing with balloons since I was five; and I'll admit that I still love to pop them."

I paused, not knowing what kind of response I would get. Whether I was going to get ridicule, good for you if that's what turns you on, or you know what- I really like playing with them myself.

Instead Greg remained silent and I could sense he was weighing the risks of revealing some of his immature life joys. I continued, "Don't feel embarrassed. Jeeze even my dad loves to bust them. He gets his jollies with a lit cigarette. Hey most kids and adults that aren't afraid of them love to play with and bust balloons; that's what they're made for."

Greg gave me a really funny look and I suddenly thought, oh shit, I've really spilled the beans this time. But then he broke into a faint smile and said, "Yah, I like popping them myself. It doesn't look good for guys our age to be playing with a kids toy, though."

Greg paused as he glanced down at his legs then added, "Especially when we look silly enough already wearing little kids short pants."

"Yes I guess you are right," I said.

Damn! So near yet so far. If Greg really enjoyed balloons any where near the way I did it looked like there was no way he was going to reveal it to me. He obviously possessed the maturity and strength of character that permitted him to suppress what he considered immature pleasures in his life. This was something I definitely lacked. I had little doubt that the real Greg behind the facade liked to wear shorts and play with balloons. I really felt it was highly unlikely they had any sexual attraction for him, however.

Greg and I continued to wear shorts to work for the rest of the summer. I considered any further overtures to either him or Tom regarding short pants and knee socks, and most especially balloons, to be fruitless and far far too risky. I never did find anything out about the nifty knee socks Greg generally wore. By the beginning of August the several that he had were pretty well ripped up and ready for the incinerator.   Rev. Date 4/03.
<Continue to Later Years #21b>

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