Chamblee54

The appropriately named Dangerous Minds has a link to a story. The story begins with a normal kid exposed to the underground press of 1967.
It took PG until 1968. PG was a subfreshman (subbie) at Cross Keys High School. One day, he had a stye in his eye, and realized he could get out of school if he had a doctors appointment. There was an eye doctor working in Rich’s at Lenox Square, and PG walked over there to see him.
By this time, the stye was fading, but any excuse to get out of school is a good one. The doctor gave him an ointment to put in the eye, and the standard instructions. PG was then let loose on Lenox Square. It was an open air mall, with a bowling alley and grocery store. There were concrete statues of Uncle Remus characters on display, and two doors were kept locked in the restrooms downstairs beside Davisons. When the mall first opened, those rooms were “colored men” and “colored women”.
There was a bearded man on the courtyard, with a stack of newspapers. PG asked what it was, and the bearded man said it was mostly politics. PG gave the man fifteen cents, and got a copy of “The Great Speckled Bird”. He was warned not to get caught with this at school.
“The Bird” was roughly 16 pages of tabloid sized newsprint. There were two things about that first issue that PG remembers today. There was a story about a man who had been in ‘Nam. He was proud to be the first Marine to piss in the latrine at Da Nang.
There was also a crude drawing of a naked woman. An arrow pointed to the vagina, with a caption…” pussy- good for screwing and or babies”. The Bird was not known for subtle sophistication.
The Great Speckled Bird stuck around for a few years. In the 1968 election, someone printed a “greatest hits” edition, and distributed it to houses in Dekalb (spell check suggestions:Denial, Dermal, Decal) County, with the headline ” New Era prints hippie smut sheet”. Evidently, the same printer who did the county legal organ printed the Bird, and some politician thought he could score points with the voters. The cartoon of the naked woman, from that first issue PG bought, was included.
Pictures for today’s feature are from The Library of Congress.