Kansas City News Blog

Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from area basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.

Over Sexteen

Author: Contributors to the ABC Freight Forwarding Company Newsletter
Publisher: Grayson Publishing
Date: 1951
Discovered at: Prairie Village Estate Sale
The Cover Promises: "Prudes Won't Think It Funny!" Also: Prudes talk like Bizarro Super-Man!

Representative Quote:
"He made a perfect 36 on the golf course today."
"Nine holes?"
"No. Fifth Avenue model."

In the days before everything was dirty, dirtiness itself was often the joke. In once-scandalous jokebooks like Over Sexteen and its sequels -- all written by men more horny horny than marble-eating hippos are hungry hungry -- what at first appears innocent always turns out to be dirty.

A typical joke runs, "He bought his girl a bicycle and now she peddles it all over town."

Also dirty: the sweet science of boxing.

See, in 1951 pre-marital sex was exactly like boxing. You would hide in your corner, pummel each other and hope to win on points. Also, spectators could only differentiate the participants by trunk color.

Dirtier cartoons await you after the jump!

As with sixth grade boys, a dirty-minded King Midas, or the writing staff of Two and a Half Men, everything Over Sexteen touches becomes a lame sex joke. On and on it goes, with pre-sexual revolution gags about honeymoons, farmer's daughters and the very idea that women might enjoy sex, too.
 
What shocks today is not the sex but the persistent sense that the mere fact of sex is scandalous. Consider the old maid who found a hobo in her bed and then spent the whole night with her stomach "on the bum." Or the bachelor who was thrown out of his apartment after his downstairs landlord heard two sets of shoes drop.
 
Of course, much of Over Sexteen is so predictable that your Crap Archivist can spring a pop quiz.

Pop Quiz, Hot Shot!
 
An Over Sexteen joke begins:

"One of our New Jersey customers found himself in the Times Square section of New York and stopped a flashily dressed young man to ask, 'Where can I find the 42nd Street Ferry?'"

Can you identify the real punchline?

• "Practice, practice, practice."
• Before the young man could answer, our New Jersey customer added, "Please do not misconstrue my question as relating to homosexuality, which in fifty-odd years will, to society's great shame, continue to inspire ridicule and discrimination."
• "Thpeaking," he replied.

Round Two!

In this cartoon, Tom Bosley's friend has just returned from a date with:

• A woman with particularly large, sharp breasts.
• Ms. Pac-Man.

This one is mystifying. Please explain.

Maybe she should stop worrying about it and find out what happened to the doctor's hand!

Shocking Detail:
Over Sexteen marks a bold early break from the stifling rules of '50s decorum.
Cartoonist Bruce Dolen dared to shatter Eisenhower-era taboos against motorboating.

Highlight:
Your Crap Archivist has nothing against the making-the-innocent-seem-dirty approach. In fact, I practice it regularly. Take this bold statement from the dust jacket -- probably the one truly innocent thing in the whole book.
 

The hardest day of any boy's life comes when he tells his mother he's flap-happy.
At times, Over Sexteen reverses its strategy.
 
Here, it takes the overtly sexual ...
 
And then, in this case, makes it innocent.


It never fails! I think I see a beautiful nude woman, and it turns out to be a hideously deformed dog!