Growing Up

There are so many stories to share from my elementary school years. Growing up in the early 1960’s in America was in many ways still so innocent and idyllic. The sexual revolution of the late 1960’s had yet to occur. No one had heard of Vietnam. John F. Kennedy was president and life in white middle class America was good. Segregation was the norm at that time. Incredibly, I never met a single black person until I was in the 7th grade. I never made a black friend until I was an adult. We were isolated from most social issues in Overbrook, and we never even knew it.

Gender roles were strictly defined, as well. Little girls stayed inside and played with our dolls or our Easy Bake ovens. If we were outside, we played hopscotch or jump rope. We took piano or ballet lessons as our after school activity. We wore dresses and saddle oxfords or penny loafers to school every day. Even on the coldest winter days, we never wore pants to school. Instead we wore knee socks with our dresses--like that would help us stay warm. Play clothes, such as pants and shorts, were strictly reserved for the back yard in the afternoons. And no little girl wore jeans or pants with a front zipper or fly. Those were for boys. Our pants had side zippers because that was more modest.

The boys had a lot more freedom and were always allowed to have more adventures than the girls. Boys could wear jeans to school. Boys got to ride bikes and build forts and climb trees. Boys got to play sports. Boys got to run around with their shirts off in the hot summer. I went to many Little League games as a child, but always as an observer, never as a participant. Even if a girl had the athletic ability and desire to compete (which many girls did), there were no approved outlets for her save the occasional back yard game of softball.

Of course, the reverse was also true. If a boy were more inclined to play the piano rather then baseball, he was often ridiculed by his friends. A boy either played sports or he was considered a "pansy". It was a rather rigid caste system, and it was a rare individual who could buck it. Rather than be an outcast, most of us just conformed.

This was true of the adults, as well as of the children. Dads worked and moms stay at home. I remember that my mother sewed all of my clothes and used to scorn the notion of ready made clothes. She made me beautiful new dresses every year for school and church. I use to wear a lot of shirtwaist dresses: a fitted bodice that often buttoned up the front or back, and a very full skirt. When I was a very small child, Mama took great pride in making me petticoats of the fullest, stiffest tulle netting. I think she starched them. They sure did itch! They were three layers deep and they made the skirts of my dresses stand out wider and fuller than any of the other girls. Thankfully, by the time I entered elementary school, the trend for starched petticoats was waning somewhat, and my school dresses were a little less frilly.

She also curled my hair every night. I slept on pink sponge rollers for years. They were so uncomfortable! (Of course, she slept on “grown up” wire rollers—and they were ten times worse. So it was no good complaining to her about discomfort and rollers! It was a female rite of passage of sorts.) The only break I got from the curlers was on Friday nights because we didn’t have to worry about my hair (usually) on Saturdays.

Most mornings, she would fix my hair in “Shirley Temple curls.” It was a source of great pride to her that my hair was so curly and that she could form those big fat sausage curls around her index finger with nothing more than a brush and little spit. She would pull the top of my hair back off my forehead and tie the whole thing up with a big shiny bow. Let the other little girls who had straight hair wear pony tails or pig tails. My hair was curly and she wanted to show it off.

But for all of its seemingly archaic rules and restrictions, the early 1960's was a very comforting time to be a child. You knew who you were and where you fit in. Your mom and dad adhered to the rules, too, and you knew who they were. It often seemed as if everyone belonged to the same church, the same school, the same community, and there were no surprises to knock you out of your little bubble of contentment. Divorce was unheard of, political unrest was a thing of the future, and every family had about the same number of material things. We all had a black & white television set in our living rooms. Every family had a car, but very few had two cars. Sometimes the dads had a pick up truck. We all dressed alike, ate alike, and played alike. The world seemed to be one big homogeneous neighborhood of good will.

And so, with an incontrovertible background of middle class solidarity and prosperity, I was prepared to begin the next phase of my childhood--the elementary school years.