1953

Pardon me while I am away.  I’m visiting 1953.

As a teenager, I loved pouring over my parents’ high school yearbook – Class of ’53.  The fashions, the bespectacled prim “spinster” teachers, the sock hops, the corsages pinned high up on taffeta prom dresses…going steady.  It was so different from the time I grew up.  I think my generation was trying very hard not to be my parents’ generation so instead of demure Peter Pan collars, we wore colorful “peasant” smocks, instead of wool skirts, we wore Landlubbers, and instead of black and white saddle shoes, we wore platform sandals.  Yes, we were different – different-looking, that is.

Maybe I was nostalgic for my parents’ high school years because they didn’t have the Vietnam war blaring from their TV sets every night after dinner.  But they did have to worry about the Cold War, bombs, and other scary things.  That is, when they weren’t attending faculty tea socials, football games, dances, and drinking cherry Cokes.

My mother and father didn’t fill in too many blanks about their years in high school – only that they enjoyed it.  Their yearbook is chock-full of adorable illustrations such as the sleepy youth rolling over in his bed while the radio shouts out another snow day.  Some things never change…

I’ve dipped into another “malt-shop novel” recently.  A really good one that is charming the bobby sox off me.  We have the lovelorn heroine, the helpful and funny best girlfriend, the devilishly handsome football star, and the kind and wise “friend” –  not popular, but ever-waiting in the wings for his queue.  It all takes place in 1953 and I can’t put it down.  Pure escapism back to a kinder and gentler past where mothers made cherry pie just because it was Tuesday and Pop came home every night to sit at the dining room table with the family, just in from bowling, the library, or sledding and skating.  And everyone helped bring those dinners to fruition too, including Junior whose job it was to bring chairs into the dining room for any guests that just happened to be studying and listening to records upstairs with Sis.

There’s plenty of angst in my new read – the school kind and the love kind.  Right of passage stuff that we all went through, even my 1953 parents.  And it doesn’t matter if you wore wool skirts or bell-bottomed jeans, there’s a common thread through the high school experience, isn’t there?

I wonder sometimes what it would be like to go back to those four years, if only for a day.  But I think I would much prefer to try 1953 on.  I like the climate then:  cozy and hospitable, teachers who looked like teachers, true-blue chums, and a dinnertime that could be counted on.  That is until college but by then everything was tied up in a nice little bow.  Kindly and all-seeing Johnny finally stepped out of the wings, just in time to pin his Kappa Sigma on your shoulder.  And as it was for my parents, 1953 was the beginning of absolutely everything…

Yes, I’ll be returning to 2019 soon.  Just as soon as I finish this piece of cherry pie.