So in the "I Like Ike" 50's it was Guys and Dolls and West Side Story and Elvis and those teen angst songs on the AM radio. Then the 60's rolled in with JFK and the Viet Nam and maybe the biggest thing for emerging teens - the British Invasion and the West Coast music infusion. There was a feeling that the times were changing as the baby boomers got their first tastes of freedom.
No matter what the hype about those days, I have the feeling that most of what we all experienced in terms of our social interactions - tensions with adults, trials and errors with dating, finding stuff to do with the guys that was acceptable and novel, etc. - wasn't so much different than generations before or since, even if the particulars were different.
As May rolled around this year I was taken back to Spring 1967, fifty short years ago, when a few things happened that made lasting impressions on me. I thought I'd share a couple of them in the spirit of sharing a flavor of the times - at least my times, which were probably pretty typical.
We were finishing up our third year of high school. I was working after school delivering notions by handcart to the major downtown department stores (Sibley's, McCurdy's, Edward's) for a little tightly cramped hole-in-the-wall shop on Clinton Avenue. This gave me a little spending money during the school year and it felt good to have that little bit of independence. With school and work there wasn't much time for much else.
One evening, out of the absolute blue, I got a phone call invitation to an upcoming dance at St. Agnes. This girl was someone I had never spoken to but somehow she must have heard that I had admired her from afar. So now I was going to meet her at this dance in a couple of weeks. How to wake up a 16 year old boy!! But it never happened. It doesn't really matter why, but I had to call and cancel...and I never did talk to that girl - nor did I ever forget how excited I had been when she called. This was the kind of experience that just has to shape us in whatever mysterious way such things do.
Around that same time there was a prom being planned at my school but I had no intention of attending. There just wasn't anyone for whom I felt inclined to shell out the prom bucks. Instead, I went to the Grange that night and lo and behold met this cool girl who lived in the city and attended Monroe HS. (What was she doing at the Grange?) We hung out and had fun and that was that. But she needed a ride home and when my older brother came to pick me up he said he'd drive her home. So we did and while doing so made plans to get together the next day. I picked her up at home and we just drove around for a few hours in the afternoon. It was a great day. I think we went to Ellison Park. We hit it off, talked easily, really nice. But that was that. We never spoke again. Can't remember why. Just remember the day. Another interaction that must have shaped me somehow.
That summer I started working at Sky Chef preparing food for on-board flights. I worked the breakfast and lunch shift so I had to get there at 6:00 am everyday and work until 2:30. Again, not much time left for fun and adventure. It was kind of a lost summer. We went to the Grange on Friday or Saturday nights, played pool at friends' houses or Olympic Park, and otherwise not much. In those days, every airline meal was served with a mini-pack of four Winston cigarettes. I had resisted the temptation to start smoking through three years of high school, but these free cigarettes were smoked by everyone who worked there on their breaks. After a while the less than exciting work led to my dabbling. Soon I was cruising around with a box of free cigs on the console for all to share. Yeah, RJ Reynolds knew what they were doing with those freebies!!
We ended up the summer with a trip to NYC. I had a free ticket as a bonus for working the summer. Originally it was just me and two friends going. Unbeknownst to us, word got out and another group of four or five guys made a separate trip at the same time. We all met up in NYC where we got two rooms at a fleabag hotel near Greenwich Village (which was, after all, the hot spot in the news those days). We were so young and such hicks, maybe if we had never gone we wouldn't have learned it so hard. I've got to hand it to my mother for allowing me to go and quench my wanderlust a little, but what a disaster. We wrote postcards the day we got there and beat them home!
Lots of things shape us. When I think back about all these things we did I realize that no one thing overwhelms our development. Instead, it seems like we go along and make decisions day by day based on the things happening around us and in the end we have a life. If, in our day to day decisions we help, or at least not hurt others, that life is okay.
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