Pajama Parties in the 60s

When I was in middle school, (Junior High to my generation) and in High School, pajama parties were very common.   I remember telling my oldest daughter about those girl parties and she did try a time or two, but they really never caught on.  She would have a couple of friends over, but not the dozen or so I had.  Maybe it was a generational thing. 

 Our PJ parties were usually on a Friday night at one of the girlfriend's houses.  In my case, we would have about a dozen girls spending the night. We ate chips and dip and made Chef Boyardee Pizza. We drank pop/soda.  I lived in the country.  It was 30 minutes to "the City" for McDonalds or the A & W.   We had no fast food available so it was all what we could buy at the grocery store.

No, I'm not in the top one.   The one below shows me with my head down.  This was the girl not seen in public without makeup since I was 12.

We never slept.  For hours we would sit in a circle, in the dark, around a candle, and play "Truth or Dare?".  One person starts by asking the question.  If you choose Truth, you have to answer the question truthfully.  ( Sure, who's gonna know right?)  or if you were afraid of what might be asked, you could choose Dare.  That's when you were given a task to do.  Back them it was something harmless like hang your bra on the tree in the front yard and leave it there all night.   I seem to remember that was how all of us ran up town, in our baby doll PJs. We ran up one side of the street and down the other, at the only stop light in town.  That was in the days when nothing was open after 6:00pm so at 1 or 2am, there was not a sole around.  Boy, did we think we were daring.

We played 45's and albums on the stereo.   Music was a huge part of our lives.  Garage parties ( with boys) were popular then as well, but we're still talking ages 12- 15 maybe. We danced for hours.  Oh, yeah, the guys did too. Then they would leave and the PJ party would start.    The Beatles, The Four Seasons, Beach Boys, and Motown were huge.  The music I most associate with those innocent boy/girl parties was Ronnie Dove.

As we got older, we girls still had our pajama parties.  The photos are from the time I was about 16. The guys always knew when a party was happening and usually threatened to raid it. We hoped they would, but it never happened.  Once in a while the boyfriends would drop us off after a date, but usually, we girls made time for each other. 

In the morning we would be bleary eyed and exhausted from not sleeping.  We would have cold pizza and Coke for breakfast and then call for a ride home.  Ahhhh, Good Times.

Do You Remember?

I watched the Biography channel today with their bio on Twiggy.

I remember her from the 1960's.  I thought she was utterly "fab".  That reminded me of other '60's type stuff.

Like Yardley Cosmetics.  ( Anything remotely Bristish was so much better than the U.S. stuff, or so we thought.)  Yardley reminded me of Jean Shrimpton.  I loved her.  I think she and Twiggy were the first of the model celebrities.

The 1960's cosmetics were all about the eyes with little or no lip color.  I had a girlfriend that used the concealer in a tube for lipstick to wipe out her lips entirely.

I tried false eyelashes. I shouldn't have.  Mine kept popping up on one corner or the other.  I never did get the hang of it.

This stuff I used by the gallon.  Then we learned later, from a dermatologist, that is is horrible for your skin.  Every night I washed my makeup off with Noxema and piled on Clearasil to that one pimple that was sure to ruin my life, the next morning.

My foundation makeup was Cover Girl.  For some reason this stuff was not kind to me.  By the end of the day it turned orange on my skin and looked ridiculous. I was not Cheryl Tiegs.  That was not a good look for me.   I think I switched to Avon then, when I was ordering my Sweet Honesty or Soft Musk, to go along with my all time favorite Ambush by Dana.

The other trend I followed was the white/silver pearl nail polish.  I know I wore this all 4 years of high school.

Does anyone else have any style memories from their teen years?  

The Cost of Convenience

This is me at 15 and this is pretty much where I spent my four years of high school.   On one side of the divider was the kitchen, as you can see, and on the other was the living room.  This was the only phone in the house so all those family members watching the only TV in the house were three feet from me.  There were no secrets.  No bad language.  I was free to talk until Mom got tired of listening to me or the TV watchers were bothered by the constant drone of conversation.

 My brother was once sitting on the living room side of that divider when my mother was washing dishes.  He said some smart comment to her so she took the glass she was washing, that was full of water, and soaked him good. 

We lived in a small town that had it's own phone system that made it impossible to call any other town without it being  long distance.     So, therefore, we did not call anywhere else unless you asked permission and it better be for a good reason.  Like someone died.   On Christmas my parents would call the grandparents and then pass the phone to us kids when they ran out of stuff to talk about.

Terry and I were talking yesterday about the high cost of living  we have now that our parents didn't have.  Things like cell phones are hugely expensive compared to their house phone bill.   We have not had a land line phone for about 8-10 years.   Our cell phones are more than double that land line charge. 

Then there is the cable and Internet bill.  Forget the Internet even.  Just go with your television cable bill.  Our parents had an antenna.  Do you remember when you could turn the dial and the thing would move?  That was high tech!    Once they bought the antenna, there was no other bill.

I would like to see the price comparison for an average date then and now, with allowance for today's dollar value.  The kind of date that teenage girl on the phone went on.  A regular go to a movie, get some popcorn and pop at the concession stand date.  I know Terry and I don't get refreshments at a movie unless there's a special of some sort.  My teenage dates were pumping gas or bagging groceries after school.  Some were working at the local orchard on weekends.  They didn't have much money.

It just costs more to live today.   There's gas....we know that's horrible.  Can you think of any other comparisons?

When We Were Young

I've had a blog block the last few days.  My husband has to do my scanning for me because even when I write down the 47 steps to scan photos, something always happens to mess me up.

So I thought I would go this route.

I am a Kenny Chesney fan.  He and Jimmy Buffet are my summer music.  I think most of us can relate to his (Kenny's) song "Young".   My adult daughters talk about their high school experiences and wonder "what was I thinking?"   Like daughter # 3 telling me she couldn't call home when she was going to be out later than planned because her friends were Amish and didn't have a phone.  I didn't believe it either.

So I'll sing along with this one.  We all have stories to share and some only with others that were involved.  It's gone too fast for me and for my girls.  My middle daughter just got a  10 year class reunion announcement. She's not sure she wants to go.   I think she should.

Discounting the raging hormones and the angst, it's a fun place to visit for a short time.  If we could go back with all we know, I for one, would have one or two conversations end differently.  Most of it I wouldn't change.  I have heard it said that a teenager makes many life choices for the adult they will become.  We made those choices because ...we were young.

May 1968

In May of 1968, my high school class were lucky enough to travel from our little town in Michigan to Washington D.C. for our class trip.  We didn't ride luxury buses with air conditioning or even a greyhound bus.  We were loaded unto two school buses for the 12 hour ride.  We drove though the night and arrived in time to be hustled off and out to breakfast with a full day of touring  to follow. 

During that night ride, when we stopped for gas, we would hear whispers that buses of poor people were heading for D.C. as well.  Little did I know and less did I understand, that we were in the middle of something historic. In early 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had called for a spring campaign in D.C. to ask President Johnson for jobs, homes and health care.  (Sound familiar?)  After he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, his organizers decided to go ahead with it and chose Sunday,  May 12th.

Our group of about 60 arrived in the beginning of that week.  Women (that would be us ) were not allowed to wear slacks touring.  We all wore dresses and dress shoes.  Guys wore dress pants and dress shirts.  We were able to tour in small groups, chaperoned by teachers of course. All the while we were seeing bus after bus parking to let off dozens of people, some carrying homemade signs.  I wish I could say I paid attention to all that but I didn't.  We were staying in a single story Marriott Hotel.  That I remember because it was surrounded by a brick wall with roses growing on them. 

It took a hitting a wall for me to see what was happening.  Not until we arrived at the Washington Monument and looked  down the Reflecting Pool toward the Lincoln Memorial  and saw hundreds of makeshift, cardboard housing structures, did I fully understand "this is something big".   I climbed every one of those 897 steps of the Washington Monument, up to the tiny windows in the point, to take pictures of  "Resurrection City".   And..... I don't know where they are.  I've seen them through the years, tucked away in a "safe" spot. Of course...But if you saw Forest Gump and his search for Jenny at the Memorial, that's how it looked.  Mobs of people and structures.  That was out last "tour" day.

Our trip was not affected at all, by the arriving people.  We left toward the end of that week.  Our small neighboring town arrived on Friday, at the same hotel and were immediately put on lock down and could not go out at all.  The "Poor People's March" was in full force and I think the thousands of  participants unnerved the school officials in charge. The rumor was that the students tore the Marriott apart.  Tore the roses off the walls and destroyed the rooms.  I don't know what really took place, but I do know that was the last year of Senior Trips for that school.  One of my LARC friends was a Freshman in that H.S. then and confirms it.   I hope it wasn't as bad as all that.  I hope we heard exaggerated tales of teenagers

I had already experienced the assassination of John F. Kennedy and then the same thing with of Martin Luther King Jr.  I witnessed  the Poor People's Campaign and Resurrection City.  I was 17.  Boys I had dated were getting drafted and going to Vietnam.  But summer was coming and the Rolling Stones were singing  Jumpin Jack Flash and Steppenwolf was telling us we were Born to be Wild.   I was going to college in the fall and I had a boyfriend and a summer job.  Priorities.

Sad Day for a Memory

I get the email version of the "Big City" newspaper, that everyone in my small hometown had delivered.    I was so sad today, to see that the football coach from my high school days had  passed away in Florida.  His wife was an English teacher during my Freshman year and she also was the drama coach my Senior year.  With his leadership, we has a good football team all four years I was in high school.  She was my favorite teacher.  Needless to say, I am feeling a little melancholy about this. 

I have posted about spritzing on the Ambush cologne and  wearing my currant date's  red and black, leather and wool, varsity jacket to those football games.  A bunch of us girls would wait in the parking lot, after the games, for our certain guy to come out of the showers , dressed in chinos/slacks and a sweater, smelling like Jade East or Canoe.  Mostly, they won, thanks to Coach Samec's tough couching, because that ride afterwards was no fun if they lost.  And, if they lost, they wouldn't want to stay for the dances which was pretty high on our social life calendar.

One of my most vivid memories of him was how mad he got that some dumb girl had made a poster for a dance featuring the football players during a game,  with a thought bubble over one of them saying, " I can't wait until this game is over so I can go to the dance.".... He was livid. That is not what his players should be thinking.   He kept the team at practice longer because of it.  That poster had been made by the Captain of the football team's girlfriend...ME.  oops......

I'm in the middle with the long hair.  The Queen was the blond, second from the right.  All of the rest of us were close friends and hoped she would get it and she did.  

It rained buckets that night so all the work on the floats was for nothing. They stayed in the barns.   There was no Homecoming parade. No "Beauty Queen" waves from the back of a convertible.  We did walk out onto the field and became drowned rats for the dance following the game.

There I am in the back, left, holding the "Spirit Wand" that the Seniors had won at the Pep Rally for having the most spirit.  Such innocent times.  My whole high school only had and still does have about 500 students. Total.  My class graduated the smallest number from that school, which was built to replace the two story 1920's version, and opened the year before my Freshman year.   We had a very spirited 76 students in that class.  

This time brings to mind,  "going steady" with your boyfriend's class ring held on with a mound of adhesive tape under it or rubber bands twisted around the top.  Of dress codes, study halls and being asked out on dates at least by Wednesday for a Friday or Saturday night.

About 4 years ago, I was working in one of my retail jobs and Jayne saw me, came over and told me she knew who I was.  I had not a clue it was her.  Believe me, I do not look like this 17 year old, long haired teenager anymore.  She still knew me.  She said "I was one of your teachers."  Then, I knew.   Then it clicked.  I was so glad she approached me.

So Coach and Mrs. S., thanks for the memories.