Looking back on my teen years during the mid 60s, we did some pretty unusual things but also there were some pretty neat things that were done also. Being a teen in those years was unforgettable and I must admit we were pretty sheltered.
With the introduction of Rock and Roll music in the late 50s and early 60s, it was the rage to keep up with the latest in music and dance. Elvis, the Beatles, Dave Clark, Petunia Clark, the Supremes were some of the top singers and teens rushed to purchase their 45s and albums. It seemed like every week there were new dance moves and most everyone was eager to learn them such as the Fish, the Twist, the Stroll, the Jerk, the Pony, the Wah Watusi, the Hully Gully, the Locomotion, the Swim and the Mash Potato. You learned these new dance moves by watching the popular teen television show, American Bandstand. Teen dancers were out on the floor dancing away. My hometown, and most towns back then, had teen centers where there was a large room, with a record player at one end of the room where the latest records were played as teens danced away with adult sponsors, of course, present. Every Saturday night found the doors to the Teen Center open and it would fill with teens eager to have a good time. I remember one of the adult sponsors would not allow the Twist to be done as they thought it was not appropriate.
Listening on the radios at night was the thing to do in the cars or at home on our battery operated transistor radios tuned into the radio station KOMA from Oklahoma City. They would play all the latest hits all night.
The boys would have their pride and joy, their “hot” cars to bring their dates into town or to just hang out solo in on a Saturday night. Now a days, these cars are highly sought after and called “Muscle Cars.” The cars would go up and down the town’s main streets. Since gasoline cost from 25 to 50 cents a gallon, there was a lot of traveling from town to town done in those hot cars.
To go out on a date meant your guy came to your house to pick you up, take you to a movie and maybe get a hamburger or malt at a popular eating place. Of course the cost to get into a movie was about a dollar and a hamburger could be purchased for 25 to 50 cents. Sometimes a date could take you to the closest drive-in movie during the summer months either in Smith Center, Beloit or Belleville, in these parts. Dates were also to attend school events, or just to cruise up and down the main streets. Sometimes chances were thrown to the wind and a race with the hot cars happened. There was a hot car called “Tweety Bird” that seemed to met those risky challenges. Boys’ fashion dress wasn’t that fashionable, mostly blue jeans with a shirt of some kind, loafer shoes, and greased down hair or a buzz cut.
Girls held slumber parties. They were a blast where a lot of giggling, trying out new hair dos, and learning the latest news of who was going with who. As I look back, I wonder why we did some things trying to look beautiful like sleeping in brush hair rollers and even sometimes rolling our hair up on empty orange juice cans. We’d “tease” our hair to make it fuller and boy was it fuller, then we’d hair spray it until it was stiff as a board. We’d sun bath smothering our skin with a combination of baby oil mixed with iodine, and then we’d lay for hours out in the hot sun getting the perfect tan.
The latest styles were pleated or full skirts, blouses, sweaters, necklaces made out of plastic pop beads, but jeans were hardly ever worn. During the late 60s the styles changed and “hot pants” and short skirts were introduced. Couples went “steady.” They exchanged class rings that were worn on a chain around the neck, or the girls would adjust the size of the boy’s rings by putting sticky pads inside the ring so that the rings could be worn on their finger. Sometimes boys even trusted their steady girl friends to wear their letter jackets. But sometimes that was just for an evening date as somehow the boys didn’t quite trust that the jackets would be well kept.
Those were the times almost every teen that grew up then wished they could live again. We were the sons and daughters of the Greatest Generation and as we grew up, we became proud of that fact.
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