Of all the summers I have lived through, the Summer of 1961 stands out as one of the most fun, rather carefree and enlightening. It was that summer of being fourteen and turning fifteen and graduating from the ninth grade. The time when you are too young to date and too old to play with dolls. Rather reminds me of a song about how lovely it is to be a women but still in braces and can't walk gracefully in high heels.
Since Muskogee had two junior high schools that went into one high school the following fall it seems like the kids from both Alice Robertson and West Junior High Schools spent a lot of time hanging out together. There were a lot of us that knew each other from sporting events, summer camps, churches, dancing and music classes. Without the crosstown rivalry of being at different schools it was easy to become friends.
The local YMCA had a great youth director. We could purchase a membership to what he called Teen-O-Rama. This entitled all the kids to go to the Y on Friday night with a stack of 45rpm records, pay a quarter and dance the evening away. A lot of new friendships, a few little romances and a lot of self confidence were gained at YMCA.
From there trips across town to one of Muskogee's two swimming pools, early movies, the skating rink, slumber parties and I can't fail to mention, the Trampoline Center, that brought us all together. I think we were all having so much fun meeting those that we would be attending high school with made the summer fly by and stepping into Muskogee Central High a little less overwhelming.
My Mom had gone to work years before but I always manged to get a ride to someplace during the day and she was good to pick up a car full of kids on the weekends. My two brothers and I had learned by then not to mess up the house and to get all of our chores done early so there was time to go swimming. Paul, my then sixteen year old brother, had a car but there was no way he was going to haul a couple of his siblings around. There were always other Moms that would pick me up to go somewhere.
Now not to make the summer sound like all fun, Mom had to be sure we stayed busy and learned something. She enrolled Ke
 |
| Kenny in the Rose Garden at Honor Heights Park |
To get there, the city bus ran right down our street. We rode the bus to town, went to class and then visited all the stores until Dad got off work to take us home. I don't think Kenny was very interested in Susman's, the nicest ladies store, but he liked Woolworth's and having a cherry coke at the Purity #5 Drugstore. Our favorite haunt was the Kroh Music Company. Not only did they sell musical instruments but they had those little booths where you could go in, put on earphones and listen to the latest hit records. They probably groaned when we walked in the store each week.
Tulsa had a dance party program on KOTV each Saturday afternoon. I guess that was Tulsa's answer to American Bandstand. There were a group of dancers that showed up every week but they also allowed other groups to come in. I decided that for my fifteenth birthday party I wanted to take some friends and dance on the show.
I manged to find enough couples to fill up my Mom's 1956 nine passenger Chevy station wagon. Then I dug up the nerve to ask a friend of Paul's to go. I couldn't believe he said yes but he did. Paul kept telling me for weeks before the show how dumb I was. Sure enough the morning of the big day the boy called and said he sprained his ankle and could not go. My tears flooded the house. My life was ruined. How could I go to my own birthday party with no date?
About the time my eyes were swollen shut from crying the phone rang. It was the boy - my supposed date. Somehow his ankle had gotten all well and he was going to be able to go to Tulsa. He came and Mom let me ride in the car with him, following her, of course. The show was fun, he was nice and I think everyone had a great time being on TV.
We followed my Mom home and when we got there, at the end of my very first date, he told me I was just the kind of girl every boy wanted to have for a sister. I think that blew all my belief in movies about young love. The thought did occur to me that it was strange that Paul and one of his other friends disappeared that morning between the two phone calls. The "date" had no noticeable bruises but I have always wondered.
My Mom and Dad were really OCD when it came to neatness. Every blade of grass in the yard stood at the exact height, if a leaf grew out of place on a shrub it was gone and my Dad wiped his car off with a chamois every night. So cool Paul drags home this really old car with no paint, no seats and an engine that would not run. He and his friends were going to make a really neat street rod out of it.
Nice intentions but we only had a one car garage and two cars parked outside. They put the car in the front yard under our only tree to work on it. Need I say that it was not an acceptable situation. It was made worse when they pulled the engine out using a tree branch, chain and broken hoist. What goes up did not seem to want to come down. It was lucky my parents did not have a heart attack watching the engine dangling from the tree for several days until a wrecker could come and remove it. The car, engine and the parts scattered in the perfect grass were banished to the backyard until restoration could occur.
I have to admit that this was the summer I really fell in love. They say you never forget your first true love and I can't imagine how many times through all these years that I have looked back on mine. No it was not a boy. It was a huge white two story house on almost an entire block that I had walked by a thousand times.
Were my parents looking for a new house? What even possessed Mom to consider even looking at it? It was known as the Bower house and the owner had passed away. The kids in the family did not want it and somehow Dad got the key to check it out. Mom and I loved it instantly.
There was a huge front porch, a portico and a four car garage with servants quarters above. Inside was a circular music room and a three tier mahogany staircase. I could imagine coming down those stairs in a gorgeous dress and meeting my date in the entry hall. I did watch a lot of chick-flicks and TV.
Upstairs there was wallpaper peeling off the walls and signs of water damage from a leaky roof. None of that mattered to me as I could visualize it all returned to it's once beautiful state. Mom and I explored every nook and cranny of the house, sat on the porch and dreamed of living there and made plans on how to fix everything. But she could not talk Dad into it and in the end someone else bought the house. The love affair I had with that house made me appreciate and renovation several old buildings and homes in the years to come. Guess you can say that first loves never die.
The summer of 1961 was a great summer. Not to have you believe that I lived a perfect teenage life, this was also the time that enough maturity developed that I began to realize that perhaps my parents were not as happy as some of my friends parents. There were disappointments and more parental control than I wanted but that is all part of the growing up stages. I feel very lucky that I was a teenager in this era rock and roll music, cool cars and an abundance of innocent fun.
The end of the summer meant the beginning of high school. Should be interesting starting all over as one of the "little guys".
No comments:
Post a Comment