My Sunburned Stock Car Summer

Favorite Lifeguard Bathing Suit

After graduation from Muskogee Central High School in May of 1964 it was time to start my first "real job".  Getting up at four o'clock in the morning for the past two years to throw newspapers just did not seem to qualify as a "real job", more like something kids did.  Being all grown-up with a high school diploma it was time to get serious.  The chance to be a Lifeguard and getting paid a dollar an hour sure seemed like a move up in the working world. On the first Tuesday after Labor Day I drove to Meadowbrook Country Club with my newly acquired Senior Lifesaving Card and more than a little apprehension.

Looking back now I realized that the only things I knew about Meadowbrook County Club was that I had played golf on their nine-hole course many times in the previous two years usually at the crack of dawn all by myself.  Growing up in Muskogee every teenager attended the dances in the huge old building with the rent-a-cop sitting by the door. I knew my bosses name was Bob and that I was the only lifeguard for the pool behind the Pro Shop.  As far as being a lifeguard was concerned I only knew how to jump in the water and save a potential drowning person and that lifeguards sat up on high platforms getting a beautiful tan. Wow! Was I in for a learning experience!

When something is called a Country Club you might have visions of a pristine golf course, a beautiful dining area with white table cloths, a pro-shop filled with all sorts of golf equipment and a beautiful pool. Meadowbrook was the public country club in town and quite different from the  "membership only" one across town. Thinking back about it now, being more of a history buff, I wondered just when it was built. There doesn't seem to be any facts on the Internet but I did find that Bob Peerson ran Meadowbrook from 1950 to 1963 even though he was still there in 1964 and 1965.

Evidently in it's heyday there was a restaurant and bar called the Topaz Room adjacent to a large area that could sit 400 people with a stage for dinner and dancing. Ah, the answer as to what the large building was where the teen dances were held.  The Pro-Shop was a small building by Tee #1 big enough for a couple of tables.  I can imagine golf equipment being sold from the glass cases that in 1964 held a few golf balls and snacks.  Soft drinks and beer were available from the cooler.

The pool was built up on the ground almost like they dug the hole and then piled the dirt up on the sides then poured the concrete.  It was surrounded by a chain-link fence with the only trees far in the distance. Instead of a lifeguard stand there was a park bench.  Meadowbrook had been there for several decades and no doubt was on the decline.  None of that was noticeable to me then.  Being my first job I loved every inch of the place.

The pool hours were 10:00 to 12:00 and 1:00 to 7:00 Tuesday through Sunday. Not only was I to keep anyone from drowning but it was my
 job twice a day to check and make sure all the chemicals were right. Never can learn enough important tasks. When it rained the pool was not open and if I needed to take a break to go to the bathroom I had to get everyone out of the pool until I returned. So, I arrived my first day at work in my bathing suit, with a whistle around my neck and a towel. The learning experience began and trust me, there was a lot that I learned that summer.

The morning session from 10:00 to 12:00 was usually very quiet - quiet as there were hardly ever any swimmers there except for an occasional mother with a little child or two.  It made for a very long morning so my Dad bought me a portable radio.  Listening to music and the DJ chatter from KLIF out of Tulsa was entertaining.  You have to love my Dad who loved to shop.  He did not just buy me a little plastic radio, he bought one in a leather case with a pretty good sized speaker. They could probably hear the music in the clubhouse.

                               1960's Leather Covered Radio

The afternoon was a whole other story.  I could have anywhere from five or six children to as many as forty in the pool at the same time. Rarely was there ever a parent who stayed at the pool with their little ones.  They played golf, sat in the clubhouse or just left.  Ages of the children ranged from four to fourteen. Actually they were pretty well behaved but it was difficult to keep an eye on all of them at the same. time.

The first week of sitting in the sun all day with no shade what so ever proved to be interesting.  Those were the days before mammoth amounts of sunscreen.  Those were the days of Coppertone and Baby Oil with Iodine so you could get the California Beach Blanket/Surfer look.  Instead of turning into the next Gidget, I turned into a charbroiled lobster.  Mother would not have had to worry if I had gone out on a date since a boy's hand two inches from my body would have caused screams of pain from the sunburn.  The first week the only way I could sleep was sitting on the floor in the living room with my head on a pillow on the coffee table.  After the first or second layer of my skin peeled off things were much better and finally the California girl look set in with the tan and sun bleached hair.  The exception was my nose which did require several applications of good old white zinc oxide a day.

About the same time I started my job a couple of the boys I graduated with had built a stock car.  Muskogee was pretty famous for their Thunderbird Speedway stock car track at the Muskogee Fairgrounds. Built in 1907 as a horse racing track it was converted to stock cars in 1955.  No one in my family ever went to the stock car races but they were broadcast live on the local radio station plus you could hear the roar of the engines over half the town on any Friday night. Stock cars were almost as popular as football on a Friday night.

The boys came to see Kenny one night for technical advice or parts or something and the subject of a Powder Puff Derby came up.  There was to be one in a week or so.  Everyone thought it would be a great idea if I drove the car in the Powder Puff Derby.  Wow!  Sounded like a really cool idea to me.  Certainly it would not be any more dangerous than me jumping on a surf board like Gidget soaring over the waves. If in Oklahoma you have to do what the locals do which was jumping in a car and racing around a dirt track as fast as you could go.

Since I want to keep you in suspense as to what happens next you are going to have to look for part two next week.  What did happen with the stock car adventure and did anyone drown that summer?

My Sort of Secret Life

In order to fully tell the tale of the summer of 1964 after high school graduation I need to regress a few years.  I grew up with a father who only drove Studebaker's until they went out of business.  A father who wiped his car off with a chamois every night and only knew where to put gas in the car. This did not fit too well with children who liked car parts covered in oil spread all over the garage. Stuck in between my brothers, Paul and Kenny, I was doomed to be just a little car crazy myself.

I must have been in the seventh or eighth grade when Johnny Tiger would show up at the house in his cream and red '55 Chevy. Johnny was very good looking but I would sit and stare out the window at his car. Then there was the all white '56 Ford Victoria with the side pipes that almost touched the ground that belonged to Mel Rounds. Needless to say I probably thought I was the luckiest little girl in the world the day Mel took me for a ride in that car.  Then as Paul got closer to driving age a '34 Ford Three Window Coupe showed up in the front yard.  It was rusty, had no seats and did not run but to me at the age of thirteen it was the Coolest!

Paul, who later became very good at restoring old cars, did not have much patience with trying to get the '34 to run.  Kenny at the age of eleven or twelve sat in the house reading Hot Rod Magazine and would make suggestions to Paul as to what to do.  Well, no macho big brother wants a little brother telling him what to do and Paul ended up giving Kenny the car. No doubt there was some statement to the effect that if Kenny was so smart he could just fix it.

Kenny tinkered away, conned Dad out of some car parts and got the car running.  I remember the first test run very well.  The car had no seats but orange crates were a good replacement and a rope for a throttle. Mother had to be the test driver since neither Kenny or I were old enough to drive.  It was a little scary when she almost ran off the road into Sallee Park but then we flew around the rest of the neighborhood.  

Long before Kenny or I were old enough to drive there were occasions when we talked Dad into taking us to Tulsa to the old North Airport to watch the drag races.  Poor Dad would sit in his '56 Studebaker Golden Hawk in his suit, tie and hat while we stood by the edge of the runway cheering the cars on.  Back in those days the drags had to be on hold every once in awhile for a small plane to land.  Later, Paul's friends would talk him into taking me along to the drags with them since I knew all about pistons, rods and camshafts.  

The trip to the drag races that stands out the most in my mind was the summer after the ninth grade.  Paul and his friends were going to Tulsa and somehow I got to go even though Paul never wanted to be seen with his little sister.  I was squished in the back seat of George Highfil's "Christine" type car - the one with the push button shift on the dash and pretty cool looking fins.  It must have been quite a sight for other people to see.  Here were five really cool (at least they thought that) almost Senior guys followed by this kid with overly permed hair and braces covering her teeth tagging along after them. Little did I know that I would learn a vocabulary consisting of elapsed time, quarter-mile, rail-job and mile per hour that would follow me the rest of my life.

Things got much more serious when we moved to a larger house when I was in the tenth grade. Kenny's car building took place on the back patio of the old house as it only had a single car garage.  Mom and Dad bought a house with a two-car garage but it was still not allowed to be used for car restoration.  So Dad had a second car garage built on the back of the lot for Kenny and I.  At the age of fourteen Kenny had become the go-to-guy for all things car related. The garage was like a huge magnet that attracted every wanna-be hot rodder in town.  On any given evening or weekend you could hear the rumble of a car or two coming down the street. Needless to say I would casually stroll out to see what was going on if I was not already in the garage helping Kenny work on the '34.

To be really truthful I did not have many close girl friends. It was always difficult for me to spend much time playing with dolls as running up and down the street in cowgirl clothes or jumping out of bushes dressed in army surplus attire attacking the neighborhood boys was much more fun.  By the time I got to drive my '54 Chevy convertible around town I knew where every salvage yard with in twenty-five miles was. Kenny and I would spend Saturdays scouring car parts from places most girls did not even know existed.  One of the things I never did do was to go on a "mid-night" salvage where you climbed over a salvage yard fence way after dark, carefully avoiding the man-eating dogs and retrieved the car parts you needed having located them during the day. Not going to claim that my brothers never did that.

Even though the duck-tailed, t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up era for guys was just about gone there were still many around.  In Muskogee there were three drive-in eating establishments that the youth cruised through.  One was Chet's where you could for the most part find the football, band, cheerleader types.  Then there was the Corral.  Even though the days of duck-tails and rolled up T-shirt sleeves were a few years back there were still a lot of those to be seen at the Corral.  It was the real place for most of the hot-rodders to hang out.  Last was Russ's which had a pretty good combination of both.  The kind of place you drove through looking straight ahead so everyone thought you were really cool and not interested in who was there.  Guess the idea was to be see and not to notice anyone else.  My Mother would always wonder how I knew a twenty-something guy with a duck-tail who would say hi in a store. Little did she know that Kenny and I had discussed engine and transmission combinations with him the night before at the Corral.

I had to tell this story before I could write the story of the Summer of 1964.  The girl who had just graduated from high school with a scholarship to an all-girl private college was the same girl who was perfectly happy laying under a car covered in grease and oil.  There was both excitement and fear in thinking about how my life would change come September. Best thing to do was to not think about it and charge on into my Sunburned, Stock Car Summer.

Senior Week II

This may come as a surprise to many but I have no recollection of the Baccalaureate.  The only memory I have of that day is that my aunt passed away.  Was there family kerflubawoozie?* Did I not go?  Did I go and my little mind was elsewhere?  There is also a blank when it comes to Senior Night.  I can think of a lot of things that could have happened during  Senior Night with the Class of 64 that I would not put down in print.  If anyone remembers anything about Senior Night, please feel free to fill in my blanks.

Much to my dismay the Class Day remains as a vivid memory.  That was the day we all sat in the high school gym with parents in the bleachers while all the awards and scholarships were given out.  Back in those days schools were not air conditioned especially ones that were verging on being sixty years old.  It was going to be a warm afternoon in the high school gym.

Ah - the days of madras.  I have noticed in the stores lately that it is making a return to popularity.  I wonder if it still fades with the least amount of dampness?  Since it was going to be a warm day and we had to wear our cap and gown I decided to wear my cool madras shorts. Even the thought of wearing shorts to school was forbidden, but who would know under the graduation robe?  Everything would have been just fine if they had not called my name to come up to the stage and receive a certificate for my scholarship to Stephens College. Naturally there was a circle of many colors on the back of the robe almost an early tie-dye look. A quick exit from the gym after the program and a heavy foot on the car gas pedal prevented any teacher from catching me.  By the next time I appeared in the graduation robe again I could bat my eyelashes when asked about the strange color from the day before and say "what?".  It only took every cleaning agent my Mother could find and an evening of scrubbing (and the usual"what were you thinking" from her) to be rid of all of the strange color.



One event that was not listed on the Senior Week schedule was the Senior assembly which consisted of the program This Is Your Life B.L.Wertz.  Mr. Wertz was our principal at Muskogee Central High School and was retiring with the graduation of our class.  Hopefully he was retiring because he had been the principle since 1947 and not because he could not face another year with students like us.  I wrote a story about Mr. Wertz and all of the great things he brought to our high school.  You can read it by going to Senior Year II dated June 1st.  It is well worth a look back to see what an outstanding job he did.  At this assembly people who had graduated under his tutelage came back to visit and applaud him.  It was one of the nicest things our class ever did.

Our Graduation took place at Indian Bowl, site of all the sports activities back then and is still used to this day.  It took place on a beautiful evening with all of the stands filled.  There were five hundred and two names on the insert in the program with the disclaimer that the list did not indicate all requirements of the students had been met for graduation. I think the talk was that four hundred and ninety nine actually did graduate.  We had reached what we thought was the summit in learning and in growing up. Square graduation hats thrown in the air marked the freedom of twelve years of having to be in a certain place at a certain time and doing what we were told to do. Little did we know when we all thought we knew so much.

The big production number at the conclusion of the movie Grease is the song, We Will Always Be Together.  I am not sure that  was  the thought of many of the new graduates. Some wanted to get as far away from Muskogee as they could. For others there was the excitement of going off to college or getting that first job.  The boys had the threat of the draft hanging over their head.  We had basically one summer to still be all together before we fanned out all over the country.

There was actually something very special about those twelve years that has taken me a lot of years to really understand. I have written a lot about high school in the last few weeks and fully realize that everyone does not remember those days with a lot of pleasant thoughts. 

Growing up in the fifties and sixties was a lot more innocent than in later generations. Fun was hanging out at the local hamburger or hot dog place, sneaking people into the drive-in, the football games and the dances all under the supervision of parents who kept a watchful eye over us.  But underneath all the laughter and the shenanigans there were all the insecurities, the desire to be liked and to fit in with all of our peers.  

The great part of growing up in a pretty neat town, even though I cringed when that song about it first came out, is that ability to talk with my classmates after all these years as if a day had never passed since we all went our separate ways.  There are not too many friends you make through out your life that you have so many shared memories with.  


*Mary Poppins made up Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious so I made up kerflubawoozie. Mine is easier to spell!

Senior Week

It has been over a year since I started my stories about growing up in the 50's and 60's.  There have been lots of comments about how I should write a book.  In a way I guess I am with just little stories about how much fun it was and still is growing up as a so-called baby boomer.
There are a couple of more stories about high school and then on to the serious but silly attempts at gaining some maturity.

Quite by accident while looking for something important this week I came across a school newspaper from May of 1964. It had a little block at the top of the front page that gave activities for Senior Week.  Now I know when the Prom was but there are some events left out. One of the days during Senior Week was the day set aside for students to work at the school to off set their Office E's.  Anyone but me remember those?

Maybe Muskogee was the only school to award Office E's.  You won them by doing something stupid.  The offense was not great enough to get suspended but still not acceptable. Wonder if the participants in the Secret Clubs got Office E's?  With three or more you had to show up on the designated day to "work off"  the E's or there was the threat of not graduating. Working meant picking up trash around the school and helping teachers with things they needed to do.   I was lucky, I had three, so I got to attend the work day.  All three of the E's were for really silly stuff that the Dean of Girl's thought was serious.  It wasn't such a bad day until you remembered that most of the nice, well behaved class members were doing something fun that day.

Needless to say with five hundred students in my Senior class there was no Senior Trip like smaller schools had.  What teacher or parent in their right mind would have wanted to chaperone five hundred kids?  Instead we had a Senior class Picnic.  Everyone met early that morning at Spaulding Park since there was enough room to line up all the cars. Equipped with numbers on the cars we drove maybe twenty miles to Greenleaf State Park for the day. If "number police" were along the road to make sure we did not get out of line I didn't see them. There must have been rules such as no sneaking off into the woods to look for wild flowers or bringing any type of beverages. If anyone broke the rules I missed out on it for a change. A road race back to Muskogee would have been fun but somehow they lined the cars back up in order mainly to make sure no one had gotten lost or snuck off.

                         Can't believe that I really still have this.

The next evening was the Senior Banquet.  I had made a really cute dress for the occasion.  It was just a simple yellow sleeveless dress made out of a pretty lace.  Since friends decided to go spend the day at Lake Tenkiller jumping off of the cliffs, I joined them.  I look at those cliffs now and wonder what I was thinking but the day was fun with no one drowning or knocking themselves out.  The only thing that did happen was that I did get a horrible sunburn.  If you have never had the opportunity to combine a sunburn with a scratchy lace dress you have really missed out. For decades I have wondered how I managed to eat and give a speech holding that dress up off of my shoulders. 

Next week I will finish the stories of Senior Week but when I was looking through the old school newspaper I noticed an interesting story.  Muskogee was the pilot city for President Kennedy's Physical Fitness Program.  There are actual videos on YouTube.  During the month of May there were tests to gather data on the program.  The requirements for the girl's in the 17 year age range were, 42 sit-ups, 45 pull-ups, running the 600 yard dash in 2:30 and the 50 yard dash in 7:30. It didn't say the whether the times were seconds or minutes but I would hope for hours.  Perhaps on "some" Tuesday of some month I will see if I can pass the test now.

I enjoyed all the comments I received about the Senior Prom story.  No matter what high school you attended I am sure there are some great stories.  Please feel free to share them in the comment section at the bottom, via email or Facebook.  

The Senior Prom

I have been sitting here staring at my empty blog page for the last hour wondering how and why I remember all this stuff.  Somehow I don't think it is the old-age thing where you can only remember things from long ago since I can tell you what I ate last Tuesday or a conversation with a client about interior design fifteen years ago.  But don't despair if you can't remember events.  I can't recall exactly when the Class of 64's high school prom was or the theme, if there was one.

Etched in my memory are all the events leading up to and the evening itself.  Since my parents never took any pictures after I was five or six the only piece of memorabilia I have is a corsage and a card in a scrap book marking the occasion. At least I took pictures of my son, Wes, heading off to his prom at a fancy hotel ballroom in Detroit wearing a tux and riding in a limo. To haunt Wally for the rest of his life is a picture of him and his date, he in the sliver sequined tie and cumber bun I made him to match his date's dress. Oh well, on with the story.

When prom time approached I was not dating anyone very steadily.  Guess I was too busy with plays or the concept of being the next Miss America. There was a boy I had a few dates with, nothing serious.  My mother didn't like him because when he came over to our house he would pick little pieces of the rubber off his tennis shoes and deposited them on the floor. Perhaps she scared the crap out of him which is a good possibility.  

Actually I was not too crazy about him.  All through high school I had double dated with him and his date on several occasions and gone to parties at his house. He was, I will add, rather full of himself. But when he asked me to go to the prom I was not about to send him packing as there were no other prospects on the horizon. So Mother had to keep sweeping up pieces of rubber from his tennis shoes and I endured endless evenings of hearing how great he was.  Until the phone call.

There are certain events in a teenager life that one never forgets.  About a week and a half before the prom with the dress made, shoes dyed to match and beauty shop appointment confirmed he called and told me he found someone better to go to the prom with. I don't remember what I said to him that night - probably very little.  I know what I would have said to him at this point in my life but I was pretty nice back then.

The minute I hung up the phone the tears started to flow and I remember yelling, "I knew he would do it, I knew he would do it!".  Mother said something to console me but there was nothing anyone could have said to stop the now buckets of tears falling from my eyes. Now you have to realize that when I really am heartbroken it is difficult for me to stop crying.  The more I cry, the more my eyes tend to swell closed.  Not a pretty sight.  After crying all night, no doubt knowing my life was over, I had to go to school the next day.

The next morning I did not recognize the face that I saw in the mirror.  My eyes were so swollen that they were only little slits plus I had a pounding headache.  My darling pharmacist Dad did not offer me any drugs and I did not know at the time how well Preparation H worked on swollen eyes.  So I had to go off to school and face the questions as to what was the matter.  If I had answered that question the flood of tears would have started again. I spent most of the day avoiding everyone but getting strange looks from all my classmates.

Speech class was one of my last classes of the day.  Most of the kids were lot asking questions by that time but one boy seemed very concerned. He was the best of the best when it came to debate, almost the same height I was, rather tiny actually and wore big horned rimmed glasses. We had been in classes together all through high school but I really did not know him all that well.  He very quietly asked me what was wrong and somehow I managed to tell him about the jerk who broke the date to the prom with me without bursting into tears.

He looked at me through those huge glasses and said the same thing happened to him.  I don't think any tears fell during our conversation but if they had the tears would have been as much for him as for myself.  The girl that broke the date with him was really cute and they would have made a darling couple.  I think I got over feeling sorry for myself the instant he told me his story. Forget about the jerk who broke the date with me - how could anyone do that to someone as nice as Drew?

Did he ask me to the Prom right then?  I can't really remember but to characterize a popular cartoon of the day on TV  It was like Mighty Mouse coming to save the day.  Flowers would have popped up at the bottom of the screen and birds and clouds would have floated through the sky.
Funny how fast an upside down world can turn right side up.  I think I knew from the minute he asked me to the Prom that I would have the best time ever.

 Wish I had I had a picture of my dress.  I had learned from a lot of negative experiences with "special occasion" dresses that I had to take matters into my own hands.  If I had asked Dad he would have said to go to one of the department stores and pick one out and charge it. In those days you just signed a hand-written ticket. He would have then faced the wrath of Mother over it.  If I went shopping with Mother she would have picked out something I hated or had me wear some goofy dress I already had.  This had to be special and my choice.

So I went to the fabric department of Hunt's Department Store and bought everything I needed to make what I wanted to wear and charged it.  I remember it was sleeveless (I wasn't good at putting sleeves in), a slightly gathered skirt to the floor and gold satin on the bottom, maybe a brocade on the top.  The Buster Brown Shoe Store stocked in hundreds of pairs of white satin heels. Once you bought the size you needed they dyed them to match your dress.  I have the thought that the dress may have actually been hideous but I was always proud of something I made.

Prom night arrived and Drew came to pick me up. He looked quite smashing all dressed up and it only took a few minutes for me to get over the fact that I was taller in the gold satin heels.  Off we went to dinner at Baker's Catfish Restaurant where we were surrounded by many other Prom attendee's.  Then off to the dance at the high school gym where we danced the night away.  Of course we saw the two villains that broke dates with us and I think we both had to laugh as we were having more fun than any other couple there.

Back in those days I know there were "after parties" as I had been to one my sophomore year that was not fun and I got into trouble for getting home late. My junior year I had to get a ride home with another couple due to a huge argument with my date, once again late, once again in trouble.  Drew took me home by the stroke of midnight, sort of like a Cinderella except I had both of my shoes.  It had been one perfect night and the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

Marshell has been telling me for the last twenty years that everything happens for a reason and it usually happens for the best. Guess I was learning that little fact early on and just did not realize it.  

                                                        Drew