Those of us who grew up in the 1950’s had a cultural companion growing up with along with us rock and roll music. Rock music, as it is sometimes called, did not have a static definition, but its nature evolved constantly, and how we related to it and enjoyed it has continued to change, both with the technology and our own tastes.
In those days we had 3 main sources for listening to music jukeboxes in diners and other public places, the radio if the station’s format allowed it to play rock music, and dances at our schools. While the first two were by and large the main sources of our music listening, I am presently concerned with the third, school dances.
I grew up in South Easton, Pennsylvania and attended Shull Junior High from September 1958 to June 1961. After the end of the high school varsity football season with the annual Thanksgiving Day game with our arch-rivals, Phillipsburg, N.J., There would usually be a dance in our gymnasium every Friday night over the winter.
Unlike today’s youth gatherings, where the dress code is non-existent, our dress code would allow us to wear only certain things. Boys had to wear a jacket and tie and the girls had to wear skirts or dresses. Girls weren’t allowed to wear slacks and they had to wear a complete set of underwear, unlike today where the girls seem to challenge each other to wear less and less and get away with it. Not that we boys would have minded that.
I usually had a problem with dressing exactly by the code, because my father’s work in the foundry at that time was not good and I didn’t always have a dress jacket I could wear. I was very self-conscious of this and felt that everyone was sniggering behind my back. In truth I don’t think they were, but at the time I thought I stuck out like I was wearing a big sign, something no teenager wants to do.
Times have sure changed pricewise too. We used to pay 10 cents to get in and sometimes I didn’t even have that and had to stay home. To get to the admission table outside the gym we had to walk back the entire length of the first floor hallway, which was dark and dreary even in the daytime because the modern era of using fluorescent lights to light the halls hadn’t yet been started, and the terrazzo floors and varnished woodwork did not reflect much light. IF it was wet out, the terrazzo near the door was like snot on a doorknob and we had to walk very carefully to keep from falling. It has been 44 years since I was in that hallway and I can close my eye and visualize it like it was yesterday.
We had to bring our own records and one of the older kids would play them on the PA system in the gym. I usually didn’t have too many records in those days, so I didn’t get to bring many. Exceptions to this were records I would buy from Bernie Caffrey, my father’s foreman in the foundry, who had a small jukebox business on the side. I would buy some of his takeoffs for 5 or 10 cents after they were on the boxes for a while. I wish I had some of them now, like Tommy Dorsey’s So Rare or Elvis’s Don’t Be Cruel. But we never saved things in those days.
We would walk into the gymnasium and take our records, if we had any, into the gym teacher’s office, where the PA controls were located. One of the boys usually would select what got played and play them over the PA to 4 huge horn speakers that were placed at floor level in the corners of the gym. These were not speakers designed to reproduce the subtle nuances of music, but the blaring announcements of a basketball game, so the sound was terrible at best, but at least we could hear them.
Moving out onto the gym floor we would come face to face with the great unexplained phenomenon of the time, boys and girls who would gravitate to opposite sides of the gym and mingle only perfunctorily from time to time. Boys hardly ever danced with the girls, which left the girls to dance with each other. Of course the boys never danced with each other, but it always seemed to be acceptable for the girls to do that. I could never figure that one out. Even today if you watch the polka shows on TV you see many women dancing with other women. HHHHMMMMMMM.
There were a few boy/girl pairings at these dances, but generally we kept to ourselves. I took a fancy to Kathy French, who lived on Philadelphia Road. She had kind of a 1930’s look about her. I would imagine there were a few girls even at that age who were willing to put out or let themselves be groped, but most of us were good kids and that sort of thing just didn’t occur to us.
The PTA ran the snack table and Cokes were 10cents and most of what they had was as cheap. One friend's mother was usually working the table. She missed a few weeks when her husband got busted as the projectionist showing porno movies at his club. Today it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, but 44 years ago it was a big deal.