Tuesday 4...Back to School

 

Back to School

Welcome back to Toni Taddeo's Tuesday 4 dear friends. I am so glad you are continuing to play along!

It can be hard to come up with topics from week to week so your input would be great .

Let's go back to school today...

1. You are back in high school... what are you doing after school lately? Mostly after school I had cheerleading practice.  That would start right after school and last for at least an hour. Then I would walk downtown to Boulware's Drug Store and "hang out with my friends" and have a coke...they even had vanilla cokes, cherry cokes, or whatever you wanted at the Soda Fountain. Sometimes we'd share french fries. I would wait at the drug store until 5:00, and then my mother would come pick me up after she got off work. We lived too far out of town for me to go home on my own, and I didn't have a car.  

Junior Year...Co-Captain

Senior Year, Captain

  

2. Do you do homework early or late? Do you really study?

I did my homework mostly after supper, because by the time I got home it was supper time and I'd help my mother fix supper and then wash the dishes.  Then I'd do homework.  I wasn't as studious as I should have been...I was more into the "extra-curricular activities" than I was school work. I wish now I'd applied myself better...but then again...I enjoyed being involved in a lot of activities...besides cheerleading, I was involved in our class plays, chorus, Future Homemakers of America, and was the class Secretary. I stayed pretty busy I guess...

3. a, Do you go to the games? Football? Basketball.. what is your favorite to attend?

Yes,  being a cheerleader meant that I went to all the games; football,  basketball and even the baseball games. I liked Football best of all. I loved being outside on the cool evenings, cheering and watching our team play...and hopefully win the games...
b. Do you go to the dances? Prom? (what'd you wear?)

Yes, we often had dances after the football games at our town community center. Some of the other nearby towns also had dances in their community centers after the games. It was a fun time, with live bands playing.  To the dances after the games I usually still had on my cheerleading uniform or I changed into something cooler because we had to wear sweaters with our uniform and that could be too hot for the dances. But those dances were informal.  The prom was formal. I wish I could pull out my scrapbook and find some pictures to share, but they are buried in a closet under too many things to move and so I will just try to describe what I wore.   

My sophomore year our class was the entertainment for the Jr.-Sr. Prom. I was a part of the group that performed for the prom. The theme was "Arabian Nights", and we girls were dressed like harem girls and the guys wore turbans and looked like the "Sheik of Araby", which was one of the songs we sang and 'danced to'.  I still have the harem costume somewhere. My mother had to make it. It was lavender and pink I think, with see-through nylon netting on the legs and arms. It was rather risque' for the time...a two piece outfit with a bare midriff (but definitely not bikini cut). That caused some concern on the part of our parents, and the teacher in charge of our program had to assure the parents that we would be modestly attired and properly chaperoned and directed for the program.  Oh how times have changed!  After our group did the performance we were permitted to stay for the prom even though we were only sophomores. I did have a date for the prom, my boyfriend at the time. I remember my dress was a light green dotted swiss long dress. My mother made it too. I wore my hair in a bee-hive hairdo, because I had to have it that way for the harem costume, which also had a sheer veil around my head.  If I can ever find those pictures I will share them sometime.  

For my Junior prom I wore an emerald green satin dress with white lace trim under the bodice. It was a straight (or A-line) long dress with spaghetti straps. I actually made that dress myself in home ec class and modeled it for the Miss F.H.A. contest, which I did NOT win.  But it made a wonderful prom dress. 

For my Senior Prom I wore a white dress with silver sequins around a high neck and capped sleeves. (My mother also made that dress).  I also wore that same dress at Christmas time previous to the spring prom, for the Holly Ball Debutante ball.  Here is a picture of that dress from the newspaper article about the Holly Ball. I am with my Daddy and my date for the event. The Holly Ball was sponsored by the area Women's Clubs and was a very nice event. We "debutantes" had to endure many rounds of ladies' tea parties prior to the ball and learn to hold our pinky fingers up just so as we held our tea cups and made polite conversation with the sweet ladies of the Women's Club.

My date was the cousin of one of my childhood girlfriends, and we had become acquainted when he visited her occasionally for family events. He lived in a town about an hour away, so we didn't see each other often. He was very kind to agree to be my escort for such an event. We probably only saw each other one more time after that before we both went our separate ways and I met my hubby to be. A funny story, about 35 years later we ran into each other totally unexpectedly.  I would never have known it was him except I heard him say his name. He had white hair and a pot belly. But, for the record, he didn't recognize me either and I had to tell him who I was. It was really funny. I think we were both in shock at how much we had changed from the carefree teenagers we were back then...

Here's a picture from the newspaper taken at one of our lovely teas.  We had to wear hats and gloves and look very prim and proper..

I will say that going through this experience probably helped prepare me for my life as a Pastor's wife and the many kinds of prim and proper entertaining I would be expected to do in that role. 

4.Lunch! What are we having today? What is your favorite lunch?

Oh, I loved our school lunches! Our lunchroom ladies cooked real food...and the very best homemade yeast rolls you could ever dream of! How I'd love to have one of those rolls right now!  I don't remember any particular meals except their spaghetti was always good, oh, and those little chocolate/peanut butter/oatmeal no-bake cookies...love those things!  We never had things like pizza or other modern food. Maybe a hamburger and french fries occasionally, but the food was always good. And we only paid 25 cents for lunch! Those WERE the good old days. The only thing I didn't like was we had to drink milk in those little cartons, and I did not like milk then and still don't.  We didn't have the option of sodas or tea or anything but milk.  

It was fun going down memory lane here today. I enjoyed my high school years and was blessed to live in a small town and go to a small school where we had lots of opportunities to do things, There were only 50 students in my graduating class, and most of us went to school together from first grade through 12th grade, so we were a very close group.  I still stay in touch with a lot of our classmates on Facebook.  We had our 50 year class reunion a few years ago, and we really need to have another one before we get any older.

Thank you, Annie, for hosting our Tuesday 4 weekly gathering. I hope you all enjoyed reading this and will go check out the others over here: Tuesday 4