The Good Old Days

I admit that I like shaking my kids up. Recently their jaws almost hit the floor when I pointed out a few differences between the world they’ve grown up in and the world I lived in growing up.

After watching an Elvis impersonator at the Puyallup Fair, I mentioned that when I was in college, around 1:00 in the morning, the TV stations would play Elvis singing “An American Trilogy” as an American Flag rippled in the background. When the song was over, the Indian Head test pattern would come on for awhile, then eventually there’d just be gray static. They were shocked. “You mean TV would end???”

“Yep, TV was off for the night. It came back on around 6 a.m.”

“So, what would you do when it went off?” they asked very concerned.

“I went to sleep.”

Then I really rubbed in the hard scrabble times I grew up in, minus the 30 miles barefoot walks through the snow to school. “There were only usually about four stations: the three big networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC and then you might have a local station that aired old movies, cartoons, and The Three Stooges or The Little Rascals. Oh, and you had to pay attention because there weren’t VCRs, TIVO, or OnDemand. If you missed something, too bad.” They stared at me in disbelief.

I piled it on, “Oh, and we were also limited to watching whatever my dad was interested in because we only had one TV. Sometimes he’d have to climb up on the roof to turn the antenna around to get better reception, and there weren’t any remotes. That’s why people back then had kids—to tell the kids to get up and change the channel for them.” They just shook their heads amazed that I’d survived.

Community Hall, Washington State University, Pullman, WA.

Then the other day Sarah called on her cell while she was doing laundry. She started reading some information hanging in the laundry room of her dorm. Community Hall is one of the oldest dorms on the WSU campus. “Wow Mom, there’s a list of the rules for my dorm from 1945-49. Listen to what it says! ‘Study hours are from 8 – noon, 1 - 4:30, 7:30 – 10, and 11 p.m. – 7 a.m. One could not bathe between these hours. Curfew during the week is 7 pm for freshmen, 10:30 for upperclassmen. Weekend curfew is 10:00 for freshmen, 11:00 for upperclassmen. Some girls who missed curfew used knotted bed sheets to climb in through a window.’”

She continued, “Some of the girls would sunbathe, two at a time on the balcony with a lookout because they weren’t allowed to wear swim suits.” She giggled at that part because the balcony is part of the room she was in last year. Not a week into her freshman year, she got disciplined because two boys who’d come to visit her and her roommate went out onto that tiny balcony, illegally. Swim suits weren’t the issue. Drunk students falling out of windows is the issue nowadays.

The notorious balcony of Community Hall, WSU, Pullman, WA.

“’Room 213 is the sewing room. No typing after 11:00 p.m.’” Room 213 is now her Resident Assistant’s room, and very few girls, if any, sew. Nobody’s using a typewriter to type up papers anymore either. She thought the whole thing was quaint. “Can you believe it?”

I told her that I could definitely believe it because those rules weren’t all that different from when I was a college freshman in the fall of 1973. Granted, I went to Louisiana State University, so I’m sure it was more conservative than WSU in the 1970s. To begin with, there weren’t any co-ed dorms in Baton Rouge. Students kept circulating petitions to get one started. Lots of students signed them. The petitioning student would ask female students who were signing it if they’d live in a co-ed dorm. Invariably the answer was, “Oh no, my daddy wouldn’t let me. But I still think there should be co-ed dorms.”

My choice for a dorm was much narrower than my kids’ choices--air conditioned, or un-air conditioned, and different options for how strict the curfews were. Other than that, LSU Housing assigned me to whatever was available. I got Power Hall, un-air conditioned.

They chose my roommate too, without me filling out a survey about the hours I kept, or whether I liked sleeping with the window open. Peggy was from New Orleans. She brought her black and white TV. I brought my stereo so that worked out well. The first time I talked to her was when she moved in. She was sloppier than me, but we got along just fine.

Boys were not allowed in my dorm, as in Sarah’s 1945 dorm. Any men who entered:  the janitor or repair men, would call out a warning, “Man on the hall!” as they walked past our rooms.  

There was a house mother. I had to sign in and sign out if I was leaving the dorm after 5:00. I filled in the date, my destination, the name of the person with me, hour out, expected hour of return, and hour-in on an oversized index card. On weeknights my curfew was 11:00. On Friday and Saturday nights it was 1:30 a.m.  I could feel Sarah cringing on her end of the phone call, “What did you do? I mean, when you went out to party. Did you sneak back in?”

“No, I came back at the curfew. My date made sure I got back on time. If you didn’t, you got in trouble.” To refresh my memory, I went and found my old sign out cards. The few times I was late are circled in red, but I don’t remember getting disciplined, so I must not have been late enough times to have to answer for it. It also says I was on Option 1, with the strictest curfews.

“Well, couldn’t you just stay out all night then?”

“You know, that never crossed my mind. What would I do, stay in a boys’ dorm? They probably would’ve called Campus Security if I didn’t show up.”

“Couldn’t you just sneak back in?”

“There was no sneaking in. They locked the doors. When you walked up to the doors, there’d be couples kissing goodnight, then the housemother would flash the lights, and you’d better get inside!”

“Ewwww! I hate PDA’s (public displays of affection), that’s disgusting.”

“Not as disgusting as the freak dancing your generation does. What was bad was if you’d had a crappy date and were trying to avoid the good night kiss while walking through the couples who were in love.”

“1:30, huh, so then what did you do after that?”

“I went to sleep, or talked to my roommate.”

We had a lot less electronic distractions. I think that’s why there was less ADD and ADHD then. There wasn’t even a name for those disorders. We were a lot more well-rested too. The only place that stayed open 24 hours was the emergency room.

No cell phones, so no late night texting. I talked to my parents every other weekend from a phone attached to the wall with a 3-foot cord. If I wanted privacy, I pulled the handset out into the hall. When the phone rang, my roommate or I would answer it without the slightest idea of who was calling—no caller ID. It could be anyone: parents, boyfriends, girlfriends, campus administrators, who knew? The only sure bet was that it wasn’t a telemarketer because there weren’t any back then. Some kids used football games as a primitive, free way to communicate with their parents. They’d paint signs that said, “Hi Mom!” or “Send money!” and get in front of a camera.

Here’s how my social network worked back then.  I got to know everybody on my hall, in person, face-to-face, because I was the only one with a stereo, and a popcorn popper. It got to the point where I was the hall DJ. Girls would request certain albums to study, or relax to: Motown’s Greatest Hits, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, The Doobie Brothers’ The Captain and Me, and Joni Mitchell’s Court & Spark were favorites.

“Was the house mother mean?”

I thought back, “In my freshman dorm I didn’t get to know her. I don’t remember anyone complaining about her. I felt protected and safe with the front desk and a house mother there.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, one time there were about 50 guys streaking. We heard them coming and ran down to the lobby to watch them run by outside. All of a sudden, one of them, a big guy, came right through the doors wearing nothing but tennis shoes and a spiked pith helmet. He ran right at me! I scrambled behind the front desk, like a toddler fleeing to hide behind her mother’s skirts.”

Sarah’s laundry was done, and she had to go, so I didn’t tell her this story.  My sophomore year I lived in East Laville Hall. I had a boyfriend who I was starry eyed over. We had started dating freshman year. Sometimes I’d cook a meal in the dorm kitchen for the boyfriend, and carry it down to the courtyard for us to share.

East Laville Hall, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA.

The house mother, Mrs. Olinde, was probably about my age now. She’d watch the guys come to pick up their dates, calling us on the house phone to come down to the lobby. She kept an eye on all 400 of “her girls,” making sure we’d sign out, and chatting with us. She liked me.

One day on my way back from class, she stopped me. “What’s going on? You look down lately.”

I told her that the boyfriend had dumped me.

She shook her head, “Well, I wouldn’t waste too many tears on him. He wasn’t that great a guy.”

My eyes brimmed with tears. Then she told me, “He’d come here to pick up you up for dates on Fridays, and then come to pick up another girl on Saturdays.” She patted my hand. “You’ll find someone better.”

My 19-year-old heart was broken. I thanked Mrs. Olinde for caring.

High drama, and no Facebook to post it on. My roommate, a new one, Carolyn helped me get through it by teaching me how to crochet. I still have the ripple afghan in shades of blue. Now it’s just an old school way to keep warm. Some things change. Some things stay the same.

Carolyn, my roommate and crochet teacher, and I on graduation day.

Laura Keolanui Stark is thinking about designing a t-shirt that declares “I survived the prehistoric age of the 1970s.” She can be reached at stark.laura.k@gmail.