Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [126]
I loved Tammy, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Chartroose Caboose and South Pacific. I scanned these movies for information about sex. Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds and Frank Sinatra fought and flirted until the end of the movie, when they kissed against backdrops of sunsets to the sounds of swelling violins. This was the era of biblical epics. In The Story of Ruth, a demure young Ruth lies down on Boaz’ pallet for the night and the camera zooms to the stars. I asked myself, What were they doing on that pallet?
Forty-five RPM records were big in the late fifties. I listened to mushy songs by the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison and Elvis. My favorite song was Elvis’ “Surrender,” a song whose lyrics gave me goose bumps and filled me with longing for something I couldn’t name. My parents forbade me to listen to Bobby Darin’s hit “Multiplication” because it was too suggestive. I learned to twist, a dance that was considered daring.
As Garrison Keillor said, “Nobody gets rich in a small town because everybody’s watching.” Money and conspicuous consumption were downplayed in my community. Some people were wealthier than others, but it was bad taste to flaunt a high income. We all shopped at the Theobald’s grocery and the Rexall and ordered our clothes from Sears and JCPenney catalogs. The banker ordered a new Oldsmobile every year, and my family drove to Mexico at Christmas. A rancher’s widow with asthma had the only home air-conditioning unit. The only places to spend money foolishly were the Dairy King and the pool hall.
Particularly children were outside the money economy. Most of our pleasures were free. Most of us had the same toys—Schwinn bikes, Hula-Hoops, basketballs, Monopoly games and dolls or toy soldiers. We could buy Sugar Babies or licorice at the pool, and makeup, comics and Mad magazines at the drugstore.
After school I worked for my mother at her clinic. I sterilized syringes and rubber gloves and counted pills. The money I earned went into a college account. By junior high, gifts went into my hope chest—good china, luggage, a dictionary and tatted pillowcases.
Elsewhere mass marketing had begun. Women were encouraged to fix up their homes and dress themselves and their children smartly. Via commercials and advertisements, they were fed a distorted image of themselves and their place in society. This image was less focused on their sexuality and more on their femininity. But because of our distance from a city, mass marketing barely touched our town.
Our town was a dry town and our state had “blue laws,” which kept liquor from being advertised, sold on Sundays or served in restaurants. Even our pool hall served nothing stronger than root beer. My father brought tequila back from Mexico and would open a bottle and share it with other men on a Saturday night. Teenage boys had a difficult time finding alcohol. Once my cousin Roy drove fifty miles, convinced a stranger to buy him a six-pack, returned home and hid the six-pack in a culvert.
The Surgeon General had yet to issue his report on smoking, and cigarettes were everywhere, but marijuana and other drugs were unheard of in my town. My father told me that during World War Two a soldier had offered him a marijuana cigarette. He said, “I turned him down and it’s a good thing. If I’d said yes, I probably wouldn’t be alive today.”
At Methodist Youth Fellowship we saw films about the deterioration of people who drank or used marijuana. Women in particular were portrayed as degraded and destroyed by contact with chemicals. After these films we signed pledges that we would never drink or smoke. I didn’t break mine until I was in college.