R is for Retro!

I should have been born in the fifties.

For as long as I can remember, I've loved everything about it, from the fashions to the decor to the television shows and toys. And even though I grew up in the seventies and eighties--decades of bell-bottoms and acid-washed jeans--I think I would have been right at home in the decade of pedal pushers and jewel-neck pullovers!

Poodle skirt parade
Photo by Peter Griffin
Courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

My mom and dad were teenagers in the '50s, and as I was growing up, I'd ask them to tell me stories about what life was like then. I loved when my mom described the kinds of clothes she wore, like poodle skirts (love!) and saddle shoes. I've always found it funny that saddle shoes were back in style when I was in high school in the eighties!

Speaking of the eighties, each year my high school would hold a Fifties Day, and I was the envy of all my female classmates when I wore my mom's red poodle skirt with white ankle socks and my 1980's version of saddle shoes. Mom still owns a lot of the clothes she wore back then, and I had so much fun trying them on when I was growing up: Capri pants; form-fitting, short-sleeved shirts; blouses with Peter Pan collars; cat-eye glasses; and cardigan sweaters, which my mom said were sometimes worn backward. The outfit wasn't complete until I had pulled my hair up into a scarf-tied ponytail or tied a silk scarf around my neck. She told me once that another fad she and her friends took part in was to wear small animals collars as ankle bracelets.

1950's diner booth
Photo by Lee Wag
Public Domain Pictures

For entertainment, Mom and Dad would go out to the diner for cheeseburgers or to the drug store for Green Rivers--or maybe they'd attend a sock hop at the school or cruise around town in my dad's old Ford.

   

The fifties also brought some of my favorite television shows, like I Love Lucy and The Twilight Zone, and toys that my own children play with today, like Barbie and Etch A Sketch. And although my music tastes tend to run a little more modern, I still enjoy some of the idols of the fifties, like Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson. Also, in my opinion, few modern actors possess the brooding good looks of James Dean.

It's official: I love the fifties!


What about you? Do you have a favorite decade? What are your thoughts about retro style?

Showing my age

Today's 100 words:

I wonder if elementary school girls still pass around those homemade books made of lined paper and construction paper covers. I remember them from the eighties, when I was in the fourth grade. Someone would create one of these books and then fill them up with questions, leaving spaces for the girls to place their answers as the books traveled surreptitiously around the classroom. I remember one question was "What boy do you like?" and in my naivety--Who would really answer that?--I wrote "Mike," which was true, but it made me an enemy (for a time) of Edie.