I is for the Idols we had as Teens

My sister, Scherri, and I were close growing up and many times, we had the same set of friends.  We’re only a year and a day apart.  Once we finally moved to town and off the farm, we got our own room for the first time.  Boy did we have fun decorating it to our liking.  I was about fifteen and she was fourteen.

Our decorating included plastering the walls with photos of “hot” rock stars we found in the teen magazines in the fifties.  We didn’t have any money to save from cotton picking then, but occasionally we would babysit and we always saved some of our lunch money, as there was no such thing as an allowance in our house.  We got about thirty-five cents a day for a cafeteria lunch, so we usually always had about twenty cents a day left over to put toward our records and teen magazines.

 Teen Magazine cover - 1965

Back then, we existed on cokes and a bag of chips from the cafeteria at school.  Looking back, I imagine this wasn’t very healthy but you do what you have to do.  We had a goal in mind.

We got a small square blue and white record player one year for Christmas.  We were ecstatic.  We would crank it up, listen to records, and dance in our room amongst the poster-covered walls while we talked about boys.

We didn’t allow any of the younger kids into our space.  It was our escape from the mad house.  Yes, our house was noisy and bustling with activity all the time because of so many kids and we could actually bring friends home once we were living in a small town and off the farm.

I guess we worked off all our horrid lunches by walking all over town.  It was nothing to go out and walk ten or twelve blocks each way to look in the stores.  Those were the days and some good times.