Rural Youth Culture of the 1950s & 1960s

Family Life

Narrators detail experiences at family holidays with large families, family expectations regarding multigenerational relationships and college education, and trips to the city (Minneapolis).

Dawn Benson

Dawn: "The one thing that happened quite a bit within my family and the cousins, the aunts and uncles was getting together for birthdays. So a lot of times, whatever the closest Sunday was to your birthday, the aunts and uncles and the cousins—and I was the youngest of the cousins on one side of the family and in the middle on the other one. And family would arrive, and the kids would go off to play, and then there'd be supper, or I suppose usually supper, hot dish and salad and birthday cake and some presents to open. But, yeah, family gatherings were usually—most of them centered around birthdays. We would get together with family for Christmas Eve, too."

Vern Brown

Vern: "I considered our family pretty well-off. By lots of standards, we weren't, but we never went hungry. We didn't do a lot of things that other people did partly because we couldn't afford it, but I didn't consider myself poor. But of course, like they say, and I agree with this, poor is a state of mind, being short of cash or hard up is a condition that we go through and can come out of."

LeAnn Dean

LeAnn: "So, there was kind of this underlying set of expectations that weren't necessarily articulated in explicit ways. And a lot of older relatives. And so early on you got used to being with elderly relatives and friends and respecting them and running and getting them coffee or that extra cookie or whatever. So, it was a multi kind of generational experience. It was a time where you visited other families, and so the whole family would go to another relative's or friend's house for the evening, play cards and other activities. So it was a very comfortable, secure kind of family life."

Carla Riley

Carla: "We grew up without a car. We just never had a car because we just biked and we walked everywhere we wanted to go, and a car was an expense. And again, our family was living on pretty meager income and so we just did not have that frivolous set of wheels. However, I do know that my dad would occasionally borrow a car from one of his buddies and maybe take us to the cities for a few days. We'd go to Minneapolis and we would stay at the Andrews Hotel, and they had push-button lights. And my sister and I just thought we had died and gone to heaven, I don't know why that impressed us. So elevators and push-button lights, and Bridgeman's, the Nankin, oh, my goodness, and the Cafe di Napoli. These were things that were right on Hennepin Avenue. And again, we probably did this once every couple years, but it certainly was fun and made a big impression on my sister and myself. And by that time, my three older siblings were already out of the picture, so it was just my one older sister and myself left at home and so we got to have some of those privileges that the three oldest ones never did get."

LeAnn: "Did you ever take the train that they talk about?"

Carla: "Yes, indeed. I took the train to Minneapolis with my parents at least once. And I know when I was a senior in high school, two of my oldest siblings, sisters, were living in the cities. And when I was a sophomore in high school or maybe junior, my best friend and I took the train from Morris to Minneapolis and were met at the depot by my sisters, and we stayed with them for a few days. We just thought we were the height of elegance."

Joe Riley

Joe: "Well, I was one of nine kids in my immediate family, I had five brothers and three sisters. I had lots of relatives, there was nine in my dad's family and nine in my mother's family so I have about a hundred and twenty-five first cousins. And we had a fair amount of family gatherings, mostly on my mother's side at that time. And as far as our immediate family at home, I hardly remember my older siblings. My oldest brother, Leo, I hardly remember him being around the house when I was there. And my oldest sister, Joanne, I believe got married when I was, I don't know how old, so I was—hardly remember her and our family life."

Carol Swenson

Carol: "When it came time for me to go to school or go to college, I graduated from high school, and I just assumed I would be going to college, and all my friends were going to be going to college, so I would be too. And soon after graduation, my mother sat me down and said, well, have you thought about going to community college and becoming a secretary? And I was just horrified going, what? And I said, no. I think by that time I had been accepted here at Morris. And she said, well, if you could—well, the other thing was I could live at home, and she said, if you're going to go to Morris, you're going to have to figure out how to do it yourself. And that was it, I was 17, and so off we went and really didn't think about it. But I carried—they helped my two older brothers go to school, go to college so I thought I would be going as well. And years later, my mother said, well, we had to keep your brothers in college so they didn't get drafted. And we didn't have the money, and so that was why we were thinking about it. But that stuck with me for many years later, and I think fueled my interest in the Women's Movement and the disparities."

Relationships

Narrators remember the significance of "going steady," often signified by wearing the partner's class ring. While dating was a part of some narrators' lives, others noted that it was not prevalent in their friend group.

Vern Brown

Vern: "I had a car so I had quite a lot of friends, some of them female. So I started dating fairly young, I guess, but I didn't date many people. I had one girlfriend from our congregational church, then I met when I went to high school in Hancock, and I met my wife, Barb Schmidgall, and incidentally it was her cousin that bullied me, so I got even with him and married his cousin. But, yeah, we dated."

Dawn Benson

Lex: "Did you date at all in high school or in college? Dawn: I really didn't. I hung around with a lot of friends, but I don't—neither in high school or college can I remember the people I was with, really doing much dating, so that just really wasn't part of my world."

Tom Harren

Tom: "Most dates were on the weekend, and so it would be somewhat special. A lot of people were kind of going steady as we used to call it. Surprisingly. You know, and I think of the scene now, I don't think that's the case, but a lot of people were going steady. I mean, you had a regular girlfriend, and that would usually last. They didn't last for long periods of time, but it was usually a few months you would be going steady and then you'd separate and go off and find somebody else to go steady with."

Seth: "And when you went steady, was there an exchange of rings? A class ring?"

Tom: "Yeah. I can remember because I was going steady at the time, then we got our class rings and my mother being particularly surprised that we got my class ring, and the next thing I know, I didn't have it anymore. And I says, 'Well, you know, we exchanged rings.' And she said that didn't make any sense to her. You know, that was not something that made sense to her. And it probably didn't make a lot of sense, so."

Carla Riley

LeAnn: "Going to the next categories of memories, what was the dating culture like as you were growing up and as a teenager?"

Carla: "Yeah. I guess it was always a big deal to go steady with somebody, that was what—"

LeAnn: "That was the term."

Carla: "That was what we called it. And maybe your boyfriend, if you had one, and you were going steady, would give you his class ring that you would either wear around your neck on a yarn or wrap it around and put it on your hand. So if you got a boy's ring, man, that was pretty big deal. And that was just how it was, I mean, that's what the girls were excited about and so were the guys, they had their girlfriends and boyfriends paired off. So, yeah, that was the culture, I guess."

Annegine Vipond

Jodi: "What—how was dating viewed? Did everybody go steady or was it some people took it really seriously and—"

Annegine: "Well, a little bit of both. Some couples were so serious. It seemed like when we dated, we were more in a big group, you hardly ever would—just the two of you or whatever, it was usually two, three couples or whatever, but then you'd probably meet up with some more and so pretty casual. And that way, too, if somebody didn't have a date, they weren't feeling awkward that they couldn't join the group."