Rural Youth Culture of the 1950s & 1960s

Narrators participated in a variety of social activities, specifically noting football, 4-H, marching band, and time spent with friends.

Thomas Harren

Seth: "Describe what it was like you played football, what it was like Friday night playing on that—describe the field and the atmosphere at a Friday night home football game."

Thomas: "It was exciting. I mean, it was exciting for the players. I can say that, you know, it was the bright lights, the business. And, you know, all week long you've been practicing under pretty grueling circumstances. And so Morris had relatively large crowd of people for football. And so it was exciting to come with all the lights, and the clapping, and the hollering, and all that stuff. When I was a senior, we had a very good team, at one point in the season we were ranked like 12th or 13th in the state. And again, it was a one class thing. So, there was excitement. If it wouldn't have been for that, you wouldn't have done the other part of preparing for it, because of how grueling that was. And then because we were winning all the time and so after the football game, there was always a dance. And so we were the heroes because, of course, we won the football game."

Vern Brown

Vern: "Yes. I was in 4-H. The fact is, I won the Health King from Stevens County one year on the trip to the state fair."

Vern: "Typical Saturday night for me as a growing-up kid who went to Hancock, it was a big night. Stores were—

Ward: "With some of your neighbors or some of your friends? Did you go with some of your friends or—"

Vern: "No, we'd go with my parents. Parents would go, too. So they'd go and the stores were open until 10:00, and as I recall it was 9:30 or 10:00, I think it was 10:00. And neighbors meet neighbors and—"

Ward: "So it's kind of a social."

Vern: "Yeah. It was—you'd probably buy something and buy some groceries and do some things, but it was a kind of a neighborhood get-together."

Annegine Vipond

Jodi: Was band an extracurricular thing or was that part of school? I mean, you would take it like a class?

Annegine: You took it as a class, yeah. Not everybody had to be in band. If you didn't go to band, you were in study hall, so— but I was in band, I played the clarinet. We were in the marching band. I marched for several years and then the last couple years of my high school, I was the majorette. So there was five of us—there were six of us, probably, majorettes. So in the summer we did a lot of marching. I know we would always go to Glenwood for the Waterama. And we went up to Duluth one time for a big march. And then also, I—did we hit Canada? Part of Canada, too, and that was a big trip, but that was all through school.

Dawn Benson

Dawn: "I was very involved in our—the 4-H club in our community was very active. And so we had 4-H Club meetings once a month. You would do—once a year you'd have to do a demonstration or a project talk. We would have lunch, this would be—usually it was Monday evenings, once a month."

Dawn: "Friday nights when I was probably in elementary, Kerkhoven had open stores on Friday nights, so I can remember often going to Kerkhoven on Friday. And then they'd have a drawing, so everybody stood around waiting for the drawing. I don't know how much it would—I have no clue how much money it would've been, then probably not that much, but—and then maybe we'd go to the cafe for floats or something like that. But I would—there was a gift shop that had candy, and I mean, it had all kinds of stuff, but for kids, there was candy and comic books. So I might— sometimes I'd go buy a comic book and then sit in the car with the door open so I'd have light so I could read my comic book. So there mustn't have been a lot of kids that I knew there on Friday."

LeAnn Dean

LeAnn: "Well, dating really revolved around those organizations in school. Well, and going to movies. When I was really little—well, now you're asking me about teenage years, but there was a theater in Murdock, Minnesota, which is the nearby town as well. But otherwise there was a lot of going to Willmar or Benson nearby towns for movies. Roller skating parties were very popular, but they're sponsored by a 4-H Club or a Luther League or other youth group and everybody was invited. Picnics."

Carla Riley

LeAnn: "And related to that, other social activities that you participated in relating to church, things like roller skating, town dances, school dances, sports, athletics?"

Carla: "Athletics, no, I was an utter failure in anything athletic so I just avoided that at all costs. But I certainly did go to school dances, or they would have a dance sometimes at the armory here in town and they would bring in live music. And I do remember—come to think about it, that was the time my dad was concerned, too, about—didn't know if he wanted me to go to that, but, yeah. And roller— yeah, roller skating. And a lot of kids did roller skate out at a place called Perkins. I never did go, my older siblings did."

LeAnn: "There wasn't a rink in Morris, you had to go out to—"

Carla: "No. They would go out there. And then at one point they did start allowing roller skating in the armory, which burned down some years after the roller skating. The armory used to sit where the current Morris Library is."

LeAnn: "Oh, okay. Really centrally located."

Carla: "Yeah. There was an armory there, and they would sometimes open it for dances, and they would open it on weekends, I believe, for some roller skating. And that's probably some years after the Perkins faded out maybe, I'm not clear. But I used to like to ice skate, that was what I would want to do is go ice skating, was my thing, I like to do that. And that wasn't organized either, that was just some nice guys would volunteer to run the warming house."

LeAnn: "Besides ice skating in the winter, what were some things you and your friends did?"

Carla: "Let's see. What else? Oh, sometimes we'd just be at each other's houses and braid each other's hair and have slumber parties, that kind of thing, that was always a big deal, and sneak out at night. After the poor parents had passed out, then we'd sneak out and run around town and didn't really get into any trouble, it was just that we were doing something we shouldn't do. And I don't know, I guess I used to like to go to the library. I remember there was a Mrs. Grove, I think her name—I can't remember what her name was, but—"

LeAnn: "Margaret?"

Carla: "Was it Margaret? Okay. She had always sit up there at that desk and she was a little imposing, but she was really the kindest woman. And she'd always help me find something if I wanted to find something to read, and she was helpful. But, yeah, that was where the museum is now, that used to be the library."

Jay Ross

Jay: "Well, in the summertime, baseball was number one. In the fall and winter, it was hunting, which was really wandering around, shooting stuff. A lot of it was tree limbs and so forth. Although a rabbit or two met his waterloo, as with a squirrel when it was warm enough and so forth. In the fall also, there was football. And in the spring, there was track and baseball. I'm trying to think of what else we did. Hunting, sports. Fishing. Yes. Big Stone was a good shoreline fishery for crappie and some walleye. We did a lot of swimming, first at the lake, and then at an old quarry hole that was accessible at that time. It was a beautiful situation actually, you could dive off the rocks."

Carol Swenson

Seth: "Well, did you get some leisure time? Did you have friends that came over and played with you, or could you read a book, or what did you do for fun on the farm besides play softball at the church?"

Carol: "Well, reading was one thing that we would do, having friends over to stay for overnight or whatever. And I really enjoyed sewing and knitting, and so I did a lot of that growing up. And then I would go visit my friends and we would have sleepovers with three, four girls, and that was always a lot of fun."

Seth: "Was that when you were older, the sleepovers?"

Carol: "Oh, they were in grade school."

Seth: "Okay. And how would you get there, would you walk or mom and dad give you a ride?"

Carol: "You go home on the bus with your friend."

Seth: "Okay. Sure. That would make sense. Did you ever envy the girls that lived in town that maybe didn't have as many chores to do as you did?"

Carol: "Well, they were—I suppose to a certain extent I did envy them, but it wasn't related to how much work, work difference, it was more that they were able to socialize and hang out with each other. Yeah. And it was a long 10 miles out as hard for me to go to some of the activities at school or just to go and spend the afternoon with friends who lived in town. And they got to go home for lunch, too, that was another thing that was very different. Sunday afternoons was always a time for rest and visiting, and that would be when we would go to visit relatives or go over to the neighbors and spend the afternoon at their house or have people come to our farm, so that is, I think, a pretty classic experience as a rural kid."