11 Weird Things We Learned about ‘50s & ‘60s Teendom from Beverly Cleary Books

You read them too. Here’s what we learned.

 

1. Rain slickers were of paramount importance to a girl’s reputation.

 

“A dirty yellow slicker, mended with adhesive tape and covered with names in ink—the right names, of course—was the smartest thing a girl could wear to school.”

 

I have no idea if Slickermania is an authentic relic of young-adult history, but when my young impressionable self read this book in the 80s, I wanted one intensely. I would get the loveliest boy in class to sign it with my purple outliner pen, and he would totally not draw a penis on it while I wasn’t looking. 

 

 

 

2. When a boy’s shoes scuffed your saddle shoes at a dance, it was almost unbearably sexy.

 

“She looked thoughtfully at the streaks of black shoe polish on the white leather. There was no hurry about rubbing off the marks the boy’s shoes had made on hers…She sat staring dreamily at her smudged toes.”

 

I still have my eighth-grade saddle shoes and they still fit. My crush never scuffed them at a school dance, but he did call me a “hooker” and then dashed off to Humpty Dance with another.

 

 

3. Girls’ gym class offered TAP DANCING instead of dodgeball, handball, or any other -ball that makes introverts awake in a cold sweat fifteen years later. 

 

“Jean giggled. ‘You could do that Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines tap dance we learned in gym. The one where we had to paw the ground with our feet.’”

 

I would have gladly learned the Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines dance if it got me out of racquetball. Tap dancing requires neither 1.) goggles that compromise the integrity of one’s Angela Chase bob, nor 2.) forty minutes locked in a glass case with the Muggle version of a bludger. WIN.

 

 

4. If a boy liked a girl, he’d sometimes ask her to go for a coke at the drive-in. At 10 in the morning. Engagingly.

 

“Johnny grinned engagingly. ‘I was just cruising around and I wondered if you would like to go down to the drive-in for a Coke.’”

 

…And the drive-in served some nasty-sounding things—mercifully, for under a dollar.

 

BEEF ON BUN 37 cents

PORKCHOPETTES 79 cents

 

I feel like this is how people chose their life partners back then. If you found a girl willing to choke down a drive-in porkchopette with you at 10 a.m. on a Saturday, chances are she’d be up for whatever life threw her way, including impromptu dinners with the boss, neighborhood functions requiring multi-tier savory jello molds, and your bachelor pad in the city. 

 

 

5. The nicest, most attractive boy’s after-school job was likely to be Deliverer of Horse Meat.

 

“‘Horse meat!’ Mrs. Purdy began to laugh. ‘He delivers horse meat!’

Jane turned on her mother and said almost tearfully, ‘It’s U.S. government-inspected horse meat!’”

 

To be fair to Mrs. Purdy, she follows this up with “It isn’t the quality of the horse meat that we are questioning. We only want to know something about the boy.” In my opinion, the best thing about the boy is that he picks Jane up for a date in a fun and hilarious Doggie Diner truck, a gesture that “engulfs her in disappointment” in 1956 but today would be a quirky romantic gesture just two notches below Lloyd Dobler’s boom box.

 

 

6. One’s dating options were often prophesied by red convertibles.

 

“She was being just as silly as some of the other fifteen-year-old girls she knew, who counted red convertibles and believed they would go steady with the first boy they saw after the hundredth red convertible.”

 

I did this too in the 90s, except instead of red convertibles I counted how many times Morrissey went WHOOAAAAA-ooohhhhhh-AAOOOO-hohhhhhhhhh in the course of a single album, and instead of believing I would go steady with a boy, I believed Morrissey would buy the ranch house next door and write poems on my jeans and take me to TCBY. 

 

 

7. People had fewer clothes. Like, way fewer. 

 

“One by one she examined her dresses. Her best navy-blue silk printed with white daisies was too dressy. Her gray suit—well, no. That was more for wearing to the city. Her pale-blue princess dress—certainly not. Not that old thing. Her yellow cotton—no. Stan had already seen it. Besides, the round collar looked so babyish. Her peasant blouse and dirndl wouldn’t do either. Once more she went over her wardrobe. She did not have a thing that was exactly right to wear on her first date with Stan Crandall.”

 

This is Jane’s wardrobe in its entirety, which makes me feel super-spoiled. When I was her age, my closet was positively crammed with voluminous jean shorts, Outback Red clearance items, and concert t-shirts that cunningly disguised the fact that I had a discernible body. If I’d had access to a dirndl, I probably would have worn it. With fake Doc Martens. To the 6:00 showing of Driving Miss Daisy. With my parents.  

 

 

8. Rules and regulations for movie-date attire were stricter than a headmaster in a nineteeth-century-boarding-school novel.

 

“Jane began to have qualms about Stan. What if he came in a t-shirt and jeans? Or one of those gaudy sport shirts with the tail hanging out? A plain sport shirt with the tail tucked in would be all right for a movie date in Woodmont, but not a t-shirt or a figured sport shirt. But he won’t, he can’t, she thought. He was not that kind of boy.”

 

O NOES NOT A FIGURED SPORT SHIRT!!! 

 

I just now remembered that when I was twelve I tried to take this book out of the school library, and Sister Mary Alice pursed her prune-lips and said it was “too old” for me. Admittedly, there are several scandalous moments, like when Jane sheds her white gloves before dinner in the city because they “made her feel as if her hands belonged to Minnie Mouse,” but seriously? The climax is a single chaste kiss and the click of Stan’s ID bracelet around Jane’s “feminine” wrist. (Also, the tagline on the 1980 Laurel Leaf edition reads “Having a boyfriend isn’t the answer,” when lo, the last line of the book is “SHE WAS STAN’S GIRL. THAT WAS ALL THAT REALLY MATTERED.” Nice try, tagline.)

 

 

9. Typing a paper with footnotes was a task on par with dismantling a bomb.

 

“But type she did, rolling the platen of the typewriter up each time she typed a number to indicate a footnote at the bottom of the page, and then forgetting to leave space for the footnote at the bottom of the paper and having to start the page all over again.”

 

Say it sixty times before bed tonight, like a rosary to the gods of technological progress: Thank the heavens for Word and/or Scrivener.

 

 

10. At sixteen, you were already eyeing your biological clock and glaring with palpable envy at eighteen-year-old brides in smart lace jackets.

 

“‘I can’t go through another wedding for years. At least ten years.’

‘Mother!’ objected Barbara. ‘I would be twenty-six.’

‘Maybe nine years,’ conceded Mrs. MacLane.

‘Oh, Mother!’ Barbara was impatient. ‘I’ll be too old by then.’”

 

I got married at twenty-six and felt like an absolute baby, but now I see how fortunate I was, and how narrowly I escaped a barren existence devoid of fish-shaped copper molds and pumpkin-colored towels.

 

 

11. If a boy wished to apologize for coming over too often and eating too many of your cookies, sending regrets and a perfect rose would only exacerbate rage. 

 

“Above the name was written one word—Regrets.

…Oh, yes, the flowers. Barbara lifted the lid from the box and laid back the green tissue paper. Flowers! One flower. One single solitary flower, a perfect yellow rose. ‘Oh, that Bill!’ sputtered Barbara, positive now that he was laughing at her. ‘Of all the nerve.’ … She wouldn’t even speak to him. Sending her one yellow rose and his regrets!”

 

Like, Barbara? I don’t want to silence you or invalidate your anger, but do you know what sixteen-year-old boys did in the 90s when their small sensitivity fails would raise your ire? They blinked through their floppy hair and said “what crawled up YOUR butt?,” or they hid from you in the hallway and hoped you’d forget they existed, or they kept their eyes on their skateboard as you strode past them in the mall parking lot, hoping in vain for a single glance of contrition. They never, ever sent a perfect yellow rose in green tissue paper and “Regrets” on an actual calling card. I mean, I know Bill’s scarfed like eight plates of your snickerdoodles and only gave you a single ride on his Vespa in return, but if you’re so hot for an actual burgers-and-milkshakes date with him, THERE’S THE FREAKIN’ DAMN PHONE. 

 

*opens To-Do list*

 

*writes STOP ARGUING WITH YA CHARACTERS FROM 1963*

 

This post featured quotes from the following fine books which I really do adore the way I adore boxed macaroni and cheese and my “midcentury + retrofuture” Pinterest board:

 

1: The Luckiest Girl

2, 3, 4: Jean and Johnny

5, 6, 7, 8: Fifteen

9, 10, 11: Sister of the Bride

 

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I grew up on Beverly Cleary YA books. Now I write YA books about sci-fi conventions and weird anti-love self-help programs. Still searching for the connection.