<p>I was nearly out of high school before we were allowed to wear pants to school. Prior to that, we all carried around a bottle of clear nail polish to patch up runs in our panyhose, held up by garters of course. </p>
<p>In elementary school, we wore petticoats under our skirts, and sometimes in warm weather we would also wear shorts and slip the skirts and petticoats off once school was out, to walk home in comfort.</p>
<p>Oh, and does anyone else have a collection of 14K gold bangle bracelets?</p>
<p>But, even once the dress code relaxed and a few intrepid souls tried the water, they were subject to derogatory comments by some of our female teachers.</p>
<p>Several people have mentioned Wizard of Oz so I have to pipe up. A friend of mine once told me that as a child, her family had to do some church thing on a night of the week, which happened to be the night WofO would come on once a year. Every year, she was able to see a certain amount of it but then had to leave. So even tho she had the first part memorized, she never knew what happened next. It drove her crazy!</p>
<p>^^^^Wow. I grew up in the 70’s. Not only did we wear pants to school, we wore hip huggers. I followed the fashion, but I was always a little stressed about exposing myself in those things. Had to wear really long shirts so I didn’t bare all.</p>
<p>Hot Pants - my mother and grandmother were big hot pants fans, preferring them to mini skirts and dresses. I wore mine with colored panty hose and knee high boots.</p>
<p>14K bangles: sold two for the gold recently and bought myself a very nice new handbag :)</p>
<p>I still remember the day the dress code changed when I was in ninth grade. I never wore a skirt to school in the winter again. After all those years of standing at bus stops in short skirts, feeling my bare legs freeze, it was a thrill to be able to dress appropriately for the weather.</p>
<p>Then, when my kids went to school a generation later, the girls were REQUIRED to wear pants on days when they had PE. What a difference a generation makes!</p>
<p>Sonny Fox was the guy who hosted Wonderama. I loved that show and desperately wanted to be on it. I remember spending a whole day crying when a kid from my building who I hated got on the show and won a prize.</p>
<p>I went to yeshiva so we had to wear skirts all the time. I picked my HS just based on whether or not I could wear pants. I actually hated the school I chose (Bronx Science) and feigned a mental breakdown so I could transfer out after a year and a half. All my friends who went on to yeshiva HS got married at like 18 and they still didn’t wear pants.</p>
<p>My SIL used to get sent home from public school because she wore pants and then when the rule changed, skirts that were too short (she’s 6 years older than me). One day, my MIL got sick of it and sent her back wearing her (MIL’s) wedding gown with a note that said: “Is this skirt long enough for her?” </p>
<p>I remember Kukla, Fran and Ollie and the international movies they used to show. One of my favorites was called “Hand in Hand” about a Jewish girl and a Christian boy. It’s no wonder I wound up marrying a Catholic.</p>
<p>For TV shows, I loved “Here Comes the Brides” because I thought David Soul was so cute. Does anyone remember when cereal boxes came with little 45 records on the back that you could cut out and actually play? I got some Bobby Sherman songs and Sugar, Sugar that way.</p>
<p>So many memories coming back to me from these posts–from exploding caps with a rock to attaching baseball cards to my bike spokes with clothespins to Sonny Fox’s Wonderama!</p>
<p>If they thought your skirt was too short, you had to kneel on the floor in the office, and if your skirt didn’t touch the floor, you got sent home.</p>
<p>Then, they modified the dress code so that your skirt could be two inches above the knee. This meant that you still knelt on the floor, but now the school secretary was down there with you with a ruler.</p>
<p>Funny that nobody had anything better to do.</p>
<p>I can remember the first telephone number in the house I grew up in. In those days, they began with two-letter abbreviations for exchange names. Ours was “VA” for “Valley”. Another local exchange was “MU” for “Mulberry”.</p>
<p>I can remember at least one of my friend’s phone numbers, too. Mind you, I’m talking about more than half a century ago. Yet at this very minute, I can’t remember my current office phone number. Funny how the brain works.</p>
<p>YEP!!! We were Southern Baptist…we had Sunday night church…“Training Union” (the night time equivalent of Sunday School), then church. We always had to leave Wizard of Oz at the same point. We couldn’t skip because Dad was the pastor.</p>
<p>The dress code changed so that we could wear pants when I was in 7th grade. It is crazy to imagine us all in our mini skirts and knee highs walking to school in the Illinois winters, but we did. Anyway, then the dress code first came out, they said that the girls could wear “pants suits.” I guess that means that pants suits existed for 7th grade girls at the time? Then it was relaxed to “dress pants”, then just not jeans…but I think it took all of a year for them to allow jeans.</p>
<p>It is so funny to see how SHORT our dresses were…that was okay and pants weren’t? Maybe that is what convinced the powers that be to allow pants.</p>
<p>Anyone else here live in the Bay Area in the early 60s and remember Captain Satellite? It was the local after school kiddie cartoon show that was hosted by a local TV guy who was dressed up in a ridiculous space suit and helmet. He “blasted off” every day into outer space in order to show us cartoons and give the in-studio kids minor gifts and prizes. This was all happening in the age of Sputnik and the early space race. </p>
<p>We had JP Patches in the Puget Sound area. ( his live show was televised from 1958 to 1981) He recently made his last public appearance. A true icon.
His sidekick ( Gertrude/John Newman) lived across the street from us.
[J.P</a>. Patches!](<a href=“http://www.jppatches.com/]J.P”>http://www.jppatches.com/)</p>
<p>ugh dress codes- I have tactile sensitivity and absolutely couldn’t stand slips & undershirts. I used to go around the back of our house and take them off before I went to school. ( socks & stiff saddle shoes bothered me a lot too)
I remember being allowed to wear pants to school on snow days, but they had to be underneath dresses and we had to take them off when we got to school.
In junior high, we could eventually wear pants one day a week, but not jeans. But by the time we got to high school ( in the 70’s)we were wearing ratty jeans with homemade fabric inserts.</p>
<p>Count me as another Wonderama fan. I think it was on from 9-1 on Sundays. We used to dash home from church to catch part of it. At the end, they selected one boy and one girl. These anointed ones would stand there, arms outstreteched, while Sonny Fox piled about a dozen toys and games on them. My sister & I often pretended we were the lucky ones. We would take turns standing with our arms stretched out while the other one loaded us up with whatever toys we had lying around. I think the show after Wonderama was called Fun at One. It wasn’t nearly as good.</p>
<p>As for old game shows, how about Art Linkletter’s House Party? I always wanted to be one of the kids featured in the last segment.</p>
<p>Anyone remember Hullabaloo? And Carnaby Street? I remember the first day a friend brought over a record and said I just had to listen to this new band, and she played “I Want to Hold Your Hand”.</p>
<p>"But by the time we got to high school ( in the 70’s)we were wearing ratty jeans with homemade fabric inserts. "</p>
<p>My mom added those triangle inserts into the outer seams of my hip huggers in 8th grade, then embroidered the heck out of them. I had the coolest mom - all my friends were so jealous!</p>
<p>I remember the radio station playing “She Loves You” nonstop. I spent hours with my transistor radio (remember them!) pressed against my ear while I scribbled down the lyrics (such complicated lyrics!) so that I could sing along.</p>
<p>Senior year in HS (class of '71) the pants that were finally allowed included jeans without rivets- they were afraid of scratching the chairs. Son had flannel boards in his daycare in the '90’s.</p>
<p>Everyone rode tricycles when little- no Hot Wheels or others. We lived on a steep hill with mainly gravel driveways and no sidewalks- must have been nice to be able to ride a smooth, flat surface. We always made sure our foot brakes worked- no hand brakes initially. We were 8 or 9 when we got full sized one speed bicycles. Later a few, richer kids, got 3 speed bikes.</p>
<p>Even among us parents there is a divide according to age. A lot happened in those decades- women’s lib movement sure changed a lot!</p>
<p>We had some of our best meals on those mandatory meatless Fridays. Shrimp wasn’t “meat”. I remember Vatican II and the change of the Mass into English. Even though I dropped religion I still remember some of those Latin phrases from childhood. Also the Baltimore catechism- questions and answers to be memorized. The first was "Who made ", answer “Gode made me”. I guess they’ve really changed confession these days. Memorized formula “Bless me Father for I have sinned, my last confession was (two weeks ago typically)”. Then would proceed to list sins- “fought with my brother/sister x times, talked back to my mother x times…” The poor priests must have dreaded the Saturday catechism classes trouping in with all of our horrendous sins. My aunt had a “mixed” marriage- a Catholic married to a Lutheran, gasp. Now I don’t even see the big deal with Jewish/Christian marriages- they all have the same roots (I married a man raised Hindu- that’s outside the box, many similarities but totally different mythologies).</p>