I’m feeling nostalgic lately, and old, as with the passing of Brian Wilson and Sly Stone this month, the soundtrack of my youth is slowly dying. 

The Beach Boys were always there in the background with their summertime music.  I can’t pick a particular favorite song, as there were so many, (Let’s Go Surfing, California Girls, Little Deuce Coupe, see the whole Best Hits Album) but perhaps, Fun, Fun, Fun and Good Vibrations remind me the most of a summer day.

As for Sly and the Family Stone their hits Everyday People and Dance to the Music, were popular  with lots of radio play, but my favorite was always Hot Fun in the Summertime.

The song was released in August 1969, around the time of their performance at Woodstock, which greatly increased their fame, and reached number two on the billboard in October, long after summer was over.

So where was I in 1969?  Certainly not at Woodstock – I was 13, almost 14 and getting ready to start high school, so I was probably at the beach or in the backyard, working on my (very light) tan, lying on a scratchy wool blanket, and reading the latest copy of Seventeen, with the scent of Coppertone in the air, and Sun-in in my hair, because “Sun-In and Sunlight, and you’ll be blonder tonight.”  

I tried Sun-In once but it never did much for me, as the formula was so weak and my hair was already kind of blondish, and I probably didn’t sit out in the sun long enough for it to work, as I burnt so easily. (Remember Noxzema? Deep dark tans were the goal, and many people applied baby oil, but after a couple of blistering sunburns I knew that was not an option for me.)  Although one summer I dyed my hair lighter, with Summer Blonde, but the smell of the peroxide scared me and I ended up rinsing it out sooner than I was supposed to but it was still plenty light enough and it took forever to grow out, as we wore our hair straight and parted in the middle which showed the roots.

I liked my grade 8 graduation dress – white lace dresses were in style then, and mine had a green satin bow and matching bell bottom pants, which I wore because my mother thought the dress was too short without them. I grew my bangs out in high school, but have worn bangs ever since.

What an ugly uniform – white shirts with navy sweaters and skirts, although pants were an option later. They must have wanted us to look like nuns. A plaid kilt would have been much more preppy. I remember my mother sewing my early uniforms, out of some polyester material, a long open vest and a plain skirt, which got progressively shorter over the years so the skirt was the same length as the vest!

I thought you might enjoy a peek at these 1970 copies of Seventeen Magazine which I rescued from the attic when my mom moved off the farm.  They are summer issues, and the magazine was in a large size format then, similar in dimensions to Look and Life.  They cost 50 cents and in the July issue they are already gearing up for fall clothes – and so was I as I prepared to enter high school that fall, with some trepidation, so it was important to look cool.  The Fall issue of Seventeen was always a big deal, as although we girls had to wear those ugly uniforms, we had dress-up day once a month, which was like a fashion show, except for the guys who got to wear jeans and t-shirts all the time.  Now the guys must wear ugly uniforms too, which is only fair.

I wanted to look like this ad, but instead ended up buying a brown striped t-shirt-like dress which I wore with a gold chain belt, an outfit I bought at a store in the mall called Cojana, which was so dark inside, that you could hardly see the clothes.  It was the epitome of cool though, with beaded curtains and funky music.  I was not happy with my first-day-of-high-school outfit, because it didn’t look like anything in the magazine, but we were always behind the U.S. in fashions by several years.  Plus, my father, who never ever shopped, was along on our shopping expedition, and he said he liked it, and how embarrassing was that! (I suspect my dad only gave it the stamp of approval because he wanted to go home as I’d dithered long enough over the perfect outfit!)

My fashion obsession started young, and because we were so behind in styles, I turned to home sewing, (yes, me an expert with one year of mandatory grade 8 home economics) and these issues are full of ads for sewing patterns.  Only mine never turned out that great, and were usually finished by my ever-patient mother, who once smocked a dress for me, like this one only with sleeves, which I wore exactly once.  I would enjoy picking out the material and the pattern, and cutting out the pieces, maybe a bit of straight seam sewing, but anything else was beyond me – blame the old Singer sewing machine as it was so temperamental, not like today’s sleek models with their electronic programs. 

I was allowed to wear makeup when I was 12, and I remember a brief period when mascara came in a powder cake, and you added a bit of water and applied it with a tiny brush, so the advent of mascara in a tube was a big improvement, as you could always add an extra coat in the girl’s washroom between classes!  I had the exact same eyeshadow palette as I got it for Christmas that year – looking back I’m amazed that my mother was so hip at forty-four! Although, I only ever wore the blue, as blue eyeshadow was cool….

As were blue aviators. I’m sure I had a pair. I also had a blue checked summer blazer made out of seersucker material which I loved.

I had a two-piece bathing suit like this, made from some imitation blue jean material, which I thought was really hip and I had a poncho too, but who would wear a poncho to the beach?  The wool blankets were already scratchy enough – I think blankets only came in wool back then, but if they came in synthetic or crochet or something softer, you certainly wouldn’t be allowed to take one to the beach!  Beach towels were just old bath towels.  Beverages came in a thermos, and were usually Freshie or Kool-aid in colors and flavors I cringe to remember.  There was Tab or Fresca for those who were dieting, both tasted awful – pass me the sugar please.  A snack on the beach was a bag of chips, french fries or ice cream.  There were no beach umbrellas, if you started to burn you moved to the shade of a tree. 

Nobody I knew went to summer camp, or if they did it was only for a week, not the whole summer like kids do now, with soccer camp, hockey camp, theatre camp, church camp, Girl Guide camp, and what-ever-else-so-we-don’t-have-to-pay-a babysitter camp. A vacation was a trip to Niagara Falls or renting a (rustic) cottage for a week, or perhaps a weekend trip to visit your cousins in Michigan. I wonder about kids living such a scheduled life so young. Do they ever get a chance to be bored, or is constant stimulation and no downtime just normal to them? It’s one thing to be influenced by reading a monthly magazine with pretty pictures, but quite another to be constantly bombarded every day with social media. No wonder so many kids are struggling with mental health issues.

13-14 is an awkward age anyway, with no wheels and when you lived in the country like I did, that could be a problem.  My young teenage life was nothing like the magazines or movies. So, what did I do that summer while I was waiting for high school to start and real life to arrive?

I read a lot, (I would go to the library once a week and get a stack of books), and watched tv – reruns at night which were new to me as I never watched much during the school year as the bus came so early, and soap operas in the afternoon, (my mother’s General Hospital and Dark Shadows, a vintage vampire soap).  I had a few chores in the house, and the garden (my mother canned a lot) but nothing on the farm, unlike my brothers and dad who were forever baling straw or hay, first cut, second cut, third cut if you were lucky, it was all hot dusty work.  My cousin, who was three weeks older than me, lived right next door and she was always up for something.  We would ride our ten speed bikes two miles down to the corner store to get ice cream, or I would visit with my grandma who lived across the road, for homemade root beer.  And if I was really bored, I would go watch my younger brother’s baseball games, as my uncle was the coach, and there was an ice cream shop next to the baseball diamond.

On Wednesdays, my mother would drive into the city to go grocery shopping, and I went along to shop for clothes, although I seldom bought anything as we didn’t have much money and the styles were so boring.  Although you could make 50cents/hour babysitting, I only did that occasionally, as the family down the road had 4 or 5 kids, most of them bratty.  My mother would visit three different grocery stores looking for the weekly sales (something I do myself now that I’m retired and groceries are so expensive) and then afterwards we would go to Macdonald’s for a treat – a hamburger, fries and a chocolate milkshake. (75 cents)  The only other fast-food restaurant in town was the A&W drive-in, where you could get a big refillable amber jug of frothy yeasty root beer which tasted far superior to their root beer now, and KFC, whose finger-licking-good buckets were usually reserved for picnics.

In fact my life in retirement looks a lot like my early teen years, and I’m okay with that, with no set schedule and lots of time to do nothing, except I can get in my car and drive someplace if I want to.  The past few years have been challenging, so when people ask me what I’m doing this summer, I’m happy to say – I have no plans.  A normal life is highly underrated – you don’t appreciate it, until it’s at risk.  So, I want to do absolutely nothing until I’m rested and totally bored, and then I’ll figure out what I want to do next that’s fun.

PS.  And every single Sunday during the summer we went to the beach – I don’t remember it ever raining on a weekend or being this hot? The weather was just pleasantly warm and if you were lucky your favorite song would come on the radio, the perfect soundtrack to a summer day.  

I love this new TV ad for the retro Volkswagon, and the song lyrics are stuck in my head, Are You Having Any Fun?  The shot of the little girl at the end with the beach towel, is priceless and says hello summer! Wishing you all a summer of leisure, simple pleasures and fun!  As for me, I’m going to have an ice cream cone to welcome the season.

What were you doing in the summer of 1970?