Diaries - The 1950s

I know what you’re thinking. How many times is that woman going to moan and groan about disposing of her old diaries before she actually does it? Last night I took a five year diary out of the metal box where I keep them all with the intention of giving it a last read. It was a quick read because only two of the five years were filled in and those five year diaries don’t give you a lot of room to write in. I was thirteen and fourteen when I wrote in that book and it isn’t my only diary from the decade. I have three others from the '50s but only one is a single year diary and I’m pretty sure that will be the only diary I end up keeping and therefore I don't need to read it now. It has handbills from all the movies I saw attached to the pages but otherwise it's the diary of a naive and typical boy-crazy teenager.

I’m planning to pull out a few highlights from each of my diaries from the 1950s through the '90s before THE BIG PURGE and I’ll catalog those highlights into something brief but readable, maybe even bloggable. The project will occupy evenings deep into the winter when in past years I would have been knitting in my La-A-Boy. I just can't decide if I should do the project this winter or next. The advantage of waiting is I should have all my sellable stuff gone by then and while reading old diaries is entertaining it feels like I'm wasting valuable time. It's a hard decision. I'll finish reading the 1950s before I decide. At least that much will be done and waiting for the 'fire ceremony.'

Reading the five year diary, the first thing that stands out is what an atrocious speller I was. I already knew that because my "creative" spelling got me labeled 'stupid' when I was growing up. But I had to laugh at how many days the only entry I made was: “I didn’t do ‘inething.’” And I ‘red’ instead of read, went to the ‘liberly’ instead of the library and I always used the word ‘agent’ for again. One of my favorite misspellings is my cousin got ‘mariaged.’ And no matter how many times I try to decipher what I was trying to say when I wrote, “I walret tevletion” I can’t figure it out. Another puzzling entry in the diary was, “I didn’t go to church today because I didn’t get soup.” Say what? I'm seriously thinking of starting another five year diary on day one in my new place. I have Alexa to help me with spelling now and at my age any confusing sentences would get chalked up to dementia setting in.

Speaking of church, I was shocked with how many times I wrote that I had gone to church and to something called B.C. Fellowship. In my memory I thought I left all my church-going days back in early grade school when they used a flannel board to hold paper cut-outs to tell Bible stories. Now I’m trying to figure out if spending two years in my early teens going to church and B.C. Fellowship influenced my current (and often negative) attitude toward religion or if that came later. I’ve been thinking a lot about religion in recent months---and that shocks me, too. I’ve been following the newsletter from the parent company of Continuum Care Campus where I’ll be moving to get a sense of the types of activities that are available at their other two campuses. They have a Creative Writing Circle and the submissions I've read lean towards Godly topics. And I will probably be going to a lot of church choral performances around the holidays. No surprise there since these places are non-profits supported by a foundation through the United Methodist Church. And I’ll probably be making handcrafts to donate to their do-good projects. Fine by me. If I’m going to live there, I’m going to jump into the culture with both feet until/if I have a reason to pull back.

Back to my diaries. I got my first pair of nylons in the mid ‘50s and I wore them with a pink junior bridesmaid dress and silver shoes when my cousin got "mariaged." I thought her new husband was the “perfect husband” and boy was I a poor judge of character back then. He left her with a bunch of little kids, skipped the state and never looked back. Another highlight was I had my second crush on a boy named Gene. (My first crush was on Gene Autry in my pre-teens.) March 12^th the boys at school threw snowballs at me and on April 10^th I wrote: “We had a play for the grownups at school. I was an "Itay’ girl” aka an Italian. That was no stretch, given I was one of the very few dark haired kids in a sea of blonde-headed Dutch kids that I went all the way through school with. 

Reading the five year diary I also realized that I was a busy kid. I was always going off to ice skate, roller skate, dance class, see a movie or go tobogganing. I was in Campfires and I still have my beaded merit vest which probably doesn’t surprise anyone. I also went to three “sleep parties” and even hosted one of my own. Many of my entries were simply “I worked today” but I never expanded on what exactly that meant. I remember having chores like ironing, cleaning the house, mopping floors and working in the yard. I also babysat a set of twin cousins often and I took swimming lessons at the YWCA. The latter of which surprised me when I read it because I spent summers on a lake from the time I was three and I learned to swim long before my early teens. Why did my mom think I needed to go to the YWCA, especially since it involved taking a bus downtown? Details, little Jean, didn't you know your older self would want them?

As I was reading the five year diary I saw a news clip on TV about climate activist Greta Thunberg being named Time's Person of the Year. It made me sad to compare my carefree youth to hers. Kids today have to grow up too fast. They do active shooter drills in school and worry about terrorist attacks and the world being inhospitable to humans in the not so distance future. I deeply regret that the world they are inheriting has so many serious problems to solve but at the same time I'm proud of them and feel they are up to the task. Their social media version of my '50s diaries will be filled with more details and 'red meat' than mine, right down to photos of what they ate at their first Save-the-Planet rally.  ©

The junior bridesmaid.

Yes, I still have all my school report cards. What I lacked in spelling I made up for in penmanship.

It's Confession Time!

Today’s confessions will be public. Out in the open. No hiding behind a screen hoping the priest fell asleep and didn’t hear a word I said. No confessing to a loved one who’d forgive me no matter what secrets I reveal. But confess I will do.

When I was young I had very little of value to confess. I followed (and still follow) the rules of life but what I did do wrong---like smoke my first and only cigarette on a senior high trip to the beach---I told it to my diary. That was back in an era when we practically wrote with ink pots and quills. Don’t I wish! That would make me born before 1822, before mass produced metal pens were invented, and if I was that old I’d be famous. I’d also have lousy penmanship because writing left-handed was not tolerated in pot and quill days. By the way the secret is out of the bag, it’s just an urban myth that right-handed people used quills made from the right wings of birds, and left-handed people bought quills made from the left wings. Quills were sold by barrel length only with no consideration given to their curvature. Someday I’ll still remember that trivia but I’ll forget who our current president is, a fatal no-no on the senility quiz.

Okay, confession number one---or is this two? Are we counting the smoking thing? Anyway my next confession is I’ve always wanted to be famous. Not so much in this life time, but I wanted my name in the history books and short of falling on my head and getting back up with a savant-like transformation into the likes of Albert Einstein, me getting into the history books is not likely to happen between now and the grave. One of my colonial ancestors had that happen in reverse. He was smart enough that he shoulda, coulda, woulda been one of the signers of the Declarations of Independence but he got beaten up for his “radical politics” against the British and was severely brain damaged. Why couldn’t his diaries have been passed down to me? I’ll bet he confessed to significantly more important things than smoking a cigarette. Actually, I have read some of his words in a history book. I often wonder if guys like him knew their personal journals would get quoted as footnotes in the Chronicles of History. Sometimes we need the distance of time to recognize our defining moments. That’s true for people and nations alike. One man’s act of courage is another man’s act of rebellion and only the outcome and time can be the final judge. In our lifetime, think Martin Luther King. 

Confession number whatever: The only thing I ever shoplifted I did when I was ten or eleven and it was a cross make out of mother-of-pearl shell. My elder self finds it quite odd that I stole a cross, the symbol of Christ dying for our sins. What on earth was I thinking when I walked into Woolworth’s Dime Store and walked out with that cross tucked in my pocket? I can still visualize that basket of tiny, iridescent crosses piled high, a 10¢ each sign attached. I still have the fruits of my criminal behavior. And it still reminds me that small wrongs can turn into big regrets. Where is a priest when you need one? I want to know if stealing a cross is a worse sin than stealing a loaf of Wonder Bread to feed your family or stealing a pack of Black Jack just because you’re a kid with no impulse control who likes that licorice and aniseed flavored chewing gum? One time not too long before Don had his stroke, we went into a confectionery store and found that Black Jack had returned to the market with a limited edition. You would have thought he found the Hope Diamond. He bought every pack of gum the guy had---three boxes of however many came in a case, I’m guessing 50---and Don had a wonderful time handing them out to anyone and everyone who was old enough to have chewed it as a kid. He was quirky that way about anything nostalgic.  

Side note here: I couldn’t spell nostalgia and the closest I got was ‘nastalia’ which I let Spell Check have a crack at and it came up with five choices, not a single one close. I put ‘nastalia’ into my Franklin Language Master 3000 and out popped the word I wanted. I guess if this side note has a point it would be that I don’t need to confess that I’m a terrible speller. I struggle with and bellyache about spelling often enough, but it was a secret I hid until recent decades---and I guess I still should hide it. Recently, I was at a shower and they handed out slips of paper, asking everyone to write down some advice to the bride. I couldn’t do it! I couldn’t write a simple note without my Franklin! The relative sitting next to me was aghast when a torn the slip of paper up and refused another. “But you write all the time!” she said and I replied, “I do but I can’t spell without a dictionary.” The look on her face and the words that spilled out of her mouth next made me feel two inches high, like I’d just confessed to a sin worth seeking out the nearest confessional. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I’ve never been to confession before but I just found out that I’ve been a naughty fraud, flimflamming people into thinking I could write. Oh my! 

Back on topic: Do you believe in death bed confessions?  I have a few things in my history that I haven’t told to a single soul, not even to Don. Not even to a diary. I didn’t break any of the Ten Commandments with my untold secrets, I’m not worried about my soul burning in hell. But the older we get the more I imagine everyone would like to clear the secrets out of our heads as we’re bowing out of life, give them to someone else who’d probably say, "What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” and we’d reply---if we’re still breathing---“What I should have done, take it to the grave.” ©