DRESS CODES

From the chapter "The Gentlest Decade"

DRESS CODES

James Dean became a sort of cult star and was very popular with the kids in Americus High School .  The “James Dean Uniform” started popping up: blue jeans worn low on the hips, white T-shirt, and a red nylon jacket with the collar turned up.  If you wore the uniform you also had to affect a certain amount of swagger, and exhibit an air of disdain for authority, rules, and regulations.  The principal finally issued a edict outlawing the wearing of red nylon jackets.  It wasn’t the uniform that bothered the high school staff, it was all that swaggering.

It was around early 1960 that the “Ivy League” (precursor for today’s preppy look) style came into vogue.  Boys wore light blue, yellow, or white Gant shirts with the finger loop on the back of the shirt.  The only purpose served by those loops was to provide something for the older boys to rip loose from your shirt.  Pants had buckles in the back, and were worn “pegged,” meaning very tight britches legs for the last foot of length.  Bass Weejuns, or penny loafers, provided the proper foundation for the ensemble, with Gold Toe socks of the same color as the Gant shirt.  “Boatneck” polo shirts, alligator golf shirts, and paisley sport shirts were also popular, usually worn with “broke-in just right” Levi-Strauss blue jeans worn low on the hips, much like the kids do today.  Actually, not quite that low.

I had surreptitiously been letting my hair get long enough to start training it into a ducktail, in reverential homage to Elvis.  I put about three pounds of Butch Wax on my hair and actually got it combed to the back along the sides.  The pomade went on sort of creamy, and then dried into a hard shell, leaving each hair with a hard, plastic-like coating impervious to fire, bullets, and most acids.  I got to school, strutted in the front door, and decided to “let it all hang out,” meaning I turned my shirt collar up in the back.  I made it about five feet before a teacher turned my collar back down with the admonition that, “You know better than that.  My God, what have you done to your hair?  Your daddy is not going to be happy about this.” 

She insured his unhappiness by calling him at work and describing my deplorable behavior and appearance.  She may as well have signed my death warrant.  Dad was lying in wait when I got home and wasted no time taking me to the barber shop.  He instructed the barber to, “Cut it like a Marine recruit.”  The barber did.  He also charged Dad three dollars extra because he broke two pair of scissors trying to cut through my Butch Wax pomade.  Sadly, that is how my brief flirtation with the flagitious ducktail came to an ignominious end.

A classmate showed up one morning sporting a new Mohawk haircut.  The principal took the boy to the barbershop, and had the boy’s head shaved.  The boy’s father called the principal at home that night and thanked him profusely.

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