Another Time, Another Place

Thinking back on it all I remember the confusion I felt, the arguments, the accusations, the distress. It all began with the Women's Lib movement; Betty Frieden. Women revolting against a society that saw them inferior to men. Foment was in the air. Goaded by disgruntled, campaigning feminists, women saw themselves for the first time not as fragile, gentle, treasured companions, to be protected and cared for, but chattels, the property of their husbands.

Mother as I knew her then, was the quintessential wife, mother and pillar of the family; the glue that kept us together. This was the role assigned her. Assigned by proxy. Poems, books, movies, lauded and glorified a woman's role, well defined and well confined. But for Mother, if that's what she was to be; a wife, mother, and pillar of the family, then she would be the best. Second rate was never an option for her. She was first up in the morning, bustling about the kitchen making coffee for Dad, setting the table for breakfast, packing lunches for us kids to take to school. She took great pride in everything she did, serving well balanced meals as well as well balanced lunches; sandwich, fruit or raw vegetables and for a treat either a Twinkie or Hostess Cupcake, the Twinkie not yet having fallen into disrepute.

Early in the morning, Dad came to the dining room table expecting and receiving service even as elegant as that served at the dining room of the Aragon Hotel downtown. No place mats. A tablecloth. His eggs were cooked over easy with never a broken yolk. Bacon, crisp. A silver toast rack held two slices of toast, freshly buttered. On his right was a pot of fresh coffee. To the left of his plate was the front page and sports section of a morning paper that was stripped of nonessentials like want ads and the women's section. He was not to be disturbed when he was reading the paper. He drank a lot of coffee in the morning - maybe six cups.

We kids had our breakfast an hour later. She was a great believer in oatmeal, Mother was. Born and raised on a farm, she echoed her mother's admonition that oatmeal would make us strong as a horse. "That's what they feed horses. Look how strong they are." We believed her and dutifully ate our oatmeal. Wishing for the sugarcoated Frosted Flakes we saw advertised on TV.

Our white blouses were bright white. Back then TV ads were predominately aimed at housewives laundry soap, bleach, Ajax the foaming cleanser, Johnson's Glo-Coat. Mother put a lot of stock in what they advertised. The girl was elected president of her class because her blouse was the whitest. Skulking in the background, mortified, ashamed, were the girls who lost, wearing blouses that were tattletale gray, laundered in brand X. Mother must have been disappointed. We were never elected president of anything in spite of her sincere efforts to prepare us for success.

We lived in a small town, an insulated world, safe and secure. The turmoil of social unrest raging in some parts of the country were far removed from our world and had little effect on our lives. They were no more than pictures on a TV screen, easily disposed of with a flick of the dial, to think of no more. My homework assignment for Civic Affairs was to prepare a report about one of the issues in the newspaper. I read through all the news and dutifully selected as my subject matter the current mayoral election, knowing well enough what subjects would please the teacher. All the while my real interest lay in the quarter-page picture on the front page. In the upper half of the picture were brassieres flying through the air. Below were the heads and arms of the women doing the flinging.

I was twelve. Brassieres were of interest to me. Some girls in my class were already wearing bras. It was like a rite of passage, an important accomplishment, wearing a bra. I, on the other hand, had nothing to fill a bra. Why would women eschew a bra? Where along the way had it lost its iconic symbolism? On TV, pretty ladies pranced about in their bras, telling us, "I dreamed I went shopping in my Maidenform Bra." Frederick's of Hollywood was not ashamed to extoll the virtues of the uplift capabilities of its wired bras. Now women wanted to shed their bras in the name of freedom?

That night on the evening news we saw sensationalized newsreels of women marching in big cities, holding up placards that demanded equal opportunity, equal rights, calling men male chauvinist pigs. Dad, Abbie and I, busy nibbling on potato chips, only occasionally glanced in the direction of the TV. Mother sat transfixed, staring, taking it all in, her eyes hardly blinking, loathe to close them that she might miss something.

Our once placid, predictable days were soon to come to an end. After school we came home to find Mother in the kitchen with two women, strangers to us, sitting at the table, deep in what appeared to be a serious discussion. With a nod in our direction to acknowledge our presence, she turned her attention back to her new friends. Mother's ample bosom was substantially deflated, as I could see with a stealthy glance, were her companion's. By the time they left, it was late. Mother called us in and put us to work setting the table and peeling potatoes while she tenderized the round steak with a meat hammer. Daddy would be home soon. Dinner was late. We waited for the meat to finish cooking. Canned peas were substituted for our usual fare of fresh vegetables embellished with white sauce and buttered bread crumbs.

Mother went to work. She got a part-time job at the telephone company as an operator. Daddy was furious. He sat grim-faced at the breakfast table the next morning. The night before, through the closed door of their bedroom, I heard him shouting, "I provide you with everything you need. You have charge accounts all over town. Your own car. It's an embarrassment