It Was the Summer of 65′

The sun's rising, the coffee's broken, and what if we mourn it without dawn frozen?

WRJN

I want to thank you for giving me the most wonderful summer

I want to thank you for giving me the most wonderful summer

I want to thank you for giving me the most wonderful summer

in the world.

I'm going to be talking about the summer of 65 in Racine.

Jim and Carol are here.

Carol, G and Forte, Jim and Sierra here.

We're going to be talking about the summer of 65 in Racine.

Before we get that underway, I thought the presentation

did at the church a few weeks ago was just wonderful.

You guys are really good at this stuff.

I read two lines and I goofed one of them.

Okay.

No, you didn't.

Anyway, because you didn't give me my motivation.

I needed motivation to read the line.

Anyway, that was very good.

It was a nice presentation.

And that was like the beaches, the pool.

And I learned something because every time I go down

14th street now to the end, I look at where that 14th street

beach was.

You can't even tell it was even there.

You're not going to move your microphone up a little.

Every word you have to say.

I could even tell where it is.

No.

I mean, you said there were steps there.

I got it.

I couldn't see the steps.

They're covered over.

There's a bubbler.

Yeah.

Well, that stuff is con.

It's gone.

Yup.

Yup.

There you were in the state of New York.

You missed the landmark stuff.

You used to see the beach right group in Rockaway.

It's gone.

The boardwalk is dilapidated.

All the bungalows that were there are gone.

There's a big factory building there now.

I'll see.

They wiped out my childhood.

I should never have gone back.

My brother and I went back.

Yeah.

And I thought about it.

And I said, don't go back.

Because right now the memories are stuck in my head.

Yeah.

Now I picture that dilapidated.

And feel a lot.

And they were building a factory.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like our park pool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's nothing left.

The sunken tennis court.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And some.

Like they have an arboretum or whatever they're growing.

They're growing some flowers there.

That's the tough part about going back.

Yeah.

And you get to see it today because then you're all your memories are gone.

You can't.

You can't think about what it was.

You're thinking about what it is.

Yep.

And I want to thank you guys for destroying memories for people.

That's really hard.

You're a memory destroyer.

Well, this is, this is when I think of the one and only book I wrote.

And I've said this a couple times.

Coming up with this idea that we have double vision.

Because you look at a place and you see this dilapidated boardwalk.

But you see how it was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, there was a, you, you're on, you still live on Carlyle.

There was a big fire on Carlyle, the other day.

I want to go get the second home on Carlyle this summer.

Uh oh.

That has had a fire.

Uh oh.

You know what that means?

Three.

Date line has to be going out there doing investigations.

Yeah.

Now that was about four blocks from your house though.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

I, you know, should say here Carlyle.

I said, oh, no.

All right.

Let's talk about what we're going to do now.

This is, we're talking about the summer of 65.

In Racine.

Now you got to think about what was going on in the world in 1965.

Lyndon Johnson was president.

Yep.

The Beatles were at their height.

Yeah.

While they were five songs in the top 100 of the time.

And Jim and Carol were wandering around looking for dates on the beach.

That's exactly.

That's exactly right.

We're serious.

Oh, serious.

Jim was checking out the woman.

Carol was checking out the guys.

Yeah.

Who?

Let's talk about.

Well, thanks Don.

For many of us baby boomers, we graduated from high school in that year.

I did from St. Katz and Carol's husband John graduated from Horlick.

So this summer, both of these classes of 65 had reunions.

It's hard to believe this was our 60th.

Wait a minute.

I think we did the math wrong.

Yeah.

Couldn't be.

No, I think it should be 40.

Let's go with 40.

Okay.

Our 40th.

Okay.

We're going to be this old, I guess.

It's a good thing we had the name tags at the reunions, I know.

But inside, I think we're still 18-year-olds at heart.

So anyway, I was asked to give a short talk at my reunion bringing back lots of memories from 65.

And I call it the summer of 65.

I'd buy to confess now.

I was the class of 66.

But, you know, it's close enough and I hung around with you guys too.

So I want to take part in this program today anyway.

So you were dating under classmen in the summer of 65.

That's right.

I was looking for older classmen though.

Yeah, yeah.

No, if you were in 66, you were looking for the older.

Yeah, older.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

So when I learned that Jim had given this talk and Don, let's look at Jim's notes from his talk.

Because to our audience, Don is always amazed.

Is that what those crumpled pieces of?

Yes, yes.

No, no, no, no.

It's off of notes.

Yeah, wow.

Look at that.

But when I learned that he gave this talk and heard that it was such a nice part of the reunion,

it was such a summary of that last exhilarating summer and kind of a recap of those teen summers.

So I thought, well, let's do this for our program.

So here we are, part one.

Because this is going to extend into the next month, two before we let summer completely go.

But the background of 1965, setting the stage, now Don, you said Lyndon Johnson was the president.

Some of the sobering things, we won't, because we want pleasant memories.

We know that the first ground troops were sent to Vietnam in 1965.

And there were the marches in Selma.

But probably with our stage of life in here in Racine, we were fairly insulated from these events.

But other things about 1965, just setting the stage, I found out in my, as I say in my deep research, SpaghettiOs came on the market.

I'm still here.

Now, could this be right?

I needed to double check this when I looked at my writing today.

Could this be right?

720 million cans are sold worldwide today.

Let me tell you, I bought this, this was, I guess, when my daughter was smaller.

We had a can of SpaghettiOs.

I opened it up.

It was just tomato sauce.

There were no SpaghettiOs on it.

I said, where are the SpaghettiOs?

It was just the sauce.

I used the sauce for other things, but I, it was no SpaghettiOs in there.

You never forgot it?

No.

Like, I'm going to, that's when Franco American ran it back then.

Yeah.

The candles owned it, but yeah.

Yeah, Franco American.

Like, I'm going to write to Franco.

She wins.

We got a unhappy person here.

Let's get a, let's get a, let's get a queso.

SpaghettiOs do it right away, so we doesn't stop buying you.

Yeah.

Give him a truck load, right?

No, another thing in my research, I found out that the first carousel slide projector was marketed.

And my father went crazy over slides.

So, 30 years after his passing, I still have some of those carousel slides.

Well, we had to go to Goodwill.

I think it was good.

Well, I don't know if that Goodwill store is to get a slide projector carousel.

Yeah.

Because when my mother-in-law passed away, my wife went through the house, and she found all these slides

for when there used to go on vacation, how are you going to see them?

Right.

So, we went searching around.

We found a store.

All right.

I think it was on Lathrop.

And they sold the carousel projector there for a few bucks.

We bought it and we were able to see the slides.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it paid about 30 bucks for it.

But you know what it is?

As these technologies become abandoned, like all the movies you have on beta, eight millimeter,

and you've got to find the sources to play them, or you'll never be able to see them.

That's right.

True.

One other historical fact was the subway company began that year.

So, they've sold a lot of subways since then.

I don't know if they're matching Spaghetti O's though.

They're all the same triangle pieces of the cheese.

Well, we were concerned a bit with the cost of living.

We had some summer jobs.

Of course, that we'll talk about next month.

But, Cap is spread, 21 cents a loaf, eggs, 55 cents, and milk from progressive, a dollar, a gallon.

McDonald's was 15 cents a hamburger, I think.

For that, 15 cents.

18 cents for the cheeseburger.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fry's a dime.

What else did you find more important?

Pizza's at bruises.

A large pizza, mind you now, was $2.50.

For those smokers back then, a pack of cigarettes averaged about 25 cents a pack, 25 cents.

And a gallon of gas was roughly about 29 cents.

When they had mowed lawns back then, it was 25 cents a gallon.

I had to run to the run and to walk about a half mile to the gas station and get gas for a quarter right fell up the gas tank.

Yeah.

And go back and mow about five or six lawns.

Yeah.

If you go back and have to fill it up again for a quarter.

That's right.

What about wages, Carol?

Yeah.

Our wages, well, the minimum wage was $1.25.

Yeah.

But we were saying, now, if you worked like at a quarter grocery store, a small enterprise, you probably earned definitely less.

When did that illegal?

Well, we didn't have those police around here, I guess.

Mr. Mrs. Brommer.

You can't pay less than a minimum wage.

That's illegal.

And I didn't look up babysitting.

I wonder if it was $0.50 an hour when I babysat.

It might have been.

Yeah.

Wow.

But we thought we knew everything.

Oh, my gosh.

Yes.

After graduation from high school, we did think we knew everything.

I mean, after all, we had four years of English.

We had math, algebra, geometry, some of us took trig.

Science, we had biology, what else?

Chemistry, even physics.

What was there left to learn?

You know, we knew it all.

We did know it all.

Yeah.

And we had our favorite songs from that time as well.

Well, we also were very well read.

Oh, yes.

I want to remind you.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, some of us.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe the cliff notes.

I think you said you read something called Beowulf.

Beowulf.

Back in high school.

Beowulf.

Beowulf.

Beowulf.

No, no.

I remember.

Beowulf.

Beowulf.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Catcher.

Catcher in the rye.

That was a big one with holes.

That was a naughty book.

It was.

And naughty words in that book.

I can't believe you read that, Carol.

Wow.

The whole image of you is.

That was public school.

See, that's why.

Yeah.

To kill a mockingbird.

Yeah.

We read that.

But we also utilized a nice handy aid.

Yellow and black booklets.

Yeah.

Cliff notes.

Yep.

Cliff notes.

Help this get through all that.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

So we knew everything.

We were well read.

Yeah.

So you cheated with cliff notes.

Absolutely.

Ails drugs.

Never did that.

Yeah.

I never read the book.

I just kind of faked it.

But no, I never.

You're still around, I guess.

You don't need them anymore.

You just go on your phone.

Type in AI and say, what?

Give me a book report.

I don't need the cliff notes anymore.

Yeah.

Now, some of the songs from that period of time.

Don plays them on the radio here.

Remember, what's new pussy cat?

By Tom Jones.

I got you, babe.

Oh, that was good.

Sonny and Cher.

Can't get no satisfaction.

Mm.

The Stones.

Hey, Mr. Tamborine, man.

Birds.

And one of my favorites.

Woolly, bully by Sam, the sham, and the ferals.

Sam, the sham.

You can say Don plays that a lot here.

Oh, yes.

Yes, he sure does.

Oh, in 1965, a young little guy.

I'm Donald Rosen.

Went to go see the Beatles at Chase Stadium.

My mom and dad took me to see the Beatles in 1965.

And I remember they were wearing tan, collarless jackets.

Sonny and Cher were the opening act.

We've heard of them at the time.

Yeah.

The boat brumels were there.

Oh, yeah.

And the Beatles came on, played for about 45 minutes,

so you couldn't even hear them because it's screaming inside the stadium.

Oh.

And they didn't have stadium concerts back then.

So the speed systems are kind of iffy.

And they came out in a limo.

Yeah.

They jumped on the stage, played.

And then they left.

And I had my Beatles tickets with their pictures on them.

And my mother moved to Florida in 1999.

Oh.

She threw them out.

No.

She said if they were important to you,

you would have taken them with you.

Oh.

So anyway, so the Beatles in 1965, it's Jay.

Wow.

Wow.

Well, I guess we didn't get that far.

Did we do?

No, the Beatles.

The Beatles played in Milwaukee.

Mm-hmm.

That's right.

Was what you heard you remember?

Anything about that?

It was around then.

We just had Bob Barry on here with us a few weeks now.

Yeah.

And he introduced the Beatles on stage in Milwaukee.

Yeah.

That's right.

He came this far west.

Yeah.

How about some of the girl groups?

Yeah.

Now, Patula Clark, again in my research,

he had the number one with the weekly charts, I guess,

because we were talking about Willy Bulley was the number one.

But one was for the year end.

Yeah, they had a lot of number one.

Every week they had the number one song.

So we don't have to debate that.

No, we don't have to debate that.

Willy Bulley and Patula Clark.

Well, there were 51 up 50 others.

Every week there was another number one song.

I don't have that in my fingertips.

Yeah.

And then the Supremes.

Now, that was amazing.

They had four number one hits in that same year.

Let's see.

I hear a symphony.

I think it was one.

Come see about me.

Stop in the name of love.

Back in my arms again.

And the Cherelles were still popular.

The year before was a really big one.

But for the Cherelles, baby, it's you.

And back in my, oh, they did back in my arms again.

And tonight's the night.

So what were we listening to, Jim?

How did we hear our music?

Oh, on a transistor radio, probably.

We listened to W.O.K.Y.

and Don said he had Bob Berria as a guest here a couple weeks ago.

WCFL was another rock station out of Chicago.

WLS, I think, was the biggest rock station.

We listened to Dick Beyondy, G's Clark Weber,

Art Roberts, Jim Dunbar, and a host of others.

But yeah, that was our thing to do.

Listen to these guys on the radio.

And we took the radio everywhere because it was portable.

Yeah, like we talked about to the beach, even?

Yep, that's right.

That was a must.

I took my radio to the beach and always came back with sand in it.

I took such good care of it.

Not to get any sand in it.

I came back that was sand in the radio.

I couldn't get it out.

I don't know how it got in there because I never put it on the sand.

Of course, we saw a lot of movies back then, too, right?

We did.

No.

Don, you weren't here to see or go into our Venetian and the Rialto downtown.

And we didn't realize, just like Washington Parkpool,

I don't think we realized what we had.

No.

Because now, when you look back at it,

with the photos that have been colorized, too,

especially the Venetian, it was absolutely elaborate.

Yep, yep.

And fairly large, too.

The Rialto was good, but the Venetian, it's twin down the block,

was just amazingly beautiful.

Yep.

And then we had the capital in West Racine.

And I think you could get in for a dollar.

So that's summer.

Great place for dates, of course.

Sure.

We're actually giving away tickets later on this morning to two movie palaces

that are 100 years old or more.

Yep.

The oriental and the downer in the walk downer by UWM.

The oriental.

It's like a palace.

It is a palace.

Yeah.

It's like walking into a palace.

Sure.

Beautiful.

So we can take us to give away later to those two movies.

Well, actually, now I'm thinking about the Venetian,

Jim, with your collection of so many Racine things,

I think you've got some things from the Venetian

as a few other people do.

Oh, yeah.

I mentioned that griffin that I have.

It's like a gargoyle statue.

It's big.

Yeah, it's big.

Yeah, it looks horrible.

It's an image of a lion and an eagle.

But...

Stolen?

Stolen.

I'm carrying it out one day.

Yeah.

Is this a hot item then?

How much do you think it weighs?

Oh, more than I could lift.

Yeah.

There's also one at Marsh Meredith funeral home.

There's one there too.

They still one too?

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

Over there, dead bodies.

Yeah.

Oh.

Yeah.

We're now where we're in the Venetian Royal,

so though, we have to say,

we're thinking of our teenage summer.

We went for the balcony.

Yeah, and explain why.

And we were over there.

Yeah, we were holding hands, et cetera, et cetera,

in the balcony.

Yeah, in the balcony.

Yeah.

That's what you were doing, holding hands in the balcony.

Okay.

What were some of the movies we saw?

Well, sound of music was number one major.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

But here was that astounding gold finger,

Sean Connery,

and the Beatles with help.

Mm-hmm.

And also Kat Baloo.

Mm-hmm.

So, a dollar, and a nice thing about the summer,

was if we were in a line for the tickets,

it was the ticket booths were on the outside of the building.

Outside?

Right.

Yeah.

Right outside.

So, in the winter, you had to brave the elements.

Mm-hmm.

So, a summer date, you could just wait outside.

It was much much better.

You know what's playing at the Marcus Renaissance Theatre

this week?

No, what?

The Sound of Music.

No.

Yep.

Really?

60th Anniversary, the complete Roadshow version

with the intermission and everything is playing at the...

Well, look at pointing that out.

60th Anniversary.

60th Anniversary?

60th Anniversary.

This week at the Renaissance, the Sound of Music.

Geez.

Are you going to go?

I took my mother there for the 50th.

Oh.

It's sentimental.

Yeah, it's a good...

I've never saw...

I've never saw it when I was a kid.

My mother never saw it either.

We just saw it for the first time then.

Wow.

You would see how...

It was very captivating.

Yeah.

One movie too.

Yeah, that was good one.

That's right.

That's right.

Or TV shows?

No, we had the outdoor theaters, which we went to.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

We went to the outdoor.

Yeah, the Westgate and the Mid-City outdoor theaters.

And to see such classics as Planet of the Vampires,

Bloody Pit of Horror.

How about this one?

Bloodsuckers from Mars.

That one and Oscar, go ahead.

Yeah, right.

Hot Rod Rumble.

Yeah.

These were all great movies to take a date, uh, right, guys.

That's the whole hands, yeah.

Yeah, because the scarier the movie,

the closer she sat next to you in the car.

And that was when most cars had bench seats.

Was that your move?

Yeah.

The scary moves.

All right.

Hold on.

We're talking to Jim and Carol.

Carol, Jim 14, Jim, to see you.

This morning, we're talking about the summer of 65.

What were you doing on the summer of 65 and we're seeing?

Help.

I need somebody.

Help.

Not just anybody.

Help.

You know, I need someone.

Help.

When I was young, I saw much younger than today.

I never needed anybody's help in any way.

There you go, 1965.

The year with the Beatles, 1965.

Probably in the summer of 65.

We were listening to the Beatles with their second movie.

This time, it was in color.

Help.

Wow.

Long time ago.

It was right.

It was 60 years ago.

Carol, Jim, Jim, Jim, and Sierra here.

We're talking about the summer of 65.

What were you doing in recene in the summer of 65?

Let's continue our chat.

This is pretty good.

We're talking about all the things that were going on.

And let's pick off the second half hour.

Well, getting back to the outdoor theaters.

They had some unique features.

We could always sneak in the trunk, hiding in the trunk.

And then without paying, a lot of us did that.

We had those huge carpets.

Oh, yeah.

Our parents had the huge cars.

Right.

Yeah, you can get a couple cars.

Huge trucks.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Now, does anybody remember driving off with the speaker

still attached to your car?

My neighbor did it.

Really?

Yeah.

She did it.

She got home and the speaker was there.

She didn't see it.

It was in the back seat.

She ripped her right off.

And that happened a lot.

Oh, of course.

Yeah, that's right.

And you have some speakers, Jim.

Did you drive off of them?

No.

No, no, no, no.

We're stolen goods.

No, they were stolen.

That's right.

And I watched the outdoor speakers.

Yeah.

All right.

Now, they used to call the drive-ins the passion pit.

Of course.

That's right.

That's right.

I know with the held hands.

Yeah.

We wouldn't know about that though, Carol, right?

No.

Yeah.

Look, somebody else.

I know when the mid-city switched to an ex-rated feature,

cars would be lined up on Highway A, just off of 32,

just watching the free, free sites.

You couldn't hear anything.

But all you could do is see what's on the screen.

So, yeah.

Of course, they're pretty much gone now to outdoor theaters.

I think there's only 10 left in Wisconsin.

The closest one, I think, is in Jefferson.

Yeah.

And that one is for sale from what I understand.

So let's switch to TV.

Well, TV shows.

Now, do you have some...

Jim, or should I start on the TV shows?

Well, I'm just...

All the size of the TVs and what we were watching,

let's do that.

Yeah.

The size was usually about 21-inch.

We had 21-inch screens.

And I remember when they went to 23-inch,

everybody went, oh my gosh, wow.

You know?

Oh.

The color TVs, they were out already,

but most families didn't have them until,

maybe to mid to late 60s when they came down in price.

Portables were quite common,

rather than having those huge cabinets,

which were really like a piece of furniture in your house.

Remember those?

Yeah.

Repairing them were relatively inexpensive.

You just needed to change a tube, of course,

and that was about it.

Unless that was the picture tube,

then you knew you were out of luck.

Remember that?

Just to call the guy from the TV story came with a big box

of tubes in every thread.

And ours was built into the wall,

so we had to go in the boiler room to go around the back

and test all the tubes to see what was working.

Yeah.

That's right.

Number one program back then was Bonanza,

who remembers Red Skeleton.

If you like the comedy, he came to recene once

because Johnson's was one of his sponsors.

Oh.

I think you saw him, didn't you?

Yes, I saw him at the Rialto Theatre there.

He did a fantastic job.

Who remembers having to watch Lauren Swellke

because he only had one TV set

and your parents every Saturday night

tuned into Lauren Swellke.

And you were out of luck if you wanted to watch something else.

And it's still on every Saturday night.

Yes.

Lauren Swellke is still there.

That's right.

Yeah.

I remember my husband John's grandparents.

Yeah.

They watched it in the dark.

Maybe a lot of people did,

but I imagine they thought they were like in a movie theater.

Oh, could be.

So Lauren Swellke was on it as grandparents in the dark.

Oh, wow.

But American Dance stand.

Yeah.

That had been with us all for already for a number of years.

So looking up the year 1965 for American Dance stand,

Sunny and Cher were there on June 12th.

And they sang, got you, babe.

And the Rhineettes were there that summer.

Be my baby.

Then of course we were already attuned to Ed Sullivan.

Mm-hmm.

And we'd seen the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

But no, during that year, he got braver.

He had the animals, the righteous brothers,

and Petula Clark.

The other shows that we love were, oh, funny ones.

Like the Adam's family.

Andy Griffith, the fugitive.

Andy Griffith on multiple channels every day.

Yeah.

He's on constantly.

Yeah.

Monsters?

That was another one that went with the Adam's family,

remember?

Yes.

That's right, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right.

But a source of our entertainment was going downtown.

Now we had Alma Plaza.

Oh.

And we had zairs and terries.

Yep.

But downtown entertainment was great for us.

Everyone was still there.

And so we had favorite store.

Well, everyone was there.

Oh, yeah.

So.

Yeah.

Downtown was really our entertainment place to be.

For guys, we had the pool halls.

Ace Grill.

And Doug's on stage street.

And once we graduated, we could co-there without fear of being suspended

from St. Katz, because Montsenior Recolverac had no authority anymore

after we graduated.

And we also went to the bowling lanes downtown, J&W Arcade

and Hotel Racine lanes.

And we had our favorite stores, right, Carol?

Yes.

Some of the guys' stores would be wolf brothers for clothing,

Mr. Junior, Georgian Lester's, Joe Lawrence.

And I remember more Jones, the hardware store was very,

very popular.

But one of my favorite stores downtown was Fanny Farmer.

On the corner.

On the corner.

White.

White.

Is the exterior of that still that white?

I think I think so.

I don't know.

I don't think so.

But that was a spot lit at night.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fanny Farmer.

I bought some of your girls' stores.

Yeah.

Well, I was going to say, too, jumping around here.

Yeah.

The record marked.

Yes.

Now, that was right by the Venetian or alto.

I'm skipping around.

Right by the Venetian.

That's right.

But that was owned by the Nissan family.

Yep.

Marlene La Piccolo, who was one of the seven children

that were involved with the record mark.

Yep.

And this was so fun.

Her mother, June, knew music.

And all you had to do was to hum.

Hum, a few bars.

And June could tell you what song it was.

Yeah.

And she had the top 100.

Oh.

Okay.

She had the top 100 list.

But what was fun there was you could try your record.

Yeah.

There were booths in the back.

Yep.

With cloth hanging down.

Mm-hmm.

And that's where you tried your 45, which was going to cost you 99 cents.

And you take your tape recorder and record it and then walk out.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, we're learning a whole bunch of things about you, too, today.

Wow.

Stealing gargoyles.

Yeah.

Different things.

Now, you're stealing copyright and material.

Wow.

Wow.

The 60s.

I think you want us back anymore, Don.

We got a history.

Well, I think there's a couple of warrants out for you to come 60 years ago.

Well, one thing that I learned, do you know I didn't ask you this ahead of time when you were playing a 45 record on your record player?

That little gizmo in the center.

Mm-hmm.

Do you know the name of that?

Mm-hmm.

Well, I found a spider.

A spider?

Yeah, it was called a spider or an adapter.

Okay.

But the spider sounds better.

But it was a spindle.

That was there, too.

That was there, too.

Oh, you're talking about that when you pop it into the middle of the 45.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

If you didn't have a spindle, yeah.

Yeah.

That's right.

Now, women's stories, Jim, you would ask me about that.

Yeah.

Oh, well, we had zons and idols to upscale, to really buy anything.

But some more unusual ones, too, were now Ruth Karns.

That was on Sixth Street.

Mm-hmm.

And we were getting to the age that summer, where, yes, maybe older cousins, older siblings,

were getting married.

And maybe we'd been to Ruth Karns if we were at Horlick or high school formals.

Mm-hmm.

But Ruth Karns was, as you gals will remember, kind of like we thought going to Paris,

because it was very fancy, but also down to earth to help us.

But women would bring out the dresses.

And we would be ready for the next wedding, maybe thinking of our own.

Talking about the summer is 65, Jim and Carol are here this morning.

And let's continue on, still talking about stores, right?

Yes.

What comes to my mind, too, is head and luggage.

No, that was really upper end, I would say.

But going along with our graduation summer, several of my friends, and I,

for our graduation presence, very nice from our parents.

American Tourist Su pieces from head and light blue to go away to college.

And we were so proud of our American Tourist luggage, but it had kind of a sad message, exciting, but sad.

Also, downtown, we gals, Walgreens and the Red Cross.

Now, we had a lot of hair products to get, because centered around mainly the hairstyle of the flip,

we needed a lot of products for the flip.

We also had Tony Perms, so a lot of hair stuff at the drug stores.

So that was our downtown, trying to get our go-go boots, too.

I think we had some shoe outlets.

My mother wore go-go boots.

That's amazing to me.

I mean, she was with that.

Not only that is when my brother played with the Shangri-La's.

One of the twins in the Shangri-La's, her boots were hurting, so my mother changed go-go boots with her.

Oh, yeah.

And never she never switched back.

So when you see the Shangri-La's on TV, those are my mother's go-go boots.

You know, I just wish we had met her.

We could have asked her a few things.

Well, in the 90s, she wasn't wearing go-go boots anymore, so.

Well, Jim, we also had, of course, shopping at Elmwood.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we did a program here about the plaza a couple months ago.

We went to Goldblast, of course.

Crescus had a dime store there.

What else do we have over there?

Tompkins, Velvet Freeze.

If you wanted, you know, some ice cream or whatever.

We could go bowling there at Spencer's, play miniature golf.

They had a nice miniature golf course there, too.

But we did buy a lot of our clothes at the plaza.

I forgot the name of the men's store.

Was it Richmond's?

I think so.

I think so.

Those were the days of pegpants.

Modress shirts.

Tom, you remember Modress shirts.

I had them.

Yeah, did you?

Okay.

The Nehru jacket probably came out a little bit later.

Yeah, that's 67.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, and this was before bell bottoms, of course.

But another store just west of the plaza was Terry's.

He went up in 1962, and their claim, the fame was,

they were the first store to open up on a Sunday.

And our parish pastor warned us about not shopping on a Sunday

because Sunday was meant for going to church,

relaxing, being with friends and family,

and we were not to go to that store.

Well, they had a Sunday blue laws where you couldn't open on a Sunday.

Yeah.

Unless you were a food store or a hardware store.

Those are just stores allowed to go open on Sunday.

Well, my dad took us for a drive that day,

and the cars were lined up halfway around the block trying to get in.

So much for that sermon.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

We got a shop.

Yep.

Yep.

And we still have time to talk about some of our downtown dance venues.

Well, I wanted to mention zayers too.

Okay, of course.

Now, zayers is near and dear to my heart,

because growing up on Carl El Avenue,

and prior to the driving our cars are getting rides,

people would walk to zayers on the north side from all over.

We gals.

So zayers was enormous.

And so, even in that summer,

you know, if you needed Bermuda shorts or something,

you could just run over to zayers.

They had cameras, tents, jewelry.

They had a hair salon.

One of my favorite stories about it too was,

Lou Arnone, an actual professional person,

was in the stereo department.

And he would be playing the stereo sound music as so loud

to acquaint people with how great the stereo sound was.

But anyway, zayers gave so many Horlick students jobs.

And I know I'm going on and on here,

but some of my friends worked at zayers.

Now it's hold up.