out in the mountains

Amazon Trail:

 

Jackie Marine, REALTOR

I , North Professionals
(802)655-3377 2:223
(890)639-4520 x323
5ackleiMmelnoۤ:%veri2on.net

   

333§"ah:‘rwRTaad.Btr&tatan;  e

  

  
  
    
 
   

Eitifitmm
as-:m 

 

A io\*§.ug,l§.* i»”€’51.'i)f§I.’?(Ti iartril1ettsa--
slyte l‘SC3¥t‘llE‘ an a hit] in 'St5ii;?hU¥'}*i
This new mitt h«..sm.e htzasta
wpatiiswtw mxvmst, ¥ttmii‘}‘-aeirtiti
kiffihkfi, uictzant iivi't1;,: more

with firetvlace, 2 mil batitrm_:a2s,
a£iflt.’.‘i so flitltlii more? 0:213. ‘§i2Es9.i3i}t}

»£641.Reute'£..Mir_ld1abnry -:'~.~.~ ~»--«~-.«-.--.-—- I we

.  802-3848.-9999 
   "

  
 
 

<7: ;:~er< 5;-*:~‘;ef3

  

llimnosis warns
lam Sltttflnumn, ltflvn
ltinllltllerailtst

 A 802-345-2948
or 453-5411

  
   
  

Sleep better, Lose Weight, Conquer Fears
and Phobias, Control Habits, Manage Stress

  

e don’t think of our
every day lives as mak-
ing history, but some-

times they do. _

As American kids, my
generation was required to dress up
for endless occasions, like church
and going downtown. It would not
have done, in the late forties and
early fifties, to shop at a depart-
ment store in t-shirt and jeans.

I have a black and white
photo of myself at seven or eight,
standing stiffly, with a reluctant
smile, wearing a light-colored dress
under a navy blue spring coat with
lace on its collar. I am also decked
out in black patent leather shoes,
white anklets and white gloves. My
mother had cajoled my father into
snapping a photo of me after
church.

Years later, at the Irish
bric-a-brac filled home of a
Massachusetts friend, I was not
surprised when Mary donned finery
to go hang out downtown on a
Saturday night. No more than mine
would her mother have let her out
the door without dressing up. I had
the feeling that Mary herself was
mortified to be seen with me — the
dressiest clothing I had was my
Girl Scout uniform shorts and
white shirt (we were camp coun-
selors on our weekend off). Was
Mary’s skirt and blouse any less a
uniform?

I felt like my dress up
clothes were prison uniforms. I was
a prisoner — of my time. Yet, other
little girls didn’t seem to mind the
discomfort of crinolines or summer
halter tops and pedal pushers
(today’s capris). They showed off
their clothes, chattered about them,
kept themselves clean and neat and
carefully covered their legs when
they sat. They baffled me.

Maybe I was spoiled. I
got to wear hand me downs from
the family across the courtyard,
including the boy’s jerseys and
pants. I had a taste, in my loose
cords, of the liberty of moving
through the world that boys had. I
could climb trees without little
boys chanting about underpants, I
could build roads through the
muddy back yard for my toy trucks
and I could flip around the lawn,
doing handstands, somersaults and
cartwheels. All of this would have
been forbidden in skirts.

Like childhood itself, this

 

freedom was fated to end. As I
approached young-lady age I had
one passion: I wanted a pair of
what we then called dungarees.
Before school started that year, my
mother and I went shopping. I
expected to get a pair of dungarees.
My mother was horrified; she’d
been thinking in terms of a trainer
bra. Normally I did not argue or
fight, but the dungaree wars were
an exception. Although this was
forty years ago, I can remember
detailsfof tlié st()“’r"e"clepa1'fm5’nt”"" ‘I

'where we stood," locked in mother-

daughter combat. I can remember
the rack where the beautiful blue
dungarees hung. It was to be a few
years, though, before I felt that
coarse, stiff denim on my body,

_ could roll up the bottoms in the

style of the day. It would be anoth-
er decade before my mother
donned her first pair of slacks (she
never worked in a factory during
World War II), although eventually
she, like other women of her gener-
ation, took to pants, especially
pantsuits, like they’d never resisted
their daughters.

Something was changing.
It would be a while before women
wore pants to that most patriarchal
of institutions, church, but nice
women’s slacks became acceptable
attire for going downtown.
Meanwhile, the schools fought for I
the status quo. I fumed daily as I
walked the miles to and from
school in snow, ice or rain in a gar-
ment open at the knees. By high
school I was convinced that the
purpose of skirts was to allow boys
easy access to girls’ bodies.

Never did it occur to me
that other girls might be thinking
along the same lines and that we
were headed toward a second wave
of feminism. It was slow coming.
In college, we could wear pants,
including what we now called

:.

The Dungaree Wars

jeans, to classes, although I remem-
ber some young women who’d
never owned a pair. Skirts were
required, however, at dinner in the
dining hall. That made no sense to
me — rush back to the dorm after
classes to change? It took me forty
years before I realized that meals
were considered a time for socializ-
ing with boys. Of course young
women had to look available to
them. ‘

I didn’t understand that
compulsory skirts were a feminist
(not a gay) issue. I thought it was
just my queemess that balked at
dresses and skirts. I.was not con-
scious of playing a little part in his-
tory, or herstory, but the ground
was swelling beneath me.

Entering the work force
after college was like going to the"
dining hall 40 hours a week. There
was simply no question of wearing
pants to work at the newspaper
where I wrote obituaries, or at the

college where I typed‘_(badly)wrAegi,s-g
tration schedfies. BuffFeedofii"W§§

in the air. Civil rights protests
could not be ignored. Women were
gathering under the banners of
feminism, Stonewall happened. I
worked for the state then, and we
women would talk at breaks about
a mass action to wear pants to
work and see what happened. We
felt so powerless that we actually
feared losing our jobs, but when a
few of us defied the rules, nothing
happened. We just kept wearing
pants and eventually the rules were
quietly changed to suit us.

Such a small statement,
but we weren’t the only ones. The
women’s movement fed on such
tiny victories and burgeoned
because so many of us felt empow-
ered and used our newfound
strength to wage other campaigns.
The dungaree wars, fought by defi-
ant young girls at home, in school,
at the workplace, were really, after
all, a big deal. V

Copyright Lee Lynch 2005. Lynch
is the author of eleven books
including The Swashbuckler and
the Morton River Valley Trilogy.
She lives on the Oregon Coast. Her
web page is at http.'//leelyneh6‘.tri-
p0d.com.

E0