Fashion

In 1957 Lowry, you would never get any boy child to admit to being fashion conscious, or have the slightest clue of what fashion was. And the choices available to us at McIver’s Store or the Sears & Roebuck or Monkey Ward catalog made the idea comical. 

The mail order catalog options didn't really matter, because ordering from a catalog for kids wear almost never happened, except perhaps Superman pajamas or mukluks for Christmas. But, the Sears toy section pages were well thumbed with little arrows penciled in - hope against hope. (And I might have peeked once at the women’s underwear page, since that was such a mystery). Pajamas were the standard Christmas gift and hopefully they would be Roy Rogers or Davy Crockett models.  

Once a year, just before school restarted, my family journeyed to far away Alexandria to Iverson's Shoes for Buster Brown's and Bob’s Clothes Store for black slacks, white shirt and maybe a sweater for fall and winter church wear. 

But for everyday wear, McIver’s store was the destination, excepting perhaps for the banker, who had to wear a suit - or the town ladies - I had no idea where they got their clothes. McIver’s had the goods. Dry goods. Lee jeans, Lee work uniforms & bib overalls, coveralls, flannel shirts, work boots, socks, jackets, hats - a classic mercantile. Howard and Mary kept the place shipshape and well stocked. It doubled as a grocery, although not as well stocked as Vrooman’s up the street. 

Several businesses had apartments over their main level and McIver’s was one. Like the restaurant, there was a stairway along the north wall. McIver’s was a covered wooden structure against the outside wall. Wimpy lived in one of the apartments. (Wimpy did day work for my dad digging ditches - in total silence.  But a dependable worker.) Olga and the 3 girls lived in the other.

One of my idle interests involved McIver's Store. I would occasionally stop by the window well on the south-side and look into the basement where Howard candled eggs. If he was in a good mood, he’d invite me down through the back door and into the basement to get a close look at the process.  Cooled me on egg salad.

Our summer wardrobe choices were restrictive, but even then, long before the Nike swoosh, there was a “look” we sought. The big decision was whether your Ked’s Red Ball Jets should be black canvas or white canvas. I thought the circular rubber ball on the ankle looked better on black. And blacks didn’t need to be washed as often as the whites.  At some point Keds came out with low-cuts, but if high-tops were good enough for Bob Cousy, they were good enough for me.

The second major decision was whether we turned up the cuffs of our Lee jeans one roll or two. Since these were clothes for growing boys and were expected to last a full season, having no cuff was not an option. Or at least a foolish one if the day’s events included trying to run to first base.  So cuffs were driven both by economics and a hope that summer would produce a growth spurt.  Our jeans were always 3 or 4 inches longer than necessary plus plenty of room in the girth. Add a belt, preferably with a rearing horse buckle, a white tee shirt, and for me, the most important piece of the wardrobe, the baseball cap, and I was set to face the summer.  Shorts were just not worn, except when swimming.

One influence on our apparel wish list was the relatively new medium of television. TV antennas were popping up on most every rooftop in Lowry in the (often vain) attempt to pull in WCCO, KSTP or WTCN from the Twin Cities. The word "rotor" made its way into my vocabulary. TV's influence was in its infancy but the Davy Crockett craze made Madison Avenue types drool - and what havoc they have wrought. TV westerns found their mark on my age group. I tried not to miss evening shows "Wagon Train" with Flint McCullough and "Have Gun Will Travel" with Paladin or the Saturday morning 1/2 hour serials where the plot had the hero saving his sidekick most every week. "Tonto, you go into town and ..." How many times do you have to get beat up to know that's a bad idea? You would think that since I was nicknamed "Hoppy", I would be a fan-boy of Hopalong Cassidy, but I really didn't care for the man-in-black outfit nor the conehead hat. And since wearing a Lone Ranger mask around was a bit too quirky for me, especially over my thick glasses, I opted for a Roy Rogers look, even though breaking into song with Dale was not my idea of real cowboy behavior.

This was the era of the “heinie” crewcut, apparently named for standard German soldier hairstyles. Although the town had a barbershop, it was the rare family that went to the extravagance of paying for their kids’ haircuts. A clipper could be had at the hardware store for a couple bucks and crewcuts were pretty simple to produce.  A stool, a towel and 10 minutes. Marian did mine using a bowl to keep the sides even.  How girls got haircuts was not something I thought much about, but the reek & the squealing coming from the beauty parlor in the back of the barbershop made me wonder what kind of ordeal they went through.

The final piece of the wardrobe was a bicycle. In the summer, it was part of our attire. We rarely walked anywhere, except to church. Mine was a red and white 24” Schwinn with a carrier fender on the back, and a 12 watt battery-powered light on the handlebars with my baseball glove gently nudged against it and standard balloon tires. The flat-topped back fender was practical since it allowed a more comfortable “bump” ride for another kid.  But since going bare-foot was not uncommon, “toes in the spokes” injuries were fairly common. We were pioneers of mountain biking, even though the nearest mountain was a thousand miles away.  We understood that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so short cuts through yards and down the back alleys were not only quicker but also more fun.

Sundays called for a bit more formality. Church attire for men always included a suit & tie. Some borderline pagans might show up with a sport coat and tie. And, always a hat – for both men and women. And women always wore a dress. For some reason, my mom thought I should wear a bow-tie added to the white shirt, black pants, socks and shoes - and white tee shirt and briefs.  

I thought it made me look like Garry Moore.