Ah… here’s a memory from long ago.
I moved from Brunswick to Chippewa in the summer of ’67. It was a fairly dramatic cultural shift. At that time, back in Brunswick, the kids broke into a number of very defined groups.
The best known were the Greasers. I’ve since learned that particular label was applied to many different groups in different parts of the country. In Brunswick it applied to guys who wore black dress pants, pointy black dress shoes (especially, “Regals”, which had patent leather points.), and white Banlon sport shirts. They slicked their hair back with Brylcream. They were the bad boys, the tough guys. They got into a lot of fights. Some carried knives. They were generally considered the criminal element. Granted, not all fit the stuff after the word Brylcream. Some just played the part. The girls had big teased hair and lots of makeup.
Then there were the Collegiants. These were later known as Preppies in other places. They weren’t quite Jocks, though they were tight with the jocks. These were those “good kids”, good grades, student government, that stuff. The girls were cheerleaders, pep club members and such. The Greasers liked picking on them.
Jocks were the athletes, generally the larger, dumber ones. They liked to fight. This brought them into conflict with the Greasers a lot. The Jocks generally got along with the Collegiants, mainly because the smarter athletes were Collegiants.
Then we had the Surfers. It always seemed strange that we were called Surfers. We wore jeans and as close to T-Shirts as we could get away with. Like the Collegiants, we were generally smarter. We were also generally smart asses. We weren’t generally very athletic, though a few got into track or cross-country. We let our hair fall in front of our faces. The girls were harder to spot. They looked like the Collegiant girls, they just weren’t as popular. (and were usually smarter.)
And there were the Smart Kids. In other times and places, they were called Nerds or Geeks. Yeah, the kids with slide rules and pocket protecters.
And then, during the summer of ’67, the Beatles released Sergeant Pepper and I was moving to Chippewa. I let my hair grow and got flowered shirts and crazy ties. In London I would have been called a Mod. Yeah, but in Chipp I was a hippie.
But in Chippewa or Leroy, there just wasn’t the social structure I knew. There were still Collegiants and Jocks, but nobody called them that. There were still the Smart Kids. There were no Greasers. There were no Surfers (though there were those people that water skied). There were Rednecks though.
Wow. I didn’t know what was up with them. They were like a cross between Greasers and Jocks. Well, like Jocks in that they were usually pretty big and/or strong. Some were rather criminal.
And I was the hippie.
As time went by and junior high turned into high school, I became more hippie. Back in Brunswick, lots of people were turning more hippie. Okay, the Greasers became more Biker. The Surfers turned into Hippies or Collegiants.
At Cloverleaf, well, it seemed there were a handful of hippies. Everyone else seemed to be Rednecks or not Rednecks.
And so it goes…
(I didn’t tell this story before, did I?)