The Gym

Another CK Alum suggested I write about "sock hops". He made his suggestion about 2 weeks ago and I've been trying to figure out what to write ever since then. He probably should write the blog post himself, because obviously he has some memories about those dances.

I have put a picture of the gymnasium at CK High School and one of a sock hop during the early sixties, from a couple of annuals, our Echo--the gym picture because as I was thinking about sock hops I began to think about other things the gym was used for.

Let's start with the sock hops. Until I started to look through my old Echos for a picture of a sock hop, I had forgotten that they were held after football and basketball games. (Those were the days we stayed up LATE!) My very first aural memory when Dean suggested sock hops as a theme, was a song, "Venus", sung by Frankie Avalon. We danced the "chalypso" to that song and others that had a Latin beat. For those of you who don't think I have spelled that word right, let me remind you that the word was a combination of Cha-cha and Calypso. Remember the Calypso, Harry Belefonte and our first exposure to Island music? Day-o, day-ay-ay-o--midnight come and we wanna go ho-ome...Anyway, Venus, Goddess of love that you are...we danced the Chalypso to that song, we did the stroll to some slow tunes, including the one titled The Stroll. We danced our version of the jitterbug, which by the late 50s was the dance that had evolved on American Bandstand, which we watched on our black and white TVs every afternoon after school.

Some girls probably learned how to dance from their older brothers or sisters, but I was the oldest in my family so my partner was the handle of the refrigerator. I danced with that cool partner in the kitchen when nobody was looking, because I would have been absolutely mortified if anyone had seen me. The Trouble and the Beauty with the frig was that it didn't move--when I got with a real partner at a sock hop, he moved, and maybe not even with the beat. I recall liking sock hops, liking being with a group of kids, moving with the music, dancing. I don't REALLY remember, but I'm pretty sure I went with a group of girls--strength in numbers--and there was probably intrigue and nervousness, as we wondered who would ask us to dance. In some sock hop pictures there are musicians so it appears there was sometimes live music, but I recall music coming from other sources--I think the person who suggested this topic would remember better than I where the music came from.

The gym was the hub of the high school and in addition to sock hops we went there for assemblies, pep rallies, to have our pictures taken for the Echo, basketball games, cheerleader tryouts and maybe most memorably of all, P(hysical).E(ducation).

P.E. was and probably still is, one of the most emotionally charged memories of high school. For those not athletically inclined it was an hour a day of mortification, unwanted strenuous activity, communal showers, sweat, complex rules, an hour we tried to get out of in any way we could. I can see all of us girls lined up in our snow-white shorts and blouses, trying to get noticed, or remain hidden, while "captains" were choosing teams, hoping to get on a team with our friends if we had to be on a team at all. If you had no physical talent, as appeared to be the case for me, team play was the worst, because others were counting on me to pass the ball to someone who could score, dribble the basketball only the 3 times allowed in "girls" basketball, not mess up. It was bad enough that I couldn't do a proper summersault during tumbling, or get out of the way fast enough in dodge ball, but if I let down a team member in basketball, I couldn't face myself. I had to pretend to take all the yelling with good humor, otherwise I would have cried. Lots of girls hated the showering after the class, but that was the easy part for me. Run into the shower with your towel around you, get your feet wet so the P.E. teacher would think you'd taken a shower, run out, get dressed. Easy. Kind of like the "ostrich principle"--if you didn't look at anybody else, they weren't seeing you. I got lucky during tumbling season one year--I fell off a chair at home, cracking my tailbone. The doctor gave me a 6 week pass from P.E. What a beautiful 6 weeks that was!

I wonder what P.E. was like for girls who liked sports and who did well at them. I got a little taste of what that might have been like when we played badminton and volleyball on summer potluck nights in the 70s, at a church I attended. I was actually good at both--I had confidence, which grew every time I was able to stretch to hit that birdie or jump to return a volleyball over the net. It was fun, my body worked well, I felt like an athlete. I was astounded that the same person who slumped her way through P.E. could actually do well on a court and that others found me a valuable member of a team. It was a total turnaround from the way I had felt about myself in P.E. and a tremendous confidence booster. I wonder if P.E. is still as brutal a class as it was when we were teenagers.

Pep rallies, on the other hand, were one of the best memories of what went on in the gym. Hundreds of us attended, from all classes, following the cheerleaders in rhyming chants, meant to psych us up and get us ready to cheer our team on to victory in the basketball or football games that night. The cheerleaders, who seemed like stars, worked hard, jumped high, screamed at us to scream louder, raise the roof, follow the leaders. Fight, fight, fight for CKHS, win the victory, we sang. 2 bits, 4 bits, 6 bits, a dollar--all for CK stand up and holler! we yelled. We stomped, we clapped, we sang, we roared and afterwards the enthusiasm for the game that night was high and excited. We carried that energy to the games and we yelled and sang there, too, and sometimes we didn't even watch the game, because we were so busy showing our pep. We can only hope the guys running up and down the court or busting heads on the field, trying to win another game for the school, didn't realize we weren't always watching. We loved them just the same and we were always proud of them, no matter how our attention span may have wavered.

The gym--we spent a lot of time there, we sweated, we yelled, we danced, we were thrilled, we were embarrassed, we had romance, we had intrigue, we had hopes and dreams. We were youthful, energetic, confused, happy, frustrated. The gym held us all, and all our emotions.