Author:
Wes
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Date Posted: 22:23:12 11/28/12 Wed
Both in 1958. I don't think I would want to take a couple of girls on a rather conservative first date to either of them. I origianlly considered Gigi, but it didn't come out until midyear.
-- Wes
>Didn't South Pacific and Cat on a hot tin roof come
>out about that time.
>
>>Another column picked up from the paper. The story is
>>far from done and probably won't be posted for years.
>>
>>-- Wes
>>
>>-----------------
>>
>>
>>November is National Novel Writing Month among other
>>things, so of course I've been working on one, not
>>that I might not do it at other times of the year. I
>>spent much of the Thanksgiving weekend working on a
>>story of four college kids getting to be friends in
>>1958; in the story they'll stay friends the rest of
>>their lives. (I haven't gotten that far in the story
>>yet.)
>>
>>Now, setting a story in 1958 means that I want it to
>>sound like it's 1958, and getting the details right
>>turned into part of the fun.
>>
>>For instance, the four kids go on a first date. Where
>>are they going to go? To a movie, naturally; some
>>things don't change. But what movie? Thank you,
>>Google! Bridge on the River Kwai doesn't strike
>>any of them as a great idea for a first date movie.
>>(OK, OK. If there are any real super movie buffs or
>>hairsplitters out there, yes, that's a 1957 movie, but
>>this scene is set in early 1958 and it probably would
>>still have been in first run.)
>>
>>In any case, (and that's probably not a phrase that
>>would have been commonly used in 1958) and considering
>>a limited selection, they wind up going to
>>Vertigo. After the movie, one of the girls
>>comments, "It wasn't too bad, but I don't know if I
>>liked it." (I was surprised to learn that on some
>>lists that the 1957 Vertigo has recently
>>outplaced Citizen Kane as the best movie of all
>>time. Thanks again, Google!)
>>
>>But anyway, in the story the four kids have fun, and
>>go on to other things. After all, going on a date on a
>>Friday beats hanging around a dorm room, especially
>>when the dorm room is devoid of some of the things
>>some college kids would consider essentials today:
>>things like microwaves, refrigerators, portable TVs,
>>video games, computers, and members of the opposite
>>sex.
>>
>>They might have gone down to the dorm lounge to watch
>>TV (almost certainly black and white) but what would
>>they have watched? It's easy to come up with the names
>>and some details of popular shows like Dragnet
>>(All I want are the facts, Ma'am.) but sometimes
>>even Google isn't a big help in telling me what night
>>the show was on back then, so I had to be a little
>>fuzzy about it.
>>
>>During the story one of the kids buys a used Triumph
>>roadster, an English sports car. But was it a TR-2 or
>>a TR-3? Good question on that one too, but thanks to
>>Wikipedia, I decided it was a TR-2. Another of the
>>kids drives a '53 Nash Statesman -- not a first choice
>>for a college car, but he got it from his dad for the
>>right price (which is to say free), so he doesn't have
>>much room for complaint. But was it a six or a V-8?
>>Turns out Nash wasn't making V-8s in that era; I'd
>>thought they were. The parents of one of the girls
>>drives a DeSoto. I already knew that was a V-8, but
>>that point wasn't necessary for the story.
>>
>>The following summer, one of the girls in the story
>>likes to wear one-piece playsuits. That helped place
>>the story in time; I don't think I've seen a one-piece
>>playsuit on a female older than about five in decades,
>>although they were once popular for girls of the right
>>age group. In my day girls were required to wear them
>>in gym class. They were actually kind of cute,
>>although I doubt you'll find many girls from my high
>>school class who would agree with me. Of course, I had
>>to do some research on that, (again, thanks Google!)
>>to find out that they're considered retro these days,
>>but they may be regaining popularity.
>>
>>1958 was a long time ago -- I was ten -- and my memory
>>of those days isn't very clear, so it was nice to be
>>able to go back and research those things online. If
>>one of those kids in 1958 was researching a story set
>>in 1904 (the same distance back) they wouldn't have
>>had the internet to help them. But, I'd bet that 1904
>>would have seemed as strange to them as 1958 is to us.
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