Hoods

When I was growing up in the fifties in East Dallas, we used the term "hood" to refer to adolescent boys that were on the edge, i.e., engaged in various juvenile delinquent activities such as Elvis hairdoes, drinking, smoking, having sex, riding motorcycles, carrying firearms, drag-racing, using marijuana, or vandalism/gangfights/crime.

The origin of this term distinguishes it from the later slang term associated with "neighborhood."

Check these links:

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20010327

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=hoodlum

http://www.answers.com/topic/hoodlum

http://www.answers.com/hood

Nuclear Warheads Part 2

During my years at Reinhardt, I remember two emergency situations that rattled my mother enough to let me know my life was in danger. The first was April 2, 1957, when at about 3 pm, the sky turned green and a tornado touched down in Oak Cliff. My mother and neighborhood friends had watched the sky and also probably through radio or television learned that the tornado was heading east toward east Dallas. So she and a friend rushed to Reinhardt, found us children, and rushed back home, where we prepared to sit through the storm in our bathtub. Fortunately, the tornado made it no further than near downtown. Many other children that afternoon stayed in the building in tornado drill formations. On the evening of October 22,1961, my mother again became very rattled, telling me when I got home that President Kennedy was getting us into a nuclear war. That night, Kennedy had delivered a televised address announcing the discovery of missile installations in Cuba. He proclaimed that the United States would "...regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response..." He also placed a naval quarantine blockade on Cuba to prevent further Soviet shipments of military weapons from arriving there.

The following is an educational video for children developed by Civil Defense in the early 1950s.

Nuclear Warheads Flying Toward Reinhardt

Most of us children at Reinhardt lived in nuclear families and also live under the shadow of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union.

I believe that we practiced three types of emergency drills as children:

--Fire drills in which each class marched single-file from rooms to a designated area at a safe distance from the building.

--Tornado ( a real possibility) drills where we would line up against lockers with hands behind neck and away from transom windows.



















This photo is from 1960-61 PTA Yearbook, from the
Reinhardt Library, likely of 6th grade students in
a tornado drill.

--Bomb (a remote risk but with high impact) drills in which we assumed a “duck and cover” position in halls.




To Be Continued

Boys Fighting and the Bridge Party Part 5

In The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan selectively quotes from a 1960 Ladies Home Journal feature article about a Dallas housewife who leads a perfect suburban housewife life that includes four afternoons a week playing bridge (always finishing in time to be home when her two children return from school). The above picture is an illustration in the article, which is provided in full in the reference page linked at the bottom of this post.

It was probably the evening of the bridge party that my mother angrily upbraided me. I don’t remember the exact words, but it was something to the effect that I had destroyed her friendship with Mrs. Williams, because I was so selfish, and I better keep in mind in the future that I should never again do anything that would damage her friendships with her friends. I accepted her reprimand and slunk away, but what was unsaid was what I had done wrong. I knew enough about Kenny, his mom and my mom to intuit that this is probably what had happened: Kenny, as always, got into one of those intimate, confessional talks with his mother, explaining (and probably distorting the facts) that I had insulted him, then fought him, all over my preference for the hoods who hung out on the corner. And Mrs. Williams, as always, after drawing out the confessional, would provide wise counsel and possibly a behavioral plan to correct the problem and get her son on the right track. On this occasion, Mrs. Williams apparently also felt she should advocate on her son’s behalf to my mother at the bridge party. The added social dimension was that my mother had not been part of Mrs. Williams’ social set. I don’t know that she had any great ambition to be a friend--she had others--but it must have been a difficult encounter for both of them.

I’ve approached this memory as a study to better understand my mother, Mrs. Williams, and the world they lived in. I don’t in any way intend to denigrate the social activity of bridge parties in the fifties. My wife, age 58 and the daughter of a Dallas fifties housewife, is a member of a women’s book club. It is by invitation only, made up of women in their fifties, bound by having raised children together and sharing in various social and political values. They don’t seem to talk about books much, and their club meetings seem very similar to Mrs. Williams’ bridge parties. They just don’t dress up so much and do it on weekday afternoons. Bridge is not a game for dummies (my mother is still an imposing bridge player at age 87), and those fifties women may well have been able to run intellectual circles around my wife’s social group.

I don’t buy all of Betty Friedan’s characterization of the fifties suburban housewife as uniformly focused on the question of

"Is this all?" At midcentury, said Friedan. such was the question forming on virtually every middle-class American housewife's lips. Or, perhaps as often, they just spoke of the problem as "the problem" : the "mystique of feminine fulfillment" that from 1945 onward "became the cherished and self-perpetuating core of contemporary American culture" "the problem," that is, called "Occupation: housewife." Ironically, in the most affluent country in the world, the problem was precisely affluence and the adjustment it facilitated to convenient social roles. Moreover, especially for women of advanced educational status in the best educated country in the world, it was even more ironically a problem of education. [Beidler]

But I do think it was true in my neighborhoods, for a short time in history, many women were full time housewives, with much leisure time, in a booming post World War II economy, where women had few professional or even unskilled work opportunities. The social and home lives of many women likely were real pressure cookers. And they were bombarded as we are today by Madison Avenue hype that is insulting to our intelligence. Much was unspoken in my home, but I don’t think I’m projecting to say that across the neighborhoods, everyone strove for an image of the perfect nuclear family and avoided topics such as divorce, adoption, social and racial injustice, mental retardation, alcoholism, physical abuse of women and children, sexual orientation, and other sensitive issues that we are much more open about today. When my mother did obtain part time employment, after 18 or so years as a housewife, her job as a department store credit department clerk brought on remarkable gains in her confidence and self worth.

For more authoritative discussion of some of the issues Friedan raised, click here.

Boys Fighting and the Bridge Party Part 4

My childhood friend Kenny Williams lived on the corner of Estacado Dr. and Fuller Dr. His home was a very foreign place to me—a seeming well lighted place where both parents created a very structured life for their three children. As Kenny’s chum, I accompanied him to many activities—-Sunday school, church summer day camp, Cub and Boy Scouts, church baseball and basketball leagues, and Demolay. Most of the time, Kenny’s mom did the driving though my mom did some of the time and Kenny’s dad did some of the chores for the young manhood activity of Wednesday night Demolay meetings. Kenny’s parents, unlike mine, were deeply involved in all these activities. For the most part, I didn’t or wasn’t made to feel as a tag-along, except maybe to church. The scouts and the teams were just as much mine as Kenny’s. I felt a bit uncomfortable one time when Kenny told me his mother [or perhaps his father] resented driving more than my Mom, but that passed soon. In retrospect, I think Kenny’s mother was always kind to me because she was a kind person but also because she was focused on cultivating her first born son, her son wanted his best friend to accompany him, and it was just easier for everyone if I came and no one complained.

While Kenny’s well lighted home was perplexing to me and no place I wanted to spend much time, across the street from Kenny's house on the parkway somehow not part of any residential yard, the older boys gathered at the Dallas Times Herald delivery point. Six afternoons a week and early Sunday mornings, the truck dropped off all the bundles for Mr. Kuhn’s district. My brother, five years older than me and probably about 15 at the time, worked hard to gain a route that included Fuller, Eastwood, Naylor, Pinecrest, and Sylvia. It was one of the smaller and less income-producing routes, but my brother felt it fit him because he was a small teenager, and the pivotal factor in being a paperboy was if you were strong enough to carry all your folded and banded papers in your bag for the entire route, Thursdays and Sundays being the most heavyweight days and Saturdays the lightest.
















Other big boys hung out at the paper corner and did a lot of big boy things like smoke, talk about sex, and ride motorcycles and even drive hot rods. So I was fairly cooperative in helping my brother and hanging out with the big boys, even if my brother abused me by not paying me and making me do all the work.

So on a schoolday afternoon, as I was walking along the sidewalk on the east end of Eastwood toward the paper corner, Kenny walks up and offers me a piece of candy. It was a plate of hard candy, maybe three by three inches and on first taste I didn’t find it very sweet or easy to handle. As we licked our candy, here comes one of the big boy paperboys on a Moped. He stops beside us and asks if I can help him by giving him some of my brother’s rubber bands from our house. I’m flattered and also excited to get a first-time ride on the back of a motorcycle. As I climb on the back behind him, I’m not sure what to do with the big piece of candy. It is too big and sticky to put in a pocket, so I throw it to the concrete, clutch the big boy's waist with my two free hands, and accelerate behind the big boy down towards home.

Later that afternoon, as I walk back up to the paper corner, Kenny confronts me. He’s pissed off because I threw the candy to the ground. I’m not real proud of doing it but also not going to apologize or anything. So we get into one of those interminable wrestling matches which ended, as usual, in a draw with both of us exhausted but neither giving in. What I did not know at the time was that the next afternoon, my Mom had been invited to Mrs. Williams’ afternoon bridge party.

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To Be Continued

Boys Fighting and the Bridge Party Part 3

From The Feminine Mystique
"A number of women told me about great bleeding blisters that break out on their hands and arms. ‘I call it the housewife’s blight,’ said a family doctor in Pennsylvania. ‘I see it so often in these young women with four, five and six children who bury themselves in their dishpans. But it isn’t caused by detergent and it isn’t cured by cortisone.’”

To Be Continued

Boys Fighting and the Bridge Party Part 2

From The Feminine Mystique
“Sometimes she thought the problem was with her husband, or her children, or that what she really needed was to redecorate her house. Or move to a better neighborhood, or have an affair, or another baby. Sometimes she went to a doctor with symptoms she could barely describe: ‘A tired feeling. . . I feel like crying without any reason’ (A Cleveland doctor called it ‘the housewife syndrome.')"



To Be Continued

Boys Fighting on the Streets and Moms Fighting at the Afternoon Bridge Party

Since my late teens, I’ve pretty much turned away from my early life, seeing as bleak and sterile those years in my suburban neighborhoods and shopping districts, in the schools overflowing with baby boom kids, and within my at times twisted nuclear family. As I have been reading the 1963 book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, I’m coming to another point of view, a view on how my parents might have seen things in the 1950s, that makes me accept that my little neighborhoods were the fulfillment of an American dream. My parents, married during World War II, with a first son born while my father was in the service, came from homes that suffered from extreme poverty during the depression. Both also came from homes where much brutality and suffering took place—brutality from the father against a suffering mother. So their new life in a new home in a new Dallas suburb must have been a great adventure, going forward but perhaps more significantly getting away from a past that had been traumatic.



From The Feminine Mystique—The Problem That Has No Name: “The suburban housewife—she was the dream image of the young American woman and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife—freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth, and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine fulfillment. As a housewife and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to man in his world. She was free to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances, supermarkets; she had everything that women ever dreamed of.” p. 13

Our memories of childhood are selective and some of my most pointed memories are times when my mother lost her temper with me and/or my brother. She generally was a kind, nurturing and generous, though tight lipped and high strung, woman. So this is a memory of how the bridge party Mrs. Betty Williams invited my mother to led to one of those infrequent losses of temper. My father complained to me once that he couldn’t understand why she sometimes was so unhappy; he would find her crying and she could give no explanation for what was wrong.

To Be Continued

Was Janie Overly Perfectionistic?

Though Janie gained mythic dimensions in my childhood imagination, I do not believe she was perfect or anything. She bore many resemblances to various bosses and others whom I’ve been forced through work or family to maintain relationships with. I’ve developed a general perspective that many of us in this early 21st century find ourselves dominated by individuals with a personality type that seems to find economic efficacy in our productivity-, image- and marketing-driven bureaucracies—the obsessive compulsive personality disorder.

Here’s a quick rundown from the bible of psychological diagnosis, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Fourth Edition (DSM-IV).

Axis 1 includes clinical ( mental ) disorders used to report various disorders or conditions, as well as noting other conditions that may be a focus of clinical attention. Clinical disorders are identified into 14 categories, including anxiety disorders, childhood disorders, cognitive disorders, dissociative disorders, eating disorders, factitious disorders, impulse control disorders, mood disorders, psychotic disorders, sexual and gender identity disorders, sleep disorders, somatoform disorders, and substance-related disorders.

OCD ( Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) an anxiety disorder. OCD is characterized by uncontrollable intrusive thoughts and action that can only be alleviated by patterns of rigid and ceremonial behavior. Symptoms frequently cause considerable distress and interference with daily social or work activities. There may be a major preoccupation with the smallest of details in daily life. Obsessive ideas frequently involve contamination, dirt, diseases, germs, real / imagined trauma, or some type of frightening / unpleasant theme. People recognize their obsessive ideas do not make sense but are unable to stop them. These obsessive thoughts frequently lead to compulsive behaviors as the person try to prevent or change some dreaded event. They frequently repeat activities over and over again. ( E.g., washing hands, cleaning things up, checking locks )

Diagnostic criteria: see footnote 1.

Axis 2 includes personality disorders. . . . Personality is the qualities and traits of being a specific and unique individual. It is the enduring pattern of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, it is how we think, love, feel, make decisions and take actions. Personality is determined, in part, by out genetics and also, by out environment. It is the determining factor in how we live our lives. Individuals with Personality Disorders have more difficulty in every aspect of their lives. Their individual personality traits reflect ingrained, inflexible, and maladaptive patterns of behaviors that cause discomfort, distress and impair the individual's ability to function in the daily activities of living. [Axis 2 disorders rarely benefit from therapy or therapeutic drugs].

Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder is characterized by perfectionism and inflexibility. A person with a Obsessive-Compulsive Personality becomes preoccupied with uncontrollable patterns of thought and action. Symptoms may cause extreme distress and interfere with a person's occupational and social functioning. [Most people with OCPD do not consider their behavior to be a problem, but they often drive their associates and family crazy.]

Diagnostic criteria: see footnote 2.

Beyond DSM IV’s objective criteria, some psychologists have identified another dimension of the OC spectrum:

A Comparison of the Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Style and Disorder

















Click here to see this table in larger form.

Source: Handbook of Diagnosis and Treatment of DSM-IV Personality Disorders, by Len Sperry, M.D., Ph.D.

My memories of Janie Wilson are so fragmentary that any diagnosis is wild speculation:

Carolyn Cook was singing in her vibrato soprano voice and Miss Wilson abusively told her in front of three classes that her affected singing style was unacceptable.

A soft-spoken fourth-grade play actor was enunciating from the stage unacceptably and was abruptly jerked from the play and replaced with a loud-speaking boy (Don).

Janie’s seeming preoccupation with hands and fingers also is interesting. OCD spectrum disorders include “quirky” body movements such as snapping fingers, which may be a “habit” developed to release tension. Similarly, the person with OCD may habitually “pick” at different areas of the body, including picking scabs, pulling out hair (trichotillomania), picking at the tissue around nails, or pinching unruly children.

Aside from these speculations are these most obvious truths about Janie:

She was smart, articulate and confident during a time when it was better for a woman to be less smart, less articulate and less confident. She managed with authority but some disdain many ignorant Southern brats.

As Betty Friedan began her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique in Chapter One—The Problem That Has No Name
The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—“is this all?” [For more about Betty Friedan, click here.]

How much stranger was it to Miss Janie Wilson (9351 Alta Mira Dr.)?


Did she suffer more than did Mrs. Betty Williams, OU magna cum laude graduate (10161 Estacado Dr.),


or fashion conscious Mrs. Lewis Sifford (10138 San Lorenzo Dr.),



















or maternal mom Mrs. Ruth Roan (10120 Pinecrest Dr.)?


















-----------------------------------
Footnotes

Footnote 1

Diagnostic Criteria For Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder OCD
A. Either obsessions or compulsions:
Obsessions as defined by (1), (2), (3), and (4):
1. recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses, or images that are experienced, at some time during the disturbance, as intrusive and inappropriate and that cause marked anxiety or distress
2. the thoughts, impulses, or images are not simply excessive worries about real-life problems
3. the person attempts to ignore or suppress such thoughts, impulses, or images, or to neutralize them with some other thought or action
4. the person recognizes that the obsessional thoughts, impulses, or images are a product of his or her own mind (not imposed from without as in thought insertion)
Compulsions as defined by (1) and (2):
1. repetitive behaviors (e.g., hand washing, ordering, checking) or mental acts (e.g., praying, counting, repeating words silently) that the person feels driven to perform in response to an obsession, or according to rules that must be applied rigidly
2. the behaviors or mental acts are aimed at preventing or reducing distress or preventing some dreaded event or situation; however, these behaviors or mental acts either are not connected in a realistic way with what they are designed to neutralize or prevent or are clearly excessive

B. At some point during the course of the disorder, the person has recognized that the obsessions or compulsions are excessive or unreasonable. Note: This does not apply to children.
C. The obsessions or compulsions cause marked distress, are time consuming (take more than 1 hour a day), or significantly interfere with the person’s normal routine, occupational (or academic) functioning, or usual social activities or relationships.
D. If another Axis I disorder is present, the content of the obsessions or compulsions is not restricted to it (e.g, preoccupation with food in the presence of an Eating Disorder; hair pulling in the presence of Trichotillomania; concern with appearance in the presence of Body Dysmorphic Disorder; preoccupation with drugs in the presence of a Substance Use Disorder; preoccupation with having a serious illness in the presence of Hypochondriasis; preoccupation with sexual urges or fantasies in the presence of a Paraphilia; or guilty ruminations in the presence of Major Depressive Disorder).
E. The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition.

Footnote 2
Diagnostic Criteria of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder OCPD
A pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:
is preoccupied with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost
shows perfectionism that interferes with task completion (e.g., is unable to complete a project because his or her own overly strict standards are not met)
is excessively devoted to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendships (not accounted for by obvious economic necessity)
is overconscientious, scrupulous, and inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, or values (not accounted for by cultural or religious identification)
is unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value
is reluctant to delegate tasks or to work with others unless they submit to exactly his or her way of doing things
adopts a miserly spending style toward both self and others; money is viewed as something to be hoarded for future catastrophes
shows rigidity and stubbornness