Felicity, Chapter 3

Felicity was 5’2”, slender, with dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, and regular, but not beautiful features. She was a true petite, with size 5 feet and skinny bones. She was quiet and responsible. I never remember her sobbing uncontrollably or having hissy fits, like some of us. She spent all of her time role-playing and preparing for a future right out of Future Homemakers of America. She had a best friend across the street named Carol and together they experimented with hair and make up. I tagged along with her often and she never complained in front of me, although I was boisterous and bossy and loud. We all had our baby dolls as I remember, which we held and fed and took for carriage rides. We didn’t mistreat our babies. We were already experts on child care. I didn’t want a baby doll. I wanted a Toni doll. Toni was the brand name of a home permanent kit. We had much practical experience of home permanents, since Mom was always slapping one onto our hair so she wouldn’t have to fuss with our very straight, fine hair. To this day I can’t recall the actual texture of Felicity’s hair. Maybe she did have some natural curl. I surely didn’t. Anyway the Toni doll came with a little permanent wave set, tiny curlers, a wave solution so you could give your doll a perm. The direction said that when you ran out of permanent solution you could substitute sugar and water. Whenever you wanted you could wash the Toni doll’s hair and it would straighten again, ready for the next perm. I was seven when I got my Toni doll and I permed the life right out of her.
There are also a number pictures of Felicity, Carol, and me playing cards on Carol’s porch, or Sorry, or Parchesi. Carol had a beautiful bedroom too, which she didn’t have to share with anybody. It was “decorated”. We loved to spend time up there doing I don’t remember what. I do remember that when Felicity and Carol were young teens they spent an afternoon practicing kissing techniques on each other, which I found very yucky at the time, but also fascinating.
Things weren’t always so easy for Felicity. Because she was the oldest she was sort of the guinea pig child. She had the most rules and because of her responsible nature, she took the rules pretty seriously. A lot of housework and child care duties fell to her. She was good in school and had lots of friends. Two boys were fighting over her by the time she was fourteen; a good-looking red-headed holy terror from the next block, Timothy Stanton, and an also handsome, slightly “hood”ish guy from across the main road. They hung around our house constantly, ate meals there, and strutted around each other cockily. Eventually my sister discarded both of them in favor of a slightly older guy, Jack Rhodes, from two blocks up.
When she graduated from high school with an award in Latin in 1962, she enrolled in the community college to train as a secretary. She lived at home while she went to college. Mom and Dad let her trade her bed in on a sofa bed and she could make her bedroom look like a little sitting room, and she could have boys up there. She was still with Jack Rhodes, but he was starting to balk. She wanted to get married, he didn’t.
The “hoody” guy from across the highway reappeared. Dean Travis was his name. He was underfoot all the time again, this time trying to ingratiate himself with Mom and Dad and my brother, Tyler. He helped Dad spread stones in the driveway, fix cars, load newspapers to take to Spevak’s for money, and with any number of small household repairs. In short he made himself indispensable and, although Felicity at first paid him no mind, he was like a force of nature. Eventually she stopped seeing the guys she was sort of dating and let him court her. Within three years of graduating high school she had finished community college, had her big wedding, decorated their new apartment, gone to work as an executive secretary at GE, and was talking about starting a family.
Although her husband looked good and had an engaging smile, I think he had been better at courting than at husbanding, but they did seem relatively happy. Dean may have smoked when he was younger, but he did not smoke after they were married, and, of course, my sister never smoked.
If the fifties life style had lasted forever, their life together would probably have been perfect, but by the late 60’s that 50’s optimism and affluence were being pushed aside by some mighty powerful new forces and beliefs.
The major new beliefs seemed to center around the idea of equality, which reared its idealistic head in a number of areas as we all remember.
The civil right’s movement was in full swing throughout the sixties. Someone noticed that a large segment of the American population was not sharing in “the good life”. They often had no TV’s and no cars in their possession; in fact they probably didn’t even have a garage to put a car in. And even if they did, they could be, apparently, only “separate, but equal,” not really equal. I don’t think white Americans would have noticed this on their own, maybe they would have, but some Black Americans began to call attention to it.
TV made such a difference because it allowed events to be played out in our living rooms while we ate dinner, or prepared it, or got ready for bed, or when we woke up in the morning. It may have started out with Rosa Parks but it escalated into fire hoses and dogs and prejudiced southern “honkies” with “cracker” accents and mirrored sun glasses and Freedom Riders or Fighters, and deaths; four little girls in a church, some of the Freedom Fighters, eventually Martin Luther King. Many of us were aghast and could no longer pursue our middle class dreams until a few things got straightened out and the dream was not just for White America, but could be universal. How could we enjoy our affluent peace if images of injustice were going to march through our living rooms? (Of course, now we know there’s not end to it, but we didn’t know that then.)
And, of course, there was the war - the Vietnam War which was not World War II, global and morally necessary. It was a small local war in a totally foreign culture; a war many of us suspected was none of our business. Yes, the Cold War was in full swing, and yes, there was the question of the “red menace” sweeping in across the face of the earth, but didn’t these people have the right to battle this out for themselves?
And it was such an awful war (all wars are awful) with such an elusive enemy. We often couldn’t tell the enemy from the allies and we were not used to guerilla warfare tactics, hit and run battles. The jungle was so hot and dark and deep and so easy to get lost in, with natural enemies like bugs and snakes and rot to go along with the human opponents. And there was napalm and Agent Orange and reports of civilians ruthlessly murdered. It was an undisciplined, dirty war and we were not winning. America was in chaos and her citizens were far from home.
And then there was also women’s liberation. Since everyone else was striving for equality, surely it was time to investigate the women’s role in America. Were women to be a part of the “equal right’s movement” or, if not, could they tolerate their position as “second class citizens” any longer. Women should get to live up to their full potential as human beings, either within the institutions of marriage and family, or outside of them, as necessary. Menial, repetitive housework and child-rearing tasks should not be the sole province of women, but should be shared by men, thus freeing women to satisfy higher needs, like the needs for an education, and a satisfying role in the world outside of the home, and to satisfy their sexual and spiritual needs. Why many women still lived in semi-slavery to dominating and despotic husbands!
And you can’t forget the musical revolution and the pill. Of course, the musical earthquake began in the fifties with Buddy Holly, Elvis, et al. Add in the pill (the birth control pill) and pot, etc. and you get the heady mix of free love, getting high, grooving to heavy sounds and the promise of spiritual enlightenment right along with all that cultural equality. A new world order all rolled into one hit of astonishing power and excitement.
How did Felicity and Dean’s little suburban paradise stand a chance against all this? We’re a long way from cigarette smoking and addiction, you say? By now people were smoking funny cigarettes, wacky tabbacky. We’re almost there.