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Twelve years ago, to contend with our
first hard birthday (the 40th), nineteen girlfriends
who’d started college as Millsaps freshmen in 1966,
began a tradition of meeting every five years for a long
summer weekend. We journeyed from all over the U.S.
– East Coast to West – everywhere life had
scattered us. Our first reunion convened in New Orleans,
the next in Memphis, the most recent in Perdido Key. But
the place didn’t really matter, just the people and
the fact that we were still friends decades after
college. Although as freshmen most of us had become close
right away, we didn’t realize, even upon graduating,
that we would keep that connection for the rest of our
lives. All our hard-birthday years – 40, 45, and 50 – have been a little easier, knowing that we’d be spending time with each other, that we were the same awkward age, and that we would un-der-stand. After being raised to believe, as our generation of girls was, that cuteness is the ultimate achievement, it gave us solace at the last reunion to hear a peer lament that a certain part of her anatomy had dropped so far, she no longer needed sunblock to protect the backs of her thighs. We felt doubly comforted when, after a day on the beach, she revealed two stark white circular patches at the top of a scorched-red, leggy landscape. When we nineteen – “The Group”– entered Millsaps as freshmen in ’66, little had changed on the conservative American vista for years. We’d shipped out to college expecting exactly what our mothers before us had expected – to get whatever degree we could manage with as little inconvenience as possible, and, more important, to meet the boy of our dreams, marry him no later than the summer after graduation, and subsequently live a life of bliss. From birth, we’d been inculcated with our mission; and, though it was tacit and unformed, we knew we had only four years to accomplish it. That we chose Millsaps as our arena did not seem inconsistent to us. We had educated parents, and we wanted a good education too – and intelligent husbands. What better place? Decked out in various hues of Villager A-line mini-skirts, matching sweaters, and floral print round-collared blouses, we saluted the morning by applying foundation makeup and ended each night – regardless of the hour – rolling our hair. Inured to sleeping on oversized, prickly rollers, we’d remove them the next morning and brush out our “dos” – either our new short swings with a curl turning onto each cheek, or our flips that were holdovers from high school. Fran (née Duquette) Davis of Spartanburg, South Carolina, still pictures everyone “always dressed fit to kill when we walked out of the dorm. Make-up perfect, hair perfect, short skirt and Piccolinos” (the cool flats we all wore with our Villager skirt and sweater sets). Three of us cropped our minis as high as we could and still have them be considered skirts; this was considered “stylish” and not a bit trashy and was about as reckless as any of us got. Sophisticated we were not, but then neither were the times. In fact, the Class of ’70 was one of the last unsophisticated college classes America would have. Ready for our first adventures in life, we didn’t require much to be amazed. As Margaret Ann (Sample) Mitchell of Columbus says, “We were soooooo naive. But I am so glad. We had such fun because of it.” Fran recalls that “we still wore hats and white gloves to rush parties!” and that the Bourbon Street joints, now considered just places for “expressive behavior,” were “dens of iniquity” in our time. When we began college, freshman girls had numerous and stringent rules for proper behavior, designed mainly to restrict us to the dorm. On weeknights, our curfew was 10:00 P.M.; on weekends, midnight. Any time we left campus, we had to sign out, stating time of departure, expected time of return, our date’s name, and our destination. (Perhaps the signout card was what gave me my start in fiction.) If we stayed out past our ten-minute-per-semester grace period, we were “campused”– confined to the dorm without phone privileges for up to a week. The golf course was off-limits to girls at night; and – day and night – so was the mere vicinity of the boys’ dorms and frat houses. We were forbidden to wear pants, not only to classes but also to the cafeteria, to the gym, to the library, on dates, even to town. (And under our skirts, even those of us who barely topped 100 pounds, we wore full body armor – stockings hooked to a very tight girdle – because it was considered tacky in the ’60s for girls’ posteriors to jiggle. Pantyhose, like the life-altering blow dryer, had not yet been invented.) PREVIOUS PAGE | PAGE 1 OF 4 | NEXT PAGE |