A few weeks ago was a news story about a stewardess retiring after 50 years (OW-H, 3 Dec., p. 1D). One of the paragraphs was : "A lot has changed since the old days, when people dressed up in hats and bow ties to fly on propeller-powered planes across the Pacific." That would mean the late 1950s. It reminded me of how my oldest nephew bristled at Thanksgiving when I mentioned how we used to have to dress up for the holidays--while wearing khakis and a nice sweatshirt over a T-shirt myself on a chilly day. He retorted that his jeans, boots, and sweatshirt was as much as I could expect. His wife was funnier--that deft woman's touch--asking me if I didn't like her pajamas. I was surprised that I had nettled him but shouldn't be. I come from an alien time and another culture and have the pictorial proof, which I decided to show, after I had watched my Netflix DVD of The Reduced Shakespeare Company's performance for a Vancouver audience. The Bridgit St. Bridgit theater troupe here has done it twice, so I was familiar with this often funny mockery of our best writer, including a Hamlet repeatedly reduced by speed and cuts until it ends up just a few minutes long. Anyway, what I noticed was that the whole audience was dressed casually, not a one in suit and tie or fancy dress, when I still treat the theater as a special occasion. But that's where our culture is now. And here is where our culture was yesterday.
This is my dad, Jack (John, really) Luckert, with his two older brothers, Richard at the left, Chet (Chester) at the right. Given the stories how Grandmother Luckert had to hide money to keep my grandfather from drinking and gambling it away, it is impressive that the three boys are all formally dressed--and that my athletic hunter-fisherman father has long curls too.
That's Dad in what Mom called his John Dillinger days (the mustache) when he was at auto mechanic school in Kansas City, and the photo at right has Mom there with him, the mustache gone. My father wore coveralls for his mechanic and welding work most of the time when I was growing up, but he would always dress up for special occasions, like holidays.
Here is simply a friendship photo, though apparently taken in some sort of studio. At the back are Mervin Feddersen, Mom's cousin, and Ella Larson, who married Grampa Koftan's youngest brother, Joe, in a double wedding with Mom and Dad on that day too windy to pick corn, though clearly this is before that time. The front row has James (Buzz) Brown and Lena Bishop, who would marry and be some of the best friends of the Koftan family, with their children. Note the formality in dress and pose.
As you can read, that's Grandpa Luckert with all his grandsons at that particular time: Alton (Uncle Rich), Kenny (Uncle Chet), Jimmy (Aunt Betty Vanness), and me. As you can see, oh nephew mine, whom I love dearly whatever our sharp differences are,I was programmed from a very early age.
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