Betty Pearl's Sissy Stories 20.1
Sissy Story Archives (older stories) => Pre-2011 Sissy Stories => Topic started by: lashley on August 19, 2007, 12:15:23 AM
-
From the hour after John's parents died in the accident, his Aunt Constance had added and re-added the financial aspects of inheriting her young nephew. The only child of her only sister would surely be more a net gain financially than a drain mentally or physically. Constance had one child herself, Emily, who was just two years older than John yet they received little to no support from her father. In 1965, courts were not set up with compliance laws for child support as they are now. So she was making it but barely on a clerks income. Her mother was in the same shape with little support and no husband, looking for the SS check every to weeks.
At 8, John would be little if no problem to deal with and she could get her mother to come live with them in the old stable place.
Then the boy showed up on the door step as quickly as her sister was in the ground. Emily was intrigued with gaining a brother, but put off a bit at the funeral...after all she was the only one...now he crowded that with people pouring out sympathy and attention. Her Grandma was included in this syndication of poor John and what will be to come of him? etc.
He was small but not slight for an 8 yr. old...5' 1" and about 95 Lbs...brown hair and very blue eyes. Step sister Emily at 10, was at 5'4" and 120 green eyes. She surely derived her mother's Constance genetics and Grandma Sybil's' who were larger framed women.
Within a week of John's arrival, the SS check paperwork arrived, and the life insurance benefit forms....a surprise in that the payout would be in the form of an annuity payout or a lump sum for John's College education. The monthly annuity ($2350.00 + the two SS checks + her mother's SS came to a nice little sum of $3400.00 /mo...in 1965, that changed lives.
Constance wanted to be among her old classmates at their little par ties and outings. She wanted to be vied as one of them, $3500.00 + /- a buck or two still didn't get her at their level, but could get a lot of accessories for a lifestyle...we will see from a gods eye view soon enough.
[list=][/list]
-
So here they were the three of them in a modest Conn. town a 30 min ride to Grand Central and the City. Constance was finally in a position to spend money on herself...her thinking at this time was to use the cash to advance herself socially. Of course the two children would not allow the freedom she would have hoped for. Theses were liberating times and many young bachelor, married cheater or old wealthy ones in need of someone like Constance would catapult her to the higher levels of cash but the society levels that she could finally use to bury the bitter memories of high school and her self created lack of self worth.
How to change her world not be easy, nor would $3-4 k / mo due much in the stratospheric world she now targeted. Though it did buy an "infield pass", a backstage coc-ktail or least the ability to fake it with plausible looks and fashion.
And there is when it hit Constance right between the eyes...she was reading a magazine that is still on the newsstands called "Town and Country". She had never even glanced at it until that day. The day she made the appointment in the City at the Red Door Salon...a start up Dy spa / salon adventure by ELiz Arden. The magazine coupled with the interesting and insightful gab fest by her fellow day spa ers would give her how to leverage herself, most importantly, into their world...all through the children!!! What a world they were about to experience!!!
[list=][/list]
-
I did it again...about 500 words of the story, but when I went to submit I had been timed out and its lost..my bad...Betty expianed once. I should just do these in word and cut and paste...I will send a snew chapter after I drink 6-7 beers and look at my knee sock collection!!! (LOL)
-
I have re-read the posting rules and have decided to be a bit more in depth than I originally planned for my first story…so it could suc-k. But if you are expecting a quick dress them up and humiliate them deal…this isn’t it. It will I believe create extreme interest as it evolves and the title is still a keeper for several reasons that will be seen down the road.
Correction: John at 8 years old would be a little more than 4 ft. in height and 58-62 lbs.
STORY:
John would not be the complication that he may have been if Constance’s mother Elizabeth had not agreed to be the ‘caretaker’ as the permanent resident vs. babyitter until Constance could get all of them out of their little train stop town.
What she failed to truly comprehend is that at her age with children and a possible mother in tow, who she was seeking…that 40ish handsome financial district man of self made and inherited wealth was himself saddled with the same exact environment that he and THEY en-masse sought to leave behind each week for their mid town apartments. The CT town itself was as if WWII was still at its height from Monday through Friday, save for the occasional plumber, pharmacist and dentist. No men were waiting at the one local bar that didn’t even open until train time…5-6PM. The eastern educated and reared princesses married to the ‘men of means’ had all been left there in CT with their princes often working in the city Monday through Friday, entertaining no doubt the ‘client’ or closing the deal between legs at the company or ad agency apartment or the ad hoc hotel they would write off on their martini weighted expense accounts. As Ms. Simon would sing so pointedly 20 years later,” The wives were in Connecticut”. Thanks Carly for pointing that out.
Constance cashed the checks, quit her job and situated her mother, John and Emily in a little 5 room 100+ year old home.
It was right off the town’s main strip of boutique’s, cleaners, butchers and bakers, the decades old small shops lined up as soldiers ready to face the eight ...three to seven car trains that inevitably rolled in and out directly across from this little line of proprietorships everyday.
Now what?
She was prompted by her 60 something year old mother to read about the big world thirty miles away, to go there and get a job, or meet people…that there was no magic on the horizon sitting there by the train and the baker's shop all day...no internet 40 years ago, little TV...and there she was...all day.
Contance's mother Elizabeth was a graduate school bar fly in her day and a current combined hearty gin consumption with a remarkable amount of cigarettes, she appeared to be in her late 70s. Her days of socializing were now decades in the rear mirror and Constance saw this maternal figure as a definite possibility reflected in her mirror one day.
Constance found several periodicals at the train station’s modest newsstand. One was called Town and Country and she recalled seeing it on several coffee tables in town and at friend’s homes…even the modest ones were looking to get out of the back seat 'read' or at least appear to read' the social rags of the day.
Through reading, she decided to go to the NYC and to a new place called the Red Door “a day spa”. Though Eliz. Arden was around for many years, it was the idea was she would be pampered for the entire day, not in a ‘fat farm camp” as most spas were in those days, but a beauty palace…. nails, toes, massage, sauna…my god it seemed perfect. It was also a place that she could begin to understand this social strata she so much desired to become one with.
The children were now well into the school year and fall was descending on New England. Of course they walked to school and wore nice play clothes and came home and did their work. They did not need to meet at the train station an hour earlier in the day to catch the small van / bus the private school provided nor would they be driven to the school by the “house help” in the more well appointed Lincoln or Fleetwoods. Just sub-limo class cars like these were pulling out of carriage homes / garages from estates at water’s edge. Garages below, servants apartments above...main house down the road...where the lights didn't get metered and shut off at 10PM each night.
Then there were those precious ones who's parents were struggling to keep up the appearance to those by water’s edge. These children would be driven to the private school in some General Motors version of a station wagon…the favorite was the Buick Electra 225, navy blue, fake pinewood side paneling and beige interiors, luggage racks affixed to the tops and the favorite wide whitewalled striped Vogue tires... simply an automotive must among the housewives.
Maroon and gray were the exciting anchors of the color palette for the local private school’s uniform. Little girls (k-5) would be clad in a “plaid” but not quite tartan scheme of the basic colors. The serge wool plaid was sewn as jumpers, zipped up the back with a all around pleated skirt comprising lower half separated by self fabric, belted mid waist to give the impression the outfit was in two pieces. The mandatory white blouse had a very wide round collar worn outside the jumper's close fitted circular top with lace-trimmed anklets and black Mary Janes rounding out the bottom of the outfit. As was customary then, petticoats were generally worn over slips under the wool jumpers. Their hair had ponytails or pigtails, each combined 'end' was tied with wide satin or the thinner grosgrain ribbons…always white.
-
The little girl’s male counterparts (K-3) wore Maroon lapeless eton jackets with three pearl buttons, gray wool shorts and knee socks. Though not typical, the school specified that eton style white blouses/shirts be worn/ these were narrow banded peter pan collars with pointed ends…a staple in every closet of all of the boys who went to that school. The shoes for this age group were maroon and white saddle shoes (available at the local clothier, who mad a fortune replacing outgrown or basically ruined (the white toes) versions of these shoes. Most boys this age worn John Kennedy style haircuts…or as like to call them “Beatle” cuts.
Boys in grades 4-5 graduated to regular white shirts with Maroon and gold rep ties and black oxford shoes.
Short pants and knee socks remained an option for boys in grades 6-7-8 when the girls wore gray flannel box pleated skirts, gray knee socks, white peter pan collars, eton style jackets (collar worn out) and saddle shoes.
Sundays at one of the three churches in town further defined the social strata of the community, not mentioned would be the Baptist community church 20 miles to the north. It was the area’s Black church and community center.
The three other churches could be economically separated by the following markers:
1. By cars in the parking lots (Cadillac / Lincoln vs Station Wagons and Sedans)
2. Oldest of the boys in John Johns
3. Oldest of the boys in eton suits
4. Youngest of the boys in little versions of Dad’s suits
5. Girls wearing party dresses (no age issue)
6. Girls wearing boucle suits with hats and purses (no age issue)
7. Girls wearing Sailor dresses or outfits
8. Number of children per couple
9. Families with accompanying Nannys
10. Size of the women’s hats
So in a nutshell:
· The wealthiest church would have Caddies and Lincolns with a smattering of M-Benz. The oldest John-John wearers would be 7 or so…the oldest eton suit wearer (full outfit; peter pan collar, saddle shoes the works) would be 9-10….variations with just knee socks, shorts and blazers could be found on 13-14 year olds…rare, but they were there.
· Nanny’s rarely went with the family anywhere
· Wealthy girls wore sailor outfits or little St John knit knock offs…not pinafores to church
· Three kids per couple, women wore wide brimmed hats with money.
Constance had a 4 year old Buick Special with bad tires with slight rust. John and Emily wore nice clothes to school. Her new found monthly income from acquiring John allowed her to spend money she never could on Emily. She took them both to the better of the two children’s shop in town, Katie’s Children’s Shoppe for their wardrobes. She spent a total of $200.00 in two months on their wardrobes…a sum that may be equal to $2000.00 or more today.
Note: Though her car was not immediately correctable, or her fault… however, her taste in her own clothes, left unchecked would keep her social dreams frozen. This unfortunate lack of New England/ NYC old money…the ‘I get it” attitude. This was also was reflected in her children’s clothing…something she had not even thought twice about…didn’t think it mattered that much.
Examples or role models stared her the face but she had not seen them, yet. For the reader’s sake, perhaps they would like to know where Constance needed to be, at least from a social fashion / surface level basis…and really what else was there?
So lets say we opened the time machine and spied from the clouds to the street where the “Wonderful” family was walking the three blocks north to the 10 am service at the second best church in town. We see them leave the front door from their center entry, brick 150-year-old 6-bedroom house leaving the Electra 225 fake wood side wagon or Dad’s Deville convertible for a nice walk and take in the mid October beauty of the day.
Dad is in a navy blue two-piece suit with a fedora and has on great cuff links with a Brooks Brothers shirt and Navy/gray striped Countess Mara tie. Mom in a wool Boucle tan Jackie Kennedy knock off with a lapel pin of studded gemstones, pill box hat with side veil and of course pearls and matching earrings.
They walk on either side of a pig tailed and toe headed 6 year old girl in a white pleated skirt, cuffed white opaque knee socks, navy Mary Janes, a white sailor collar blouse (no navy piping or trim, bleached to sugar white and starched like a board) the blouse's wide sailor collar worn outside a double breasted navy lapeless blazer, white straw boater hat with a navy grosgrain ribbon tied around the hat with streamers down the back.
-
The three some is followed by the oldest, another girl of 12 in a plaid red tartan kilt, navy knee socks, red sweater vest with a rounded neck line, navy single breasted blazer with a high neck ruffled collar white blouse.
The trailing 9-year-old boy is wearing rather short, short pants in the exact tartan pattern of his oldest sister’s kilt. Unfortunately for him, no one could find his navy cable stitched knee socks that morning so he is now wearing his ‘dress-up’ white double thick opaque knee socks with the deep cuffs…Mother decided the tartan brother sister outfits were to be worn a week ago as a fall celebration… so to speak. So if the navy knee socks were not around, lost, whatever, then the only substitute would be his white socks…and you cannot wear Black shoes with formal white socks…so he must wear his saddle shoes. This then would normally signal a white peter pan / eton style collar shirt, with the eton jacket and collar worn out.
However, he had worn that eton collar blouse the night before at the club for dinner, with a clip on tie, collar worn in with his plaid sport coat, gray shorts and gray knee socks. The tie saved him much embarrassment last night and the shirt was dirty. An obvious substitute was to have him wear an old school blouse from his oldest sister and have in a full Eton look. His mother would have loved it, buy there was no time to find a blouse that fit or was laundered to the condition she would have found acceptable. For either the girls or now more rarely for the boy, white blouse collars that are to be displayed outside sweaters or jackets…especially for church or dress up or at the club made additional bleaching and extra starch on those collars a must.
Time and these laundry anal conditions got him off the hook and he was allowed to wear a school shirt and tie with his black wool blazer…. but in spite of begging, the white knee socks and saddle shoes stayed.
One would have thought that Father would have come to the lad’s defense and let him wear longs…but that was an area he stayed as far away from as his wife did his dalliances mid week.