Pins

(entry for 10/30/24)

It was 1945. We still lived in Denver. The war was almost over, and they had stopped rationing gasoline and tires, so instead of taking the streetcar everywhere, we started driving a lot. That is, my dad started driving a lot, and the rest of us rode with him a lot. (He never allowed my mother to drive any car we owned, if he was in it too.)

Now there were some things about life in 1945 that seem almost unbelievable now. One of those unbelievable things is that there was no such thing as a two-piece bathing suit, let alone a bikini. (The bikini wouldn’t be invented for another eleven years.)

Another unbelievable thing was that women were not allowed to wear any skirt that showed their knees. Floor length was fine, mid-calf was fine, even something right below the knees was fine, provided she was careful.

No bare shoulders, either. (There was no such thing as a sleeveless dress or blouse.)

The only time that a woman, or a girl of nine or more years, was allowed to show her knees, or any part of her shoulders other than the tiniest hint, was when she was swimming, and even then she had to be very careful. The one-piece bathing suit shown here would have been banned in 1945, for being immodest and ‘provoking,’ as provocative was then called. (For one thing, it gave far too much of a hint as to the female shape underneath.  We weren't supposed to notice that there was such a thing as shape!) 

At least that was true at the beginning of the year. By the end of the year, everything had changed, because Hitler had committed suicide and the Japanese had surrendered. The two-piece bathing suit had been invented, and people had actually started wearing them. Not my mom, of course, but some other people. The provoking ones at least. But at the moment of this story, the war was still in full swing, though victory was beginning to seem likely, at least in Europe. Driving was not only a way of getting from one place to another, it was also a way to relax. To appreciate life. To admire the city we lived in. It was a warm sunny day in spring, and the trees were in leaf, the flower beds were in bloom, and the birds were singing.

Now we need to back up and talk about another issue, which has nothing to do with bathing suits or driving. Or even flower beds. This other issue is pins. That’s right, pins. Not safety pins or hair pins. Or the little tiny pins that you put into a fabric edge while you’re sewing a hem. No, I’m talkinge elaborate jeweled pins that most women wore on their dresses. Like the one at the head of this post, though this one is more modern and a bit less modest than the ones back then were. (Modesty in this case having to do with the number of gems allowed, rather than with anything about knees.) All women wore pins, but especially Adventist women, because they weren’t allowed to wear rings, bracelets, or earrings, or anything else that smacked of ‘sinful adornment.’ How pins escaped this prohibition is a bit beyond me, but as there are a lot of other things that are a bit beyond me as well, we won’t worry about it just now. I’m guessing that pins hadn’t been invented yet when the prohibition was written, but I could be wrong. (Adventist women were also allowed to wear corsages, and I suppose a pin is a bit like a sort of permanent corsage, so there’s some consistency there.)

Any time my mother went out of the house, even if it was just to go to the store, she had to put a pin on first. She would have felt naked without one. And if it was Saturday and we were going to church, it had to be an elaborate one, big enough to resemble a corsage, and carefully selected. Many a Church Sabbath, while the rest of us stood around nervously waiting, she would take a small slice of forever to pick out her pin for the day. And then getting it pinned in exactly the right spot. And then taking it off and moving it a quarter of an inch to the right or left, and redoing the pinning action. Sometimes a third effort was required, to get it just right. Or she would take off the first pin and put on a different one. And it was always on a dress, never a blouse with a skirt. Skirts were not dressy enough. Dresses were the rule, along with the pins. (I never saw her in a pair of shorts till I was twelve years old, and even then it was a shock, especially as it was December and below freezing. But that’s another story.)

Anyway, we were driving somewhere in south Denver that day, probably along Speer Boulevard, where we often took small trips. It was a favorite place to drive and ride because the street was split in two, with Cherry Creek running right down the middle of it. (There was an ice cream store, called Purity Creamery, at the corner of Speer and Grant, and they had the best ice cream in the world, so if it was any day other than a Saturday, when buying things was prohibited for Adventists, along with wearing jewelry any day of the week, we would stop and buy ice cream. My favorite was Butter Brickle, with Pistachio a close second.Sometimes I got a scoop of each!  It was also the only place in Denver where we could buy Cashews, which we all loved. They had not made it into grocery stores yet.)

Speer eventually crossed Santa Fe Drive, though by that time Santa Fe had changed directions and name, becoming Stout.

And that’s where we saw it: a huge billboard, with an even huger picture of a rather rotund woman wearing a dark green swim suit.

AND IT WAS TWO-PIECE! You couldn’t see her belly-button, because the midriff exposure was a bit on the modest side, but THERE WAS SKIN THERE! Between the top piece and the bottom piece! Skin!

If Adventists had been allowed to say things like “Oh, My God!”, I’m sure one of us would have said it, or maybe more than one. But of course nobody in that car was allowed to say that, or even think it.

That drive that day was only the first of many where we were exposed to briefer and briefer items of clothing, displayed on mannikins in store window, in photographs in magazines and newspapers, and, yes, on billboards.

You couldn’t drive up Santa Fe Drive any more (it only went up, not down-- southbound was a different street several blocks away) without seeing skin. I don’t mean real skin of course, that would come later. I mean billboards of skin. Even knees, if the billboard was of a bathing suit. I went into a state of shock. Not only had I never seen so much skin, I hadn’t even known that much skin existed, in the whole world! (I had never been naked, except in a bathtub, and even then only once a week, of course.)

And then the war ended, and all heaven broke loose. You could throw away your tax tokens. You could toss your ration books. You could buy bananas again. You could buy shoes again. Not only could you buy tires for your car, you could buy NEW ones! The factories began making automobiles again. You didn’t have to collect tin cans to be made into bullets any more. Road repairs could resume. There were airplanes flying overhead that weren’t bombers or fighters. It was amazing.

And there was skin, like never before. Somehow the war effort had required people to retract their arms and legs (and necks) into severe clothing, and somehow the end of that effort resulted in a sudden end to a need for restrictive clothing. There was an explosion of release. Of skin.

One day we were driving along south Broadway, down near Evans or Iliff, and suddenly there was a belly button. In plain sight. On a billboard. I’ve searched online for a similar picture and can’t find one. The shot I've pasted here is much too revealing. The woman on that billboard would never have been caught dead in a top with that sort of gap in it.

Plus, this picture is of a swimsuit that is sort of red, and red was considered a no-no, the hallmark of prostitutes. But the belly-button exposure is perfect, and gives you the feel of the revelation. 

We all gasped. Even my one-year-old sister. (The only time I had ever seen HER belly button was when she was four days old and still had eight inches of the umbilical cord attached to it.)

My dad said, “What is the world coming to? That’s a navel!”

That’s right, he even knew the right name for it, though I had never heard of it being called by that name.

He continued: “Before you know it, people will be wearing nothing at all! They’ll be running around stark nooked!” There was something somehow a shade sinful about the word ‘naked,’ so he said ‘nooked’ instead.

I pondered this concept for a few moments, and then I panicked.

“But . . . but . . . but . . .” I said.

“Yes?”

“But . . .”

“Yes?”

“Where will they wear their PINS?!?”

*

copyright ©2024, LegendKeeper LLC

*

To see an index of other entries in Len’s Memory Blog, click HERE.

To see an index for entries in Len’s Music Blog, click HERE.