***Out In The Be-Bop Be-Bop 1950s Night- Betsy And Earl’s Senior Prom Moment- With Vaughn Monroe In Mind

 

 

 Scene: Brought to mind by one of the snapshot photos that graced a 1950s rock and roll CD compilation that I reviewed recently featuring a classic prom night scene that many will remember from their youth.

The “Big” night, the night that every school boy and girl has been waiting for, well, maybe not waiting for, but hoping for, the night of their senior prom signifying the end of their days at old North Adamsville High School. Of course being a Podunk town away from the big city lights of Boston said senior prom, as has been a tradition since who knows when is held in the school gymnasium. A school gymnasium that, from long experience, has been turned into a faux-elegant hotel-style ballroom for the occasion. No cheapjack bunting and streamers, a few garlands, and maybe a couple of pieces of subdued lightning like at the ho-hum weekly school dances this night. Today the place is filled with well-appointed tables set with the best china and silverware, the bandstand is ablaze with decorations, and the dance floor specially lit to create, well, to create that mood like you were downtown at some swanky hotel. Even Podunk knows how to raise the bar for those now leaving the North Adamsville High family nest and who will soon be facing that hard 1958 Cold War world that keeps menacing everybody’s happiness.

In the middle of the festivities standing, check to check, as they have since sophomore year, eighth grade if you count the hemming and hawing that went on before the two became one, are Betsy Binstock, resplendent in her chiffony, open shoulder mother-made gown, complete with blue dahlia corsage (just what she wanted) and looking very handsome in his rented tuxedo (from Mr. Tuxedos right up in Adamsville Square as always since time immortal), Earl Avery. Children born and bred to rock ‘n’ roll they have just finished dancing up a storm to Robin Luke’s Susie Darlin’, the latest “had to have” record in the 1958 teen be-bop night. Of course this song, as all the music tonight, will be covered by the local rock band sensations The Rockin’ Ramrods hired for the occasion by the Senior Prom committee to keep their fellow seniors happy. As they release cheeks and head for their table Betsy is beaming because Earl has just made his first, tentative, maybe, kind of, move in the direction of asking her to marry him in the not too distant future. And as if on cue Jack Scott’s My True Love come forth from the bandstand and they shuffle back to the floor as if mesmerized by the power of the song.

Of course, after coming off the floor again to the sound of Tommy Edwards It’s All In The Game Betsy cannot wait to get to the Ladies’ (yes, this night Ladies) Powder Room to tell one and all of her conquest. (Really the “powder room” is the legendary Junior and Senior Girls’ Lounge, looking very much the elegant hotel lounge, including real hand towels, that has been the scene of more gossip about who did or did not do what with whom, the what being, naturally “going all the way” than Hollywood could ever conger up in its wildest dreams.) So Betsy excuses herself from the table and starts picking up girlfriends to head to the lounge. Spunky Betsy knows that in this wicked old world only the strong survive, even on the question of marriage. Therefore her strategy is to spread Earl’s kind of, sort of proposal into something like the granite from the quarry that the town was known to produce in the old, old days. Maybe it has something to do with the evening, maybe it was the Ramrods covering Ed Townsend’s For Your Love, maybe it was just something in the early June air but Betsy went all out that night in the lounge, even speculating that she and Earl would be marriage within the year.

Meanwhile poor Earl, still shaky for even going as timidly far as he did on the marriage question had to laugh as the Ramrods played the Chantels Maybe. Earl nevertheless had a sense that the die was cast as a glowing Betsy and her entourage came back into view. As we leave this scene to the strands of Jimmy Clanton and His Rockets’ Just A Dream Earl has shrugged off all evil thoughts for the night, for his senior prom night and has decided to just go with the flow.

P.S. For those who can hardly wait to know how Betsy and Earl made out here is the scoop. Well, yes they were married in the summer of 1959 although not under the circumstances one would have expected. Whether by design or just happenstance Betsy got pregnant and honest and true Earl did the right thing. In the fall of 1959 Earl Avery, Junior came. Betsy a little worn from her pregnancy seems a bit bewildered just now. Earl on the other hand, with a raise and new job title to go with his junior boy, couldn’t be happier. Go figure, right.