Back-to-school season evokes memories

In late August and early September as we drove past the golden fields of Sussex County on the way home from buying school clothes for college, sometimes from a nice store called Sea View in Selbyville (no longer there), my mother would say wistfully, "It's starting to look like fall." This made me both nostalgic, and happy and hopeful.

Clothes-buying was one of our bonding activities, for we both loved fashion, although there were many disagreements in the fitting room. I usually ended up with half of what I wanted and half of what she wanted for me. Other stores we visited in the 1960s and ‘70s were Benjamin’s, Hess’s and Powell’s in Salisbury, Md. There was a wonderful downtown then, no mall like now, and a Woolworth's Café decorated in pink and purple that she said reminded her of Paris; we would lunch there with shopping bags full of bounty.

Our mother/daughter hunting expeditions included other shops that some of you may remember, such as Braunstein's in downtown Rehoboth Beach and Cooper Smith's in Milford. Samuel's Department Store in downtown Milton was a small, local shop run by Samuel Shapiro that was a staple for my high school days. He even sold the Ship ‘n Shore blouses of the 1960s.

One of my favorite back-to-school memories is the anticipation of my first year of college out west. That year, my mother and I had a really perfect shopping day for once. She seemed to be living vicariously through me and fondly remembering her own college days in the late 1930s. She attended Temple University during the Great Depression, and her mother, a gifted seamstress and proud perfectionist, sewed all of her clothes, even suits. And my mother, Marguerite, was very particular!

This time, we got along well, and she bought me everything I wanted, including a turquoise-colored record player and every album I picked out! I kept just stacking them up, seeing how far I could go. What a harvest! One Marianne Faithfull album after another. Back then, she was the girlfriend of Mick Jagger. An ethereal-looking, blond English angel, she sang the folk songs I loved. I also snagged some Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, and a few classical records to boot. Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins came later. I loved the record player so much, I even carried it home along with a case of the records through O'Hare Airport in Chicago when I came home from college for Christmas vacation. "I thought you'd leave it back at school," my mother said. There were no cassette or CD players back then.

My mother even let me pick out ornate, rose-patterned, psychedelic towels in fluorescent blue, orange and lime green. I still have them to this day. She chose for me a James Dean-like black leather jacket and fluorescent-marker-green skirt. Was this my mother? No blazers! She once bought them in every color. But now I was going to art school, not business school, after all.

When we sat down for dinner the evening after all of that shopping, she said, "I'm glad you're going to college." I knew what she meant and wasn't offended, but my father got uncharacteristically mad and knocked over his chair at the dinner table, saying, "This is her home, too!" "She didn't mean it like that," I said. I was glad, too, that I was leaving for college, but he extended his hand like Sir Walter Raleigh and said, "We're leaving for our dinner, just you and me. I’m taking you to Angler's in Lewes.” (It was his favorite seafood restaurant back in the day.) Never one to turn down crab imperial, I took his hand and we took off, leaving her with a huge platter of baked shad and greens, dumbfounded, as he had never acted that way ever before. "Jim! Jim!" she cried.

I was glad to get out into the world, down Route 66 and under the Gateway to the West arch in St. Louis, Mo., to the hills of northern New Mexico. Our car broke down in Tulsa, overburdened with trunks of outfits and the 25 white blouses picked out for me that my grandmother ironed and ironed, putting herself in the hospital. I never intended to wear them anyway, but there were some good finds, too, and all the records to listen to – and the edgy black leather jacket to model!

I've always thought that Labor Day and September, the end-of-summer month, brought the psychological New Year. A new start! Teachers always swept clean like a new broom and loaded us down with homework, which I wore myself out with – but only at first, as it lessened with the approach of Halloween and fun.

My horoscope for that September of 1966 read, "Your upcoming month will be a story to be written," and so it was!