During the summertimes of my formative years, my sister and I and our three brothers were regularly required to go on Sunday drives with my stepfather. In these early morning, jaunts, just as the sun had come, Dad would tumble us all into the back of the station wagon: we, mumbling and groaning all the while, he, looking forward to the drive from Ocean City to the “country” I now recognize as Galloway Township. All this for Jersey tomatoes that were bursting off of their vines, corn on the cob that was still nestled into the husks that contained its pearly sweetness, and the melons that were ripe for thumping.
None of this would seem out of the ordinary, except that I was 10 years old at the time, out in public, and still in my jammies. While it may be stylish for our present generation to go out with their pajamas and yes, even their bedroom slippers on, for this author in her dorky ‘70’s upbringing, it was considered tacky. Really embarrassingly-tacky. “Dad-doesn’t-care-how-you-look,-we-need-produce” tacky.
If these outings weren’t discomforting enough, when Mom took me to the store, even though I was properly dressed at the time, I would suffer as a passenger in her Gremlin. The car itself looked like a bubble, but what’s worse was the fact that its interior was Levi-Straus denim material. I am unsure if we had fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror, but I am almost 100% certain there were no stuffed animals lined up on the back dash, nor was there any hula girl bobble-head on the front dash. There is the off-chance that I’ve repressed these memories and will end up on a therapist’s couch paying $175 per hour to help purge it all from the recesses of my mind. Regardless, it would be a painful process to explore any further, so why not save my money?
Our house was nice enough, I guess. For a family that had five children, I would like to imagine my parents were more concerned about food and shelter than they were with their (lack of) decorating abilities.
We lived in a rancher on a quaint street named “Apple Tree Lane.” The exterior had brick and clapboard shingles and the landscaping was relatively normal with boxwood shrubs and mimosa trees. The interior, however, was another story entirely: it consisted of a Spanish-style-cum-nautical-motif, with your average carving of a Buddha on the coffee table at the entryway.
If the orange shag carpeting didn’t frighten off visitors, the trip on the well-worn path to the kitchen would have made them think twice about touring the rest of the house.
Inside the kitchen, avocado-green appliances and mustard-yellow dishware were accompanied by drinking glasses that boasted of large-petaled orange and yellow flowers and, even though I felt, at the time that they were tacky, I believe they would now be deemed “retro” and had wisdom been used at the time of purchase and they had remained boxed up, we could now sell them on eBay for a reserve price to be met of at least $20/glass.
I am quite confident there was no fur – faux or otherwise – on the floors or our walls; leopard print was no where to be seen in the décor. My mother was big into ceramics and you couldn’t walk more than 10 paces without noticing *yet another* homemade ashtray (just in case any of our parents’ friends were over and they felt like lighting up). The brash oil painting over our fake black leather couch was purchased at an art show close-out sale that was held in a conference center of a run-down motel and was positively garish, especially in light of its being flanked on either side by the harlequin paintings of girls with those big eyes that seemed to stare at you in an eerie, nausea-producing way, making Precious Moments figurines look like posers.
The holidays were especially mortifying as we were the “throw-back to the early 60’s” family in the neighborhood. While I know I should have been happy it wasn’t metallic, I had difficulty reconciling the fact that we had the only flocked tree at Christmastime. I remember my dad and his friend, Don, having drinks while unclogging “the flocking machine” and laughing hysterically over their wittiness and expert diction in utilizing euphemisms while intoxicated.
The outside of the home, however, carried over my parents’ unusual penchant for all things shoddy regarding Christmas decorations: Who wouldn’t be thrilled to have a glowing Holy Family on their front lawn? It gave off enough light to serve as a beacon, a guiding light to lost space shuttles or the wayward personal plane in case the landing lights at the local puddle-jumper airport a short mile away proved ineffective. We would often wake up in the middle of the night, thinking it was time to get up for the day because the sun was out, only to discover the nativity was still lit because Dad forgot to unplug it prior to retiring.
While the Holy Family sat and radiated their special energy, it served only as a minor distraction to the plastic Santa and his eight tiny reindeer that were a particularly garishly painted polyurethane that were only slightly losing their luster, and looking, uhm, weathered — but were still colored enough that you were able to distinguish that Santa belonged with his sleigh and not over bringing gifts to the baby Jesus. I recall the one night, after an arduous night of flocking with my parents, Don had picked up Santa and moved him over by the Magi. Funny guy.
My family’s musical preferences also, for the most part, lacked in taste. Mom would blare Stan Getz’s “The Girl from Ipanema” while dusting, and Herb Alpert & the Tiajuana Brass while vacuuming. I can’t pick up a dust cloth as an adult without singing “…tall and tan and young and lovely…” Rooming with my sister, however, led me to a totally different genre of music: Gilbert O’Sullivan and the Osmond Brothers. I am the only person I know that can identify sappy music immediately upon stepping into an elevator. One would think I’d have been doomed.
If it weren’t for questionable taste, we may have led dull and mundane lives. However, because my world was colored in kitsch, and I found myself running the opposite way as an adult, I now have a great appreciation for fine art and wonderful music. My husband and I do, however, have a difference in opinion when it comes to something being worn and weather-beaten vs. “shabby chic.” It’s all a matter of interpretation, correct?
During the holidays I find when we take our own children out on “light runs” to check out our neighbors’ decorations, I am the only one proclaiming my delight over the plastic Santas and animated reindeer – the decorations they consider to be tacky.
Oh, if they only knew.
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