#48 A Woman's Briefs -- 1957

 July 9, Tuesday, 1957

I was sixteen. My journal entry on Tuesday, July 9, 1957, says I felt woozy. I was a Baptist, and a virgin, so let me be clear. Woozy was a response to the gentle roll of the S.S President Wilson passenger ship a few hours into the Pacific Ocean from Los Angeles. Along with twenty-some other North Phoenix High School students and a few chaperons, I was on my way to a week in Honolulu.

The next paragraph in my journal?

“Saw some cute college guys, pursers. They aren’t allowed to speak to guests. Wrote Dave.”

I eventually married Dave, but, goodness, not yet.

Wednesday: “Susie, and I were invited to First Class by some guys. We went up and read.” Whatever might I have been reading?

That night at a Captain’s party, “I danced with a young Filipino doctor. Karen and I slept out on the deck.”

I remember that. I remember the stars, the breeze, the motion of the ship, the sound of water breaking off the bow, the pleasant distance from our dorm room deep in the bowels of the boat.

Is it any surprise that by Thursday I wrote of flirting with those gorgeous Princeton pursers? The last line of that day’s journal entry: “I miss Dave.”

Sunday, July 14th: Arrive Honolulu!

July 14, 1957 - There I am, bottom row, right-ish

On Sunday, we settled at the beautiful Edgewater Hotel (The first modern hotel to go up in Waikiki after WW2). For the next week I wrote about fresh pineapple & mango, Waikiki beach, swimming till midnight, guys, sunburns, tourist trips, island cliffs, wild orchids, sweet orange breakfast bread (I have the recipe), and Dave. I wrote, “Remember the story about the shark goddess & dry dock #1.” But I don’t remember.

Here's the reason I write about this trip. On Wednesday, July 17, 1957, I bought a Hawaiian Holoku dress, a style created in 1947 as “an elegant day dress.” In 1957, one those was mine. It looked like this, but the fabric was slightly different.

Hawaiian day dress

 I wore that dress to a luau. I wore it on the flight home aboard Pan American’s double-decker Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, the 1950’s latest, greatest, long-range passenger plane. A swift seven hours and twenty minutes to Los Angeles.

Find Twenty-some Teens in the very back back

Here’s the thing about that dress. I don’t remember ever wearing it again. I carried it with me from my sixteenth to my eighty-fourth year. It has moved with me from Arizona to Texas back to Arizona to Nevada to Okinawa to Florida to California, and Washington state. It is likely that by the time my third child was born in Florida, there was no more fitting into it. Still, I kept it.

My wedding dress didn’t make it past the third of four Washington moves; my Holoku dress did. It has hung behind things in the back of various closets for the past seven years, its train slightly torn. Last month, I decided it “has to go.” I put it in the Thrift Store bag. I took it out. I folded it up and put it on a shelf. I put it in the Thrift Store bag. I took it out.

“If what you are doing isn’t working, change what you are doing,” said Roger von Oech, author of “A Whack on the Side of the Head.”

Change isn’t always easy. There was a kitchen helper mixing ingredients for my friend Edith’s famous sponge cake. The helper forgot the most important sugar. It was beyond salvaging. She was about to discard the mess.

         “Noooo!” said Edith, the world’s greatest re-purposer. (“If what you are doing isn’t working”) . . . “NOODLES!” said she. Egg noodles for dinner. No dessert, granted, but how often have you tasted home-made egg noodles?

Come to 2024. My friend, master quilter Tamera, said, “Noooo!  Don’t get rid of the dress. She envisioned, she changed things. She washed, cut, ironed, designed, arranged, and stitched together what the dress could be now.

One large tote. One small Japanese Rice Bag

I love my large tote! You are seeing it folded in fourths.

I love the accompanying traditional Japanese rice bag that not only has the original dress label sewn in but a quilted heart at the bottom.

Traditional Japanese Rice Bag with the original dress label attached

Can you see the heart? I hope so!

I’m convinced that we all run the risk of carrying stuff in our minds, memories, or among our possessions long ripe for repurposing. Sometimes it requires courage to change things. Sometimes, it requires the help of others. But, Ohhh, isn’t it worth it?