241. Bobby Sox

I wrote this little ditty that I like to hum while I walk:

“Bobby Sox”

Boy:

“Ain’t it grand in the grandstand?

Ain’t it grand from the box?

Ain’t it grand from the front row

In your bobby sox?”

Girl:

“Yes, it’s grand from the grandstand

And it’s grand from the box—

Even grand from the BACK row,

In my bobby sox!”

(“Bobby sox” were girl’s white athletic stockings, which were rolled into a thick cuff low on the ankle just above the shoe top. When I was a teenager in the 50’s, the era of “Rock Around the Clock” and young Elvis Presley, the girls wore “bobby sox” with their pink rubber-soled brown and white or black and white “saddle shoes” or “penny loafers”. They also wore bobby sox to the “sock hop” dances held in high school gymnasiums since regular street shoes were not allowed on the beautifully polished wooden gym floors of those days. No matter what they did or where they were, American teenagers constantly celebrated an enormous joy of life in those days and wasn't I lucky to have been one of them!)

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