Becoming a Teenager:
It was no coincidence that the music of the fifties and sixties targeted the teenage market! This was the period when the post war babies became teenagers! The social culture was teenage based and created a huge unprecedented market! There were dozens of songs centered on age sixteen!
Sixteen Candles, the Platters and the Crests,
Only Sixteen, Craig Douglas,
Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, Neil Sedaka,
You’re Sixteen, Johnny Burnette,
Sweet Little Sixteen, Chuck Berry etc.
One of my favourite songs by Lonnie Donegan starts, “Sweet sixteen goes to church just to see the boys... Putting on the Style!" Teenagers were falling in and out of love! Moodiness, loneliness, violence, recklessness were all part of the makeup of a teenager! The film Rebel Without a Cause said it all! James Dean became a superstar and, “Chicken“ became a dangerous game on the roads!
The term Teen Idol was coined!
I was thirteen in 1957!
A Teenage Crush:
I was still catching spiders, fighting fish and flying kites and fishing! Girls never featured in my activities! I was mystified by a couple of our group who raved about this girl and that girl! Then one day the inevitable happened, I was returning from fishing in the sea off Siglap when a girl on a bicycle stopped by me, smiled at me and said “How many fish did you catch Robert?”. I was kind of speechless and just held up the string of fish that I was bringing home. She smiled again and said, “That’s a good catch “ and cycled off!
I stood there just stunned ! It didn’t help that she was just prettiest girl I had ever seen and I’d never seen her before! I thought she might have been one of my sisters’ friends! But they didn’t know her. However, a couple of the guys knew instantly who she was and even where she lived! Next day, I persuaded my new classmate Lesley from ACS to come with me to see where she lived. Somewhere in Dunbar walk!
We were just outside her house when a chauffeur driven Borgward stopped at her gate! And out she came. She saw us and came to us asking what we were doing! I had cunningly dropped a few coins on the grass verge and we were pretending to look for them. “Let me help you” she said and proceeded to look around with us! We collected my coins then she kindly invited us in for a drink (orange juice)! She got us our drinks and had one for herself.
We chatted for a while and then she said, “ Excuse me I have to do my homework, just wait for me.”
She got out her homework and we just sat and listened to Guy Mitchell, “Singing the Blues” on the LP she had put on for us!
I noticed after a while that she looked perturbed about her homework so I walked over to see what she was trying to do, She had CV Durell's, “General Mathematics Vol. 4” in front of her. I had only just finished Vol. 4 at Presbyterian Boys' School. However, I looked at the problem she was trying to solve and surprisingly saw how to do it immediately! So I showed her how it was done and I got another of those beautiful smiles. Homework was done in no time and we got to chat and got to know each other better.
Teenage Socials:
This became a kind of usual pattern and a few of us used to gather regularly at her place. We brought our guitars and sang the hits by Pat Boon, Elvis, Harry Belafonte, Ricky Nelson, Fats Domino and others.
She taught us how to dance; the cha cha, jive and the waltz! We also went out as a group to the places like the Botanical Gardens for a picnic where she packed a lunch. The highlight of our get-togethers was a trip to Johore Bahru one day where again she packed a lunch and drinks for us! Our main group consisted of Philip and Dennis (our Everly Brothers Champions), myself and Leslie. All this was good innocent fun and it was happy days for me.
Surprisingly she usually went to school by bus! She would walk all the way from Dunbar walk, through Frankel Avenue to the bus stop on Geylang Road where she took a bus to Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, passing my house on the way! I used to wait to wave to her and have a few words.
I remember those mornings where I would have a Billy Vaughan LP on while waiting. “A Summer Place” and “Sail along Silvery Moon” were my favourite songs on this LP. The twin saxophones blended so beautifully! However. As all good things this would not last forever.! We were always mindful that she was a little older than us. She was fifteen and we were about thirteen.
“I’m so young and your so old”, Paul Anka's, Diana was about two years older than Paul too. We had over a year of this wonderful companionship but we always new she had older male friends who had more serious intentions.
Teenage Blush:
One day we visited as usual but she had gone. We came again the next day and were met by her older cousin waving a large screwdriver.
“Don’t come here again!” he said, in a most unfriendly manner.
We left quite shocked and we never saw her again till many years later!
“One day she left without a word she took away the sun...” Lemon Tree, Peter Paul and Mary.
So this is how I got initiated into the teenage world! All the songs we sang were becoming true!
Comments are welcome.
Another Robert Gay memory:
https://singapore60smusic.blogspot.com/2024/01/frankel-estate-siglap-singapore-meets.html
[Author: Robert Gay. Copyrighted article.]
