Besides dancing, ping-pong was a popular activity at Teen-Town. me for a little bit. He was very polite. He said, ‘I have a band,’ and I thought, ‘Yes, don’t you all.” He told me that his band, The Beatles, was going to New York and they were going to be on the Ed Sullivan Show. I remember thinking, ‘Yeah, right.’ I said, ‘Why on earth would you name your band after a bug?’ and he said, ‘Oh, it’s not about a bug; it’s about our haircuts.’ About a month later, I was at home and the Ed Sullivan Show was on TV. I heard Ed Sullivan say, “And now the rock group from England that’s taking the country by storm, the Beatles.’ I stopped dead in my tracks. I thought ‘Oh My Gosh.” There were other couples who chaperoned and the Burkitts gave up their post before their daughter was born. I was at Teen Town one Saturday night in 1966, and at risk of sounding melodramatic, I’ll call it, “The night the music died.” That’s literally what happened. We were dancing and doing what we always did on Saturday nights, enjoying one another’s company, gossiping, waiting for that certain someone to look our way. Steadys were breaking up and Break ups were getting back together. We were all on a collision course to adulthood. Suddenly the music stopped. The sound of a phonograph needle being dragged off a vinyl record and the silence that ensued caught our attention. We all looked toward the jukebox where two
men in uniform stood. Someone later told me that it was the Fire Chief and a local police officer. To our shock and dismay, they were announcing that we would all have to leave. It was too crowded; it was too dangerous. Teen Town was closed. I distinctly remember a boy, an upperclassman, going over to the jukebox, plugging it back in and playing “Town without Pity.” Everyone cheered. I think the city officers saw the whimsy in that gesture, but responsibility outweighed sympathy. They unplugged the jukebox and ushered the large crowd through the office, which was the only entrance and exit used, and down the steep, narrow staircase. I’m sure that passage had much to do with the closing. Eventually another youth center was opened one block west on the north side of Main Street. It worked for a while. I don’t remember it really catching on, but maybe it was I who never caught on. My friends and I were older: dating, dragging Main and not as dependent as we had been on a safe haven which had been so important as a place to go, something to do. . I would be remiss to talk about teen town and not mention the old railroad building across from the gym on east main that was spearheaded and kept alive for so long by the tireless efforts of Art teacher Tim Murphy and changing groups of parents. I know that held the same allure for a younger generation, many of the children of Brent Coleman’s classmates and my own friends. But since I’m writing this article, I’m going to be self indulgent enough to say that the youth center above Van Wood Electric was a very special place. As I hung back near the staircase in Rick Henson’s building that Sunday and tried to peer into the pitch blackness, I couldn’t really see anything, but I could smell it. It must have been the magic.
Carol Hengst, a 1958 FCHS graduate, was the talented artist who decorated Teen Town -known then as the Youth Center-with several pictures of ‘Redbirds’ engaged in typical high school activities such as football and cheerleading. The pictures, though a bit chipped, are still on the walls.
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618.253.4711 or toll free 1.888.467.4711 Angela Rowe, DDCD www.decdens.com/angelarowe OR www.DecoratingDen.com Angela Rowe, DDCD
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Fall • 2008