A White Sports Coat and a Pink Carnation
A white sports coat and a pink carnation
I'm all dressed up for the dance.
A white sports coat and a pink carnation
I'm all alone in romance.
Marty Robbins
When my prom date Charlie Holtz arrived at the door in a white sports coat, I was waiting in the living room wearing a pink spaghetti strap formal, the most beautiful dress I had ever owned. He brought me an orchid corsage and I had a pink carnation boutonniere to pin on his dinner jacket. I had never felt that pretty.
It was the spring of my freshman year in high school, and I was as much surprised as thrilled to be invited to the Junior-Senior Prom. My all-girls Catholic High School, the Academy of St. Catherine, was the sister school to the all-boys Villanova Prep. Throughout the year we attended dances in their gym and they in ours. I remember dancing with any number of the boys, but Charlie in particular. It was the year that "Meet the Beatles" came out and we all danced to "I Want to Hold Your Hand" at every dance. None of my friends had serious boyfriends or regular dates. After the dances we would often stay over at one or another's house and talk about the dance, the boys, and who had a crush on whom. Instead of the Beatles we would moodily play The Lettermen, dreamy young women that we were.
Weeks before the prom, like a dream come true, I received a call from Charlie asking me to be his date. "Yes, I would love to go to the prom with you." I could hardly believe it. What more could I have asked for? Later I heard a rumor that another junior, Bobby Hodgins, had wanted to invite me, too, but he was running for senior class president and wanted to be sure he had the votes of the football team. Charlie was the captain of the team, and he would be my date.
Perhaps the only person more excited by the prospect of the prom was my mother. Mommy was often very tough on me in those years. There were lots of tears and slammed doors. But she loved parties and party dresses. Before the engraved invitation to dinner and dancing at the Los Posas Country Club even arrived, she took me shopping. Not at the Broadway department store in the mall, but at a small, more exclusive dress shop on Main Street. There we found the perfect dress, a pale pink gown with a lace bodice and a long organza skirt that fit perfectly. Before long I also had a long white gloves and dyed-to-match peau de soie shoes.
Mommy helped me with my hair. She had long before trained as a beautician and regularly fussed with my hair, which was why I was blond at 15. She found me a pale pink lipstick, my only makeup. I made my father move our parakeet, Lucky, out of the dining room and into a bedroom. That bird embarrassed me. Charlie was polite with my parents and said he would make sure I was home soon after the dance was over.
Then we walked out to his waiting pick-up truck. He was a boarder at Villanova; his family had orchards in Orange, California. He was a farm boy, handsome and shy. I have no recollection of our conversation, but in my scrapbook next to our photograph from the evening and my dried-out corsage I note that we had "a wonderful time."
Why my mother saved my dress and why it is still my closet, over 60 years later, I have no idea. Yet the memory of the young woman I once was on a very special night and her date with "a pink carnation and a pick-up truck," makes me smile.
A recent article in The Atlantic reports that prom dresses are just dresses for today’s teen. Oh what they are missing.