Oh Norma, how you set the stage......for the decades in my life

In my last post, I mentioned I was taking a memoir writing class and that one of our assignments was to do a timeline of our life thus far from birth year to today.  And one of the writing assignments we were given was to write about 'My First Decade'.

When you do a time line on the Internet using websites such as www.ourtimelines.com you can title the search with your name and put the birth year and the current year and when you hit enter, it gives you a timeline of major events that have happened in your life thus far....pretty cool....makes you think......puts things in perspective.

To write a brief autobiography you choose a few major events in each decade and write about how they related to you, where you were, what you were doing when the events happened etc.  Following is my first stab at it......and this is how I started with my outline:

FIRST DECADE 1948-1958

YEAR                 MAJOR EVENT                     CONSEQUENCES

1948           33 1/3 RPM MUSICAL                 LOTS OF MUSIC

                              RECORDINGS

1949          45 RPM MUSICAL                        LOVE OF MUSIC

                              RECORDINGS

1954         RACIAL SEGREGATION RULED   MILITARY UPBRINGING

                          UNCONSTITUTIONAL          DULLED SEGREGATION

1955          POLIO VACCINE AT AGE 7     REMEMBER BRACES/SERIES

 

1957          SPUTNIK LAUNCHED              STARS NEW MEANING

1958         NASA ESTABLISHED               OFF WE GO INTO THE WILD

                                                                   BLUE WONDER

                                                               

1958      STEREO LP RECORDINGS/                MUSIC IN HOME

              FM STEREO BROADCASTS

WRAP UP THE FIRST DECADE.... REVEAL



This is my story......(some names have been left out to protect the innocent......but you know who you are)

It was a hot night in July 1947 at a diner in New Orleans when my Aunt and my Uncle, introduced her sister to his co-worker from the oil fields.  Her sister was divorced and had a 4 month old daughter.  She was not that eager to be on a blind date. But as the music came on the jukebox and Norma Deloris Egstrom purred out a sultry song, their eyes met and as the saying goes it was love at first site and the rest is history. From that first meeting into the depths of each others eyes, they were together everyday after that and were married a short 3 months later in October , 1947. In November of 1948 I came into this world as she delivered another baby girl and the name printed on my birth certificate is Peggy Lee Marie Stone. The first decade, like every decade of my life was filled with music. The year I was born was the start of 33 1/3 RPM recordings. 1949 brought the first 45 RPM recordings and skip forward to 1958, the last year of my first decade, there was the introduction of Stereo LP’s and FM Stereo Radio Broadcasts. Music was always in our home, so it isn’t a surprise that even today music, from Perry Como, Norma Egstrom, Benny Goodman, Jo Stafford and great jazz and big band sounds, is some of my favorite. It’s what I heard in the womb...it what I heard as a young child.

My dad was in the military and shortly after my first birthday, my mother set me in a wicker laundry basket and boarded a train to meet my dad at his new duty station in Indiana...the beginning of what would be many years of following dad from one duty station to another in the United States and overseas.

 

Out of my realm of understanding as a small child, in the first decade of my life, there was racial segregation and turmoil. I was 6 years old in 1954 and living in Japan when racial segregation was declared unconstitutional. But having lived those 6 years on military bases we never thought anything of playing with and going to school with children of other races. As a child I always envied my cousins who lived and still live in southern Louisiana for having roots in one place, since the military transfers did not allow that for my sister and I.  As an adult I don’t envy them that, because of the wonderful places I got to see in our travels, and because I was taught from the time I was very small to accept that people are equal regardless of their race. Children of the south, at that time, were taught the 'ways' of the south, ‘ways’ that took a great deal of adjustment and struggle in their mindset.

In 1955, we saw the invention of the Polio vaccine and as a military brat I was familiar with the multitude of shots that always had to be taken as we traveled across the states and overseas....and I remember well hearing parents discuss the fear of this disease and seeing the pictures of children with braces.... and the “series” of Polio vaccine that children had to take.

The stars took on new meaning and the world became bigger in the last two years of my first decade with the Russian “Sputnik” being launched in 1957 and the United States establishing NASA in 1958. Since my dad was in the United States Air Force....I always felt partial to the expression.... “Off we go into the wild blue yonder!”

When I think back to my first decade not only were the stars  in my parents eyes, but the stars opened up to new worlds yet explored. Even back then new strides were being made in the field of medicine and racial acceptance and peace. The music took on new feeling, recordings took on new size disks and new extremes of broadcasting and magnification even as Norma Deloris Egstrom's sultry song made my dad and mom fall in love.  I'm sure she wasn't aware of how her music affected them or her affect on my life.........Norma Deloris Egstrom was the birth name of the lady with the velvet voice , her agent changed her name to what we knew her as.....Peggy Lee. 

 

I’m told I wasn’t named after her....my dad’s middle name is Lee....but hey it makes for a good story...and it’s my story and I’m sticking to it!