Rebel without a clue

I grew up in a wicked era, a time of change and turmoil. Wanting to do our part, we flocked to the movies to learn how to be rebellious juvenile delinquents. James Dean and Marlon Brando were our role models. Now in retrospect, having recently seen these films again thanks to TCM Movie Channel, I notice that James Dean was kind of whiney in “Rebel Without a Cause” and Brando seemed to be about 16 going on 25 as he led his motorcycle gang through the streets of small town America, but this was beside the point. The main thing was they didn’t do what they were told. Cool. The obligatory dress code called for those high, black boots with a buckle on the side (engineer boots) and a black leather garrison belt. To complement this required a pair of Levis with that little leather patch on the back with your waist size and leg length (No substitutes allowed!) worn low so that the seat of the pants bagged out. You can still see this today if you look carefully at some of the seniors. The tip-off is if they are wearing what is left of their hair in a D.A. (duck’s a**) hair style. If it is a pony tail, that is a hippy from a time in the future back then, if you follow. Hippies did not belong to cool gangs as they were too busy doing their own thing, a somewhat disturbing concept to their parents who were never quite sure exactly what that meant. My parents would not buy the high-priced Levis. I got Wranglers. It was embarrassing.Anyway, if you had the money or could wheedle it out of your parents, you would complete your outfit with a motorcycle jacket; a maze of zippers and black leather, never to be closed in front which made it decidedly breezy in our northeastern winters and tended to create a lot of sickly cool guys.We were shocked one year when the principal got up at one of our assemblies and rattled off our uniform’s functionality; boots for stomping, belt to be wrapped around the hand with buckle dangling (a kind of whip with an extra punch) and the pants and jacket as armor to dull the force of those garrison belt blows. Not quite so attractive now. We just thought we were dressed cool. What if someone decided to test our bad-boy image? That wouldn’t be fun. I’m a bleeder.I never let my hair grow or did my own thing. I went a different way. I cut my hair short, bought a bright red mackinaw, and learned to do what the boss told me. That paid the bills.Bill Abrams resides in Pine Plains, where he (tries to) dress the part and follow the law.