“Let’s all go to the Prom”

By

Gerry Niskern

Among the paintings by Norman Rockwell is one titled “ After the Prom”. In the image a teenage couple is seated at the soda fountain of a drugstore. The girl is dressed in a waltz length pink gown with cap sleeves.  Her date is holding her purse and pink sweater while she adjusts her corsage. The soda jerk waits to take their order. A trip to the corner drugstore for a soda after the prom…imagine that!

I have some young friends in Paradise Valley who are getting ready for  their prom. The girls have been shopping for the right gown for weeks.  Strapless is a must. They plan to spend around $400 for their dresses, but with shoes, purse, makeup and hair the evening will run closer to $600. Their dates will be in a rented tux, of course. But  that’s just the beginning. He’ll be footing the bill for the dance, dinner at an upscale restaurant first and hopefully sharing a limousine with a group. Typically, they will go on to another party after the prom.

Our Junior-Senior prom at Phoenix Union High School was held in the gymnasium. My date picked me up in his low riding black Chevy coupe. The cool look was achieved by loading the trunk with sand bags.  A trip to Coney Island down on Central Ave for a chilidog or a ride out to the Ice Cream Polar Bar on North Central for a Zombie were a couple of the after dance options.

A friend of mine from Minnesota reminisced,  “My prom in the 40’s was held in May when the weather was good. My date picked me up in an Essex for the $6 dinner dance. My gardenia corsage was $3.  All the juniors and seniors went whether they had a date or not. The gowns were long and the boy’s suits were dark.”

We both share the experience of raising children of the 60’s who spurned the idea of anything traditional. They wore their hair long and their army fatigues baggy. Needless to say, since they worked hard at being anti-establishment, going to a prom was out of the question. By the time our free spirits had offspring of their own, the prom was popular again but prices had changed. Dress prices had quadrupled and tuxedos and limousines were a must.

Actually proms started changing in the late fifty’s. Another friend who went to Glendale Union High School remembers paying around $45 for her gown and of course, shoes dyed to match.  “My boyfriend showed up in a white tuxedo he had rented for $20. He brought white orchids.  The prom was a dinner dance at the Bali Hi Hotel in Phoenix.  After the dance everyone raced home and changed clothes. Then we drove to up to Yarnell, and had a sunrise breakfast at the old “Ranch House Café. Don’t ask me why!” she laughed.

Twenty or so years later, when their son went to the Glendale Hi prom, the ticket to the prom was $80 and included a sit down dinner at the Pointe Resort. During those days, getting a date for the prom was critical. If you didn’t have a date, you didn’t go.

It seems we’ve come full circle; because now groups go to the prom sans dates. Sounds good to me!

My date for that prom in April, 1950 says the most expensive part of prom night was the price of the ticket he received for having straight pipes on his Chevy coupe that could be heard several blocks away. He thought that maybe the limousines aren’t such a bad idea.