A rebellion that grew with an order of toast?

I recently posted on how many boundaries have come down in our society. These are boundaries that seem largely arbitrary in their origin or with underpinnings that have no application today.
I wrote about the line drawn between breakfast and later meals in the day, with restaurants thinking it strange if you inquired about a breakfast item after, say, 10:30 a.m. This line is still drawn in some places, probably for reasons of practicality more than anything else, but in many restaurants the breakfast menu is full-go all the time. At least the waitress doesn't wrinkle her forward in reaction.
Think this is a trivial example? Think back to the movie "Five Easy Pieces" in which Jack Nicholson as "Bobby" reacts to a ridiculous menu restriction at a roadside restaurant. All he wanted was a side order of toast with breakfast.
He was told "no, toast isn't offered as a side item." It defied logic and common sense. Bobby got belligerent and his group was eventually asked to leave. The movie was deemed culturally significant and is in the National Film Registry. Young people today would scratch their heads trying to realize the symbolism of the restaurant scene, I suspect. Us "boomers" were there, and we know.
In my earlier post I wrote about how women cosmetologists didn't cut men's hair. Hey, this was an actual law at one time! The archaic framework of rules and expectations, of which this law is strikingly symbolic, might be one reason the hippie culture rose up. This generation spoke up and said "do your own thing."
We talked about peace and love but what we really wanted was freedom and liberation. None of those forward steps was without some resistance. I'm sure there were those, who I suspect were conservative and Republican, who felt there was no need to implement full-bore girls and women's athletic programs in schools - on a par with men.
I could add that some cultural boundaries are defensible, like maybe a prohibition on Republicans attending lesbian/bondage nightclubs on party funds.
We accept the loosened boundaries today as if there could never be an issue about it. But there were definitely barriers years ago. Chris Voelz at the University of Minnesota was a women's administrator who gave no quarter and became controversial because of it.
Us boomers flip through pages of a 1950s or '60s high school yearbook, perhaps while waiting to see the dentist, looking at those photos which in our vernacular we'd call "dorky," and look with wonderment at how "girls athletics" was represented then. Typically you'll see a group of girls posed on some gym bleachers with the headline "G.A.A."
Girls Athletic Association. . . The only real evidence I've ever come across of that group's existence is those old group photos. I don't remember it functioning in reality. Of course, girls could always be "candy stripers." Today, girls are full-fledged in an array of sports and getting attention in the media that isn't merely bestowed as a courtesy or out of political correctness. I make the point this way because girls/women's sports did go through a novelty phase. Call it a growing pain.
It was definitely a pain because these athletes were starting from the bottom rung - sort of like learning to speak a new language as an adult. The capability was there but the usual building blocks (from a young age and with intense discipline) weren't in place. People in the "old media" could actually get annoyed (though they only cautiously expressed this) by demands for "equal coverage."
I'm sure that coverage was only grudgingly given sometimes. Whispers among these media people at the local watering hole could be condescending or worse. Newspapers have a finite amount of sports section space. The idea of bestowing "equal coverage" thus had practical limitations.
A constant theme in my writing is "Who gives a damn about the old media?" So pondering the challenges of old media institutions is sort of like looking at those old "dorky" photos. I'm so relieved not to be a "dork" anymore and now to be writing in the new media.
When I was in high school music, oh boy, there were boundaries and limitations there too. This gives me an excuse to write about an old friend of mine, Joan Force, because she was a pioneer as a prep musician. She's a lifelong Iowan and today plays in the Eastern Iowa Brass Band. What makes her special? She plays the trumpet. In high school she not only played in the male-dominated trumpet section, she was a strong and superior trumpet player.
Girls in those days flocked to the flute and clarinet sections. The few who tried brass might be expected to sit relatively deep in the section. The idea of a "first chair" female trumpet player might have been seen in the same category as a woman cutting hair. Remember, against the law!
Today the musical universe is just as liberated as sports. I frown when I realize that young people today probably take it all for granted. They should know that the celebrated "hippie phase" of their elders was about so much more than tastes with hair, attire and music.
All of those things were a "shot across the bow" toward our own elders, whom we felt had tried to force us into a world that was too confining and suffocating. We talked about "peace and love" but on a practical level we were demanding an end to the military draft. Really we just thought war needed to be pushed aside. Our elders couldn't sell us on the idea of communism being a bogeyman, or the triumphalist destiny (i.e. innate superiority) of the west.
Chris Matthews of MSNBC constantly cites the military draft as the common thread among so much of the cultural tumult instigated by the boomers when young. Today's young people should contemplate what it would really be like growing up in an America where young men would get the "greetings" letter from Uncle Sam, compelling them to take up a rifle and perhaps get killed in some jungle across the globe. That's the America I observed through adolescence.
I was a "media junkie" so it all sunk in pretty good. I was a bit too young to have to worry about the draft as a practical matter. I remember Nelson Rockefeller, considered the leader of the moderate (read reasonable) faction of the Republican Party, giving a celebrated speech proposing a "lottery" as a means of addressing the draft. Mr. Rockefeller could have taken that lottery proposal, along with the draft itself, and done something as suggested by a character in the original "Bad News Bears" movie: "Put it where the sun never shines."
The draft abated, women started cutting men's hair, restaurants served breakfast after noon and girls starting making three-point shots in basketball. What an enlightened new world.
Joan Force continues playing the trumpet with elan and flair in the Eastern Iowa Brass Band (typically abbreviated to EIBB). She's a resident of Marion, Iowa, a companion community to Cedar Rapids. She took only a one-year hiatus from the EIBB since she joined in 1986, and I suspect the hiatus was connected to her divorce, after which she took back her maiden name which is "Force." We all had female friends in our youth with whom we'll always associate their maiden names.
Joan began playing the trumpet from the get-go in fifth grade. She grew up in Cedar Falls and has a B.A. Degree in Music Education from the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. But education hasn't been her career. She's a "professional organizer" today who deals a lot with "decluttering," especially for senior citizens who are in the process of moving to a smaller place, or senior citizens who lack close family around them to assist with such transition issues.
What a perfect calling for a baby boomer whose generation is noteworthy for, among many other things, having parents living especially long and presenting aging issues that require a special brand of attention.
Hats off to brass devotee Joan Force, musical pioneer and dynamic individual.
Now I think I'll go push some bread into the toaster.
-Brian Williams - Morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com