Letterman sweaters, checkered swimsuits, making out at Lovers’ Lane …
A band called The Vibrations, prom dresses, and lining up for food at Carl’s Hamburger Shop.
If you’re a person of a certain age who called Waseca County home, the latest exhibit at the Waseca County Historical Society might just send you down memory lane for a few hours.
It’s called “Bringing it Back” and features 1950s and 1960s teen culture, much of it specific to the Waseca area. Local residents have lent items to the organization for the display, which adds a creative verve to the exhibit.
“It’s really important to have your own history remembered and honored, and to know that it mattered,” said Amy Danielson, co-director of the Waseca County Historical Society.
“I love when people come in and they can share that with their families and be like, ‘See, all these stories I’ve been telling you that you thought were boring? Here’s the pictures!’ It makes them feel validated and everyone should feel that way.”
The exhibit, which runs through Aug. 30, is chock-full of little surprises.
One area includes a series of prom dresses lent to the WCHS by a family. As the story goes, twin girls desperately wanted the prom dresses, but dad was reluctant to spend the money. Only after the girls promised to swap dresses and wear them again the following year did dad relent.
In front of those dresses is a table with all the Waseca High School yearbooks from 1950-1969. Danielson says the books have prompted visitors to stop for hours, browsing through them, looking for friends, looking for themselves.
Near that display is another featuring one woman’s scrapbook of 4-H activities, including newspaper clippings and actual submissions from her days in the group.
A display of swimwear is set up on mannequins, behind which is an enlarged photo of a dozen kids jumping into Clear Lake sometime in the ‘50s.
One of the most intriguing displays, though, doesn’t involve any artifacts from back in the day. It’s called Lovers’ Lane.
On an easel are printed maps of each township in the county. Visitors are encouraged to insert a thumb tack on the board to show a place where it was known that teens would park for a romantic rendezvous.
At first, the Lovers’ Lane piece was more talked about than engaged with. People were willing to say they knew of some people who did that but were reluctant to commit anything to thumbtack.
“It’s interesting how difficult it was to get that information,” researcher Virginia McCarthy said. “I would talk to people and say, ‘I’m doing research on the lovers’ lanes or parking spots in Waseca County. And they’d look at me and say, ‘Well, I don’t know where they were.’ And I would say, ‘It doesn’t have to be where you went. But did you hear of any?’ And they’d say ‘No, we never heard of anything like that.’”
So they decided to turn the Lovers’ Lane easel around, giving thumb tackers a smidgen of privacy. And then more thumb tacks started appearing.
“I did run into a couple of people that said, ‘Oh, we really liked that. We put some pins there,’” McCarthy said. “I’m sure as teenagers, we weren’t supposed to be out parking, so you got used to not talking about where you were parking. I don’t know. It’s just one of those things that you didn’t talk about, I guess.”
So far, this exhibit hasn’t gotten the same foot traffic as the Barbie exhibit from a few months ago, which Danielson said is understandable. Barbie had a juggernaut of a film behind it that was so beloved, anything remotely hinting at Barbie was sure to attract fans. And for many women, the film and other remembrances spoke to them on a more visceral level.
But Danielson said she hopes that, with a little more exposure, people will come and see this exhibit for its nostalgic value.
“They love it. They seem very relaxed,” she said. “People are quietly walking around and remembering when, and it’s really sweet.”