Impressed by the Gravity of the Situation

In reviewing a newsletter about the 53rd reunion of the Banning High School Class of ‘34, I expressed skepticism at two anecdotes about girls whose panties were said to have fallen around their ankles as they walked with their boyfriends.

“In all my years of girl watching,” I said, “I never saw it happen.”

I am assured by other women who were schoolgirls in that Depression era that it did indeed happen, and it was a result of the inferior elastics and primitive laundering of those times.

Surely those incidents, if true, are trivial historical footnotes, at best, but as one who likes to think of himself as having been au courant with the social phenomena of his time, I find their documentation worthwhile.

Rudolph Engelmann of Sun Valley answers my remark that I never saw it happen with a simple “I did.” He explains:

“Poverty was wrenching. The garments were finger-stitched from flour sacks and a six-cent roll of ‘elastic’ from the dry goods counter. And the ‘boiling tub’ laundry routine tended to crumble even well-sewn elastic. Those times were mean, but not so deadly as now.”

Elsie Anzalone of Long Beach remembers the anguish such an incident caused her. She was 16. A boy she had a crush on finally asked her to have a soda with him. She was thrilled. As they walked the three blocks toward the fountain she felt something give way around her waist:

“I knew instantly that the elastic in my panties had broken. I clutched at my waist frantically, knowing that if I let go the panties would have fallen down around my ankles. In those days we girls were so shy and innocent that even mentioning panties would have been unthinkable.”

Looking back on that miserable episode, Anzalone wishes she had been more daring. “What I wouldn’t give even today if I had been a spirited type who would have let the panties drop and then nonchalantly step out of them and with a carefree toss of my head, say something flippant and memorable, like the girls in an F. Scott Fitzgerald story.”

Such an accident was not uncommon, she says. “Elastic was not sewn directly on to the material as it is today but passed through a hemmed opening at the waist. If the elastic broke, down came the panties.”

“It could and did happen to me,” confesses Vi Benveniste. “In long gone days we wore satin panties with little pearl buttons at the side. Mine gave way just as I passed a football hero on whom I had a tremendous crush. My girlfriends tried to ignore me as those panties tumbled about my ankles, but it became my brief moment--those 15 minutes of fame at L.A. High.”

Rita Stricklin of Chatsworth remembers that it happened to her in 1934 when her fourth-grade class was being taught round dances, in which girls had to dance with boys. “That was bad enough all by itself, but one day I was dancing with a boy who was older than I was and a bit of a bully when I felt the elastic pop and my panties started to slip. I held them up as best I could with one hand while continuing to dance . . . but finally I became so embarrassed that I bolted from the room in disgrace. . . .” A sympathetic nun came to her rescue with a safety pin.

Ruth Rice Tobkin of Wilmington, who sent me the newsletter, explains that the brutal washing and ironing routines of those days, before drip-dry and no-iron materials, caused many a garment to fall.

“Remember, there was a world-wide depression and we survived in an era of forced frugality. Every garment was salvaged by replacing the elastic with new from the five-and-dime store. Our dear mothers were truly the heroines of the ‘elasticity vs. gravity battle.’ ”

I wonder what I would have said or done if my girlfriend’s panties had fallen while we were dancing or walking to the soda fountain. I, too, hope I could have said something worthy of Fitzgerald, like, “I say, Josephine, your panties are at half mast.”

But as Anzalone notes, “even mentioning panties would have been unthinkable.”

Maybe I’m better off, all things considered, that I never saw it happen.