HULLY GULLY

That summer before high school, my camp buddy Robby and I agreed that Sophomore year was the best year in high school for a girl,. As a sophomore girl, you could date sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Robby was going into his senior year, the most advantageous year for a boy, as all the girls were fair game. This was great until the middle of the summer, when Robby and I became girlfriend and boyfriend. I was fourteen and at that time I decided that I would marry him.

My mother was not pleased for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that I was fourteen and what did I know. Furthermore, as I was a fifth generation German American Jew, his eastern European lineage was a serious flaw in her eyes.. So the rule was established that though I might see Robby on a Saturday when he would take a train from Long Island to NYC and then a bus to Teaneck, New Jersey, on Friday nights I had to go out with local boys. Though my self image was the opposite of a teen queen, it turned out that I was very popular with boys so my mother’s edict was met.

That summer, Paula and I met at camp and then on the cheerleading squad. I was not a model cheerleader, though I could do a cartwheel split. My idols were Joan Baez and Buffy Ste. Marie, I was more interested in being a hippie, or at least, looking like one. Being a cheerleader and a hippie weren’t ego syntonic. Though I had been captain of the cheerleading squad in junior high school, by the time I got to high school I was dis-enchanted and eventually quit the squad.

Paula and I lived in the same town but the dividing line on the map dictated that we attend different junior high schools but at the one high school, we found ourselves on the JV cheerleading squad, though we really weren’t friends; she was a year older, and just like camp, we didn’t have much to do with each other.

As was the tradition in Teaneck back in the early sixties, Friday night, the beginning of the weekend, was when kids would go to an open house. An “open house” was when word got around on a Friday afternoon that someone’s parents were going to be out and anyone could drop by and hang out and dance and drink Coke and 7-Up, and eat potato chips and cheese doodles. This was in Teaneck, New Jersey: considered a model community. No one in our crowd drank beer or liquor and it was years before marijuana was in the high schools.

On a Friday night in late December, the beginning of Christmas vacation, Paula, was having the party. Loads of kids, record payer constantly spinning 45’s, filling the house with the popular tunes of the day: Walk Right In”, Lesley Gore “It’s My Party,” the Beach Boys, “Surfin USA”, “He’s So Fine” by the Chiffons. But the newest record was by the Doves, and a line dance that involved no physical contact, The Hully Gully. Everyone was doing the hully gully.

THE MOON WAS BRIGHT THE SKY WAS LIGHT

I SAID HEY GIRL I LOVE YA, WHATCHA WANNA DO? AND SHE SAID:

HULLY GULLY BABY, YEAH I WANNA DANCE WITH YOU.

HULLY GULLY BABY, YEAH, C’MON, C’MON.

ALL THAT I WANNA DOOOO WITH YOU

IS HULLY GULLY BABY.

During the party I started talking to Peter, a senior. He was tall and cute and nice. I knew who he was because he played basketball and I was still on the junior varsity cheering squad, with Paula. He was part of a group of guys with whom I was friendly and dated but until that night he hadn’t paid me any attention nor I him. We danced the hullly-gully.

As the party started to wind down, Peter asked me if I wanted a ride home. Even though in my mind I was already betrothed, my heart skipped a beat. I remember being thrilled as we walked to his car. It was a crisp clear night and the stars shone so bright. The party was on one side of town and we both lived on the other side. As we drove, Peter perhaps not wanting the evening to end, drove around the neighborhood. He showed me his house on Fayette Street, down the block two of my friends, from Dinny and Caren. A few days before we’d had a huge two-foot snowstorm back in the day when if there was snow, you still went to school. Though everything had been plowed, the street was covered with packed snow and huge banks on either side glistened in the light of the street lamps.

As we were driving further along Fayette Street, Hully Gully came on the radio. Peter looked at me, and stopped the car in the middle of the street and said, “Come on.”

We both got out of the car and danced the Hully Gully on Fayette Street. Except for the sound of the radio, it was all quiet and still, save for the crunching sounds of the snow under our feet as we moved in unison from side to side. I never wanted it to end. But the song did end, and we got back into the car and Peter drove me home. It was magical, romantic. I remember feeling so happy. As we drove home, my heart was pounding. I felt like I was in a movie.

Robby didn’t come the next day because he was going to come the next weekend for New Year’s. Peter called on Sunday morning and picked me up and we went to visit his sister, Judy, who was married to Don and living in an apartment in the next town. It all seemed so exotic: having an older sister who was married, visiting them, making lunch together. So grown-up. I loved it and when he dropped me off, I felt crestfallen. Rumor had it that Peter was really upset that I wouldn’t go out with him for New Year’s. Robby came, and that was that.

To this day, I regret it. I felt a girlish flutter in my heart when we danced that night. I had an overwhelmingly wonderful time that Sunday morning. I felt so connected in time and place in a way I had not yet experienced. A strange warm feeling, so new to me. It was as if, prior to this time with Peter, I had been numb to life around and within me; guarded, being careful not to upset my mother; following her direction. It was if I was a Stepford child, a subservient and docile role aimed to please.