Oral history as related by Norine Franke to Coral Rohlf on October 21, 1996.
Norine Franke was born on January 19, 1937. She was born 5 miles east of Belle Fourche during a really bad blizzard. She was delivered in her home because of the weather. Norine married Armand Franke in June of 1955. They raised 3 children, one boy, and two girls. Two years after their youngest child was born, Norine went to work at a clothing store in Belle Fourche. Really enjoying that, she bought and managed The Hut, a ladies apparel shop. She operated that business for twenty years.
I`ve always really loved clothes. There were 3 girls in our family and we never really had a lot of clothes. Our biggest thrill of the year was getting a care package from a cousin. She would send all her clothes she had out grown. Us girls would have a ball going through and picking out which ones we liked.
My parents owned a country store. Their shipment of flour came in colored, pretty printed sacks, made out of cotton. When the shipment arrived, my sisters and I would go pick out which flour sacks we would want our dress made out of.
During World War II a lot of clothes were cut up to be remade for childrens` clothing. My mother cut up her wedding dress to make clothes for our family.
We determined our own style. Us girls would roll up our pant legs and roll down our bobby socks and wear our hair up in a ponytail.
In the 50`s, we were not allowed to wear jeans to school. On Fridays we could wear slacks, but they had to be nice. Otherwise, we didn`t wear jeans at all to school.
Guys could wear jeans to school. They had their hair slicked back and the guys who smoked always had their cigarettes rolled up in the sleeves of their shirts.
I disliked the sack dress the most. That was in the 50`s. It was a real straight dress, and had absolutely no shape to it. You could wear a belt with it, but most people just let it hang straight.
By the time the 60`s came, women were ready to show their independence and show that they could wear the pants in the family. The polyester pantsuit was on the scene strong.
The 70`s were fun years because we had the mini skirt. They were so short you couldn`t walk upstairs comfortably. Of course we had bell-bottoms, too. The bottom of the jeans were really wide and then we would wear platform shoes with them. The platform shoes were so high they were almost dangerous. That was a different time of fashions.
In the 80`s, women`s fashions were a repeat of the last several decades. The short pants that quit below the knees. In the 60`s they called them peddle pushers.
It would be fun to get more authentic with all the accessories-but so much has been decanted through the years, it`s impossible to put a lot of the older things together to complete the look.
Norine Franke has a very large collection of fashions from the late 1890`s up to the 1970`s and 80`s. Norine has collected fashions and been proud to show off to audiences in style shows she had given for the public.