Remember When. . . 1959

Randal C. Hill

In 1959, we gained two states, lost a good buddy, fell in love with a California cutie and saw a new TV show that made some of us squirm.

That eventful year began with 846,000 territory dwellers becoming American citizens when Alaska and Hawaii were welcomed into the United States.

In February, the news wasn’t as good: Three beloved rock ‘n’ rollers perished in a plane crash, a tragedy memorialized later in Don McLean’s epic “American Pie.”

How we had loved Buddy Holly’s upbeat hits “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue”! Rocker Ritche Valens had become the first Hispanic teen idol with his double-sided smash “Donna”/”La Bamba,” and the Big Bopper made us chuckle with his borderline naughty “Chantilly Lace.”

McLean later coined the catastrophe “the day the music died,” and few among us disagreed.

One month later, with the movie Gidget, Sandra Dee helped restore our smiles, starring as Francine Lawrence in a lighthearted surf-and-sand frolic that set the stage for many beach party films to come.

The real Gidget, a petite girl named Kathy Kohner, was nicknamed that by her real-life surfer pals who combined “girl” and “midget.” Kathy’s screenwriter father had based his 1957 best-selling book Gidget on the adventures she’d recorded in her diary. These focused on surfing and the loveable layabouts who lived in a homemade shack on a California beach. (Imagine that happening today!)

Come fall, our imaginations were opened in another way with the premiere of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone.” Serling’s groundbreaking show featured studies in fantasy, science fiction, suspense and horror — often woven with such social concerns as war, racism, politics and gender issues. His always-gripping tales usually featured a moral and either a twist or a macabre ending. While his messages were typically camouflaged, Serling’s stories still managed to hit home — as uncomfortable truths often do.