Figure 1.--.
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Figure 1.--. |
I remember well what we wore as uniforms in the late-1940s, when I attended Catholic Junior High School in San Diego, California.
The pants were gray corduroy, and we wore white long sleeve shirts and gray woolen sweaters. The uniform regulations specifed a particular striped tie but I don't recall that anyone ever wore one, except for special school
functions. All the major department stores in San Diego carried the corduroy trousers and sweaters that the Catholic schools specified, and I somehow remember that the pants sold for about $4.00. Shoes were plain black leather, and your hair could not be below your collar. There was no uniform jacket. The jackets we wore to school were an odd assortment of whatever you happed to have. Those pants were a really good grade of corduroy, and wore like iron. They were washable, and needed no pressing. In fact the corduroy looked funny if you ironed it. My mother had some metal stretchers she would put in the legs when she dried them, and they looked like they had been ironed. Funny..... I had forgotten about those
stretchers until just now.
The Catholic girl's school was near the boy's school, and I can remember that they wore pleated gray woolen skirts, white blouses, and gray woolen sweaters almost identical to the one's we wore. They wore plain black shoes and white ankle length socks. They often didn't wear the wool sweaters in warm weather.
I only attended Catholic school in the 7th and 8th grade, but to the best of my recollection, at least in San Diego, all the Catholic schools from grade 1 thru 12 wore that same uniform. I know that it was the same from sometime in World War II, well up into the 1950s.
The uniform regulations weren't enforced rigidly. The climate in San Diego is very mild, and in warm weather and we often would not wear the sweaters, and just wear short sleeve white shirts. If you came to school in your gray cords and some kind of white dress shirt, nobody bothered you, at least not at school.
Getting to and from school could be a different matter. We sometimes got picked on by the kids from public schools because of our distinctive clothing.
In the 50s, I went to public high school, but I remember that both the Catholic High Schools, and Junior High Schools still wore the same uniforms we wore in the late 40s.
I think another part of the "uniform" was the marks across your knuckles, where the sisters would rap you with a ruler if you didn't do your lessons properly.
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