Nana Biography

I went there age 13, 14, 15. When I finished at the age of 15, in June, I went to New York to visit my aunt. She met the train. She looked at me and said (I remember this) “Oh my God “. She took me down to Charles of the Ritz.  I was wearing my hair, pulled back, I’ve been in bloomers and was not conscious of my looks particularly, and she had them give me a permanent, and I was given some lipstick. First time, can you imagine?

When I came home, my mother met the train in Kentucky and she burst into tears. All of a sudden, overnight, I became conscious of boys in a different way. Also, I realized I was pretty. So suddenly, I had a different outlook and a whole new field. In Lexington, where I grew up, which was a rather small town, everyone knew everyone, and the main sport for going out and dating people was going to dances or going to movies. There were two or three girls that we knew that were bad girls that went out and necked. I was a real prude, and so we were my friends. We really didn’t kiss boys. I had never kissed a boy up till then. I think I was 16 the first time, and then it was the most awful little peck.  we did a lot of dancing. At vacation, Christmas for two weeks there would be a dance every night, the dances were with stag lines.

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