Posted on by Phil Strawn

Growing Up In The 1950s. Threats Used By Parents To Keep Kids In Line


Pictured is the infamous “Dope Farm” in Fort Worth, Texas. A facility built to house drug addicts and high-profile bad guys. If you grew up in Fort Worth in the 1950s, chances are good that your parents used this place as a threat to keep you in line.

My neighborhood buddies and I were a bit on the bad side; nothing severe, just minor kid things like blowing up mailboxes with cherry bombs, setting garages on fire, raiding the milkman’s truck while he was taking the bottles of milk to a doorstep, dropping firecrackers down rooftop vents, fun little things like that.

These minor infractions usually ended with one or all of us getting a butt whooping with a belt, flyswatter, Mimosa tree switch, a tennis shoe, or a Tupperware cake pan. The Tupperware hurt more than any of the other weapons our mothers could find. When our hijinx got to be too much, our mothers would pull out the dreaded threat of “Okay, that’s it, either straighten up or I’m sending you to the Dope Farm.” That’s all it took to turn us into practicing angels for a few days. All the kids knew about this place. The narcotics users, gangsters, and local children who misbehaved went there. None of us actually knew anyone who had been incarcerated within those walls, but the thought of going there scared the liver out of us.

In the late 1950s, a cousin of mine turned into a genuine hoodlum, robbing a grocery store dressed up like Mr. Greenjeans from the Captain Kangaroo show. Greased back hair, black work boots, dirty Levis, and a white tee-shirt with a pack of Camels rolled into the sleeve, and he rode a junked-out motorcycle. When my mother spoke of him, she crossed herself. My poor cousin was added to the ever-present threat because he spent a year of his teenage life at The Dope Farm, living in a small cell, eating Wonder Bread and Bologna samwithches, and watching the old movie “Boys Town” every Saturday night. There wasn’t a Father Flannigan on the premises, only guards with guns and a Baptist preacher.

I was pretty good for a year while my cousin was locked up. We received a Christmas card with a picture of him dressed in his striped pajamas, slicked-back hair, and a Camel dangling from his snarly mouth. All this while perched on Santa’s knee. It was a nice little card, similar to the ones we made in school from construction paper and paste. Some bad words and threats were written below the photo, but my mother wouldn’t let me read them. She cut the bad word part off and taped the card on the ice-box, so every time I opened it, the threat was there, and it worked.

The only kid, other than my hoodlum cousin, who was dragged off to the place was our baseball team center fielder, Billy Roy. Billy started hanging out with our nemesis across the track, The Hard Guys, and became a regular James Cagney by the fourth grade, robbing a local convenience store with a Mattel Fanner 50 cap pistol. You guessed it, he went to the Dope Farm for six months. He learned some good stuff there because when he came out, he went directly into a lucrative life of hoodlummanity and crime. Last I heard, he was in Sing Sing.

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15 Replies to “Growing Up In The 1950s. Threats Used By Parents To Keep Kids In Line”

  1. Never would have thought Tupperware would be so hurtful.
    In 1976, I visited Seagoville Prison one day & Tarrant County Penitentury the next. I wonder if those are still around? Later, in the 1980s, I visited Huntsville. Interesting, but certainly glad I was just visiting.

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    2. Trust me on this one Jack, Tupperware is a lethal butt whoopin weapon. My mothers favorite was a 9″ by 12″ cake storage pan. Pure AAA rated plastic suitable for everything. I had the insignia on my butt for a week.

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  2. Swooft read. As per always. And as per always, put me to mind of personal past episodes. I wonder, come to think of it, given well-hidden dalliances of folk when our parents were parents, if some kinda way we might be shirttail relations.

    But apparently the strappings I got were more severe than those you suffered. Enough so, that without understanding the whole of it, I was damned near full-on Tent Revival Baptist until the seventh grade. Only time I was ever in the hoosegow was once escorting a real bad actor cuffed and leg-manacled through the skybridge from the keeper cells to the court building – locked in with all the minor and major thugs also awaiting trial. Restrained as he was, and at the time officers so terribly concerned for detainees welfare, I was to help the poor soul make the trek – he had a smidge of trouble walking. Some kindareason court was held up and Dep-u-ties on tother side of he skybridge forgot I was locked inside.

    Once again, almost converted to Baptist philosophy. I’ve since recovered. Mostly.

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    1. I was a southern Baptist until 6th grade, then for some reason the family switched to Episcopalian. No big house for me although there were a few instances that may have put me there. I went to one tent revivals with a buddy of mine, his pop was a Baptist preacher. When the rev called for the sinners to come to the edge of the small stage, both my buddy and his older sister went up. Kneeling, crying and such for a while. When they came back to their seats, my bud said he’s been saved around one hundred times and now just does it for his pop to get people up there.

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      1. Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah, step right up ladies and gents, bring the kiddies with ya, witness the greatest show on heaven an earth. And you thought used car salesmen were shysters. D’jever notice how those chaste men of God, giving to the point of poverty, were allus festooned with six pounds of gold chain, Timko timepieces, and five hunnert dollah Brooks Brothers suits? And folk flocked, wrote checks and hallejuahed. I wanted to be Catholic. Couldn’t undastann the liturgy. Onna other hann, I dint unnastann what the Baptists was telling me – that the Catholic kids in my hood was all bound for hell accounta Catholics dint bleeve in Jesus. Accounta I dint speak Latin I only suspected the Catholics had the same warning for Baptists. Pictures and holidays looked pretty much the same to me. Reckoned early on if I was hellbound anyway, might as well relax and enjoy the trip. So far not a bad ride.

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  3. This post is absolutely hilarious! Thanks for the laughs, Phil. I don’t know what nationality you are but, judging by the frequent spankings, I’d guess you have some British blood coursing through your glutes. 🙂

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    1. I am one hundred percent Texan. Scotch Irish from the mother country across the sea, and Cherokee from Oklahoma on my mother’s side. Firewater and me don’t mix well, neither do large sharp knives. Tickled that you liked the story.

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  4. Wow. My father used to threaten me with “reform school” just for being on the mouthy side to my mother. Left quite a scar actually. That threat of sending kids away I’m not sure is a great idea, but it does sound like your transgressions were “somewhat” worse. Ha.

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  6. Yeah, parents always had some kind of threat up their sleeve. I can’t remember what mine used but I do remember my dad’s belt more than once.

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