How sweet is not Memory lane this wonderful morning in North Carolina

The late summer sounds from the big trees in the backyard wisper softly in my ear that life is still worth living. A sudden noise from an eager woodpecker brings me back 50+ years to Northern Sweden and I hear my daddy saying with love in his voice, "at least someone is up early this morning."
1958 and I was almost 14 years old and had just began to realize that there was a world outside my safe haven in Visttrask. Oh how I was longing to see all of it, to embrace it and to make it mine. The most exciting contact with the world outside came from the radio. Volaire an italian tune that was sung in both languages used to give me chills and fill me with a desire to fly way up in the sky one day. "jag ser hur jorden dar nere vrider och vander sig som forr" was a line in the song. Another song was Picco lissima serenata with its romantic callings for more love and less words.
Later on I discovered Jim Reeves with his sensual telephone call song and I fell deeply in love with this man, deep as only a teenager can fall. I dreamed about how he would come up to Visttrask in a big shiny car and pick me up and together we would leave into the sunset and live happily ever after. Gunnar Viklund, a local guy's version left me totally cold and it became one of the tedious, meaningless discussions between me and my friend Ulla-Britt about who sang the best.
I was in middle school in Alvsbyn and I rode the bus 20 min every morning eagerly trying to make up the lost homework that should have been done the night before. Tons of mascara made my eyelids so heavy that most of the time I just fell asleep and woke up startled when everyone was getting off.
Brigitte Bardot, a french movie star, was everyone's role model, we were all wearing heavy starched petticoats under our wide cotton skirts with small, checker pattern in different pastel colors. When we walked we looked like ducks whipping our feathered butts. Our hair was teezed up in big beehives kept together with tons of sticky hairspray and boy did we consider ourselves beautiful. My mother had taken away my hot pink lipstick so I had to borrow from a friend in order to dare show my face at school.
I wonder what happened to all my many heavy starched petticoats? Some of them were beautiful with lace and ruffles and some had little bows made of silk ribbons on them.