Social Centers Provide Youth Of Twin Cities With Good Fun

Another Red Feather Benefit

Many a first high school date and many a first dress-up, formal dance owes its romantic origin to the fact the high school students of Lewiston and Clarkston now have social centers where they may live social lives, exclusively their own.

Clarkston teen-agers now have their Bantam Hut, decorated the way they like it; equipped the way they like it and patronized regularly because they like it.

Compared to the youth activities center at 136 9th St., for high school students of Lewiston, the Bantam Hut is brand-spanking new because it has only recently been established. Lewiston’s YAC is now going into its tenth year.

But, the need for each social center is as old as the hills and as young as the heart of each boy or girl who enters the Hut or the YAC.

Money is needed from the Twin City Red Feather fund by each organization to help out with the year’s upkeep. The YAC has requested $1,070, an amount $5 less than its request from the now defunct community chest last year. And the Bantam Hut more modest because its attendance is considerably smaller, is asking $300.

If it is hard for adults to remember times when a soda fountain could be as glamorous as any night club ever was — or how far a pretty girl’s dreams can float, even though she is dancing to music from a juke box — take a moment for reflections on evenings (not days), of teen-aged times.

Atmosphere Carefree

Each place provides a carefree atmosphere and pleasant surroundings where young people need not feel the restriction of elders in their midst. It is their night club, their rendezvous where the requirements of social graces and decorum need measure only to their own ideals. How high these ideals are held should not be measured because, through these social centers, these same ideals are being formed, being raised to the level the individual boy or girl decides he or she is capable of reaching.

Bashful boy? He learns his ease with the other fellows by coming in with them. Timid girl? She gains her social experience here with her, chums and perchance the date she was dreaming of when she first wanted to get a bid from a certain boy to go out for the evening.

Simple, isn’t it? Yes, and simply wonderful when you are a teen-aged boy or girl with excitement in your heart for romance and fun and happiness.

Each center has facilities for serving refreshments and room for dancing. The YAC, in past years, has held regular fun nights on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday to play table tennis, shoot billiards, hold dancing parties or just get-to-gethers for talks over a soda-fountain drink.

No Dues To Pay

There are no dues to pay and everybody is welcome as long as he behaves himself. All high school students are automatically eligible to join and most of them do. Students from areas surrounding Lewiston and Clarkston are equally welcome. Many are entertained after football games.

The YAC’s request for Red Feather aid represents one-third of the support it needs in its full year’s budget. The other two-thirds are shared equally by the city of Lewiston and Nez Perce county.

Clarkston’s Bantam Hut, in its initial year; is equally supported by its community.

This story was published in the Nov. 5, 1951, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.