At Ardene's last week and picked up a few cheap necklaces, including this retro sixties surfers cross.
Wow an iron cross and a banana bike, I would make a cool teenager circa 1966.
"J" immediately asks why I was wearing a swastika…..which immediately put me on mind of this rare slice of sixties wax by fellow Canuk, Debbie Lori Kaye, better known for her country music career.
Recorded in 1966 this Shangri-las, Ronettes style 45 attempted to capitalize on the "controversy" around kids wearing replica iron crosses.
http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/DY/Debbie_Lori_Kaye_Iron_Cross.mp3
The fad began amongst in Southern California's surfers:
World War I Ace Max Immelmann earned two, as did Corporal Adolf Hitler, and now U.S. teen-agers are buying them by the gross. Dug out of attics and curio shops and freshly minted by the thousands, the German Iron Cross has become the newest surfer's emblem and high school fad.
Nobody, except parents, seems upset by the Iron Cross's connotations. "When kids ask me about the 1939 inscription," says one distributor, "I just tell them it was a big year for surfing."
Time Magazine April 22, 1966
I can still vaguely remember them in grocery store gumball machines in the late seventies, edgy ;)
