7 Words Michiganders Used in the 1960s That Make No Sense Today

Words come and go, and some that Michiganders used in the 1960s left along with the places and rules they described.

Here’s what they meant, and why they don’t come up anymore.

1. Exchange Names

Detroit phone numbers once began with a word, and CApitol, LAkewood, TIffany and VErmont were four of them.

In 1930, the Detroit Historical Society says, those numbers were standardized as two letters followed by five numbers.

The system had limits since the names had to be easy to distinguish and spell.

That led to the introduction of all-number dialing in the 1960s.

2. Hours

Hours were the curfew rules for women living in University of Michigan (U-M) residence halls.

A woman who got back five minutes late had to stay in an extra 30 minutes during the weekend.

The penalty for breaking curfew was called late minutes.

Dorms also had open-opens, a weekly three-hour window when dorms and rooms alike were open to guests of the opposite sex.

Senior women lost their curfew in 1962, junior women followed in 1965, and sophomores came after them.

On January 19, 1968, the regents struck down curfews for all women students in the residence halls for a trial of one semester.

Only Regent Paul Goebel voted no.

A student could have no hours only if her parents gave written permission.

3. Housemother

Housemothers stood guard at residence hall front doors as each night’s deadline neared, so they could lock up.

Women signed record books before leaving their residence hall or sorority at night.

Editions of The Michigan Daily from 1964 give the curfew as midnight on weekdays and 1 a.m. or 1:30 a.m. on weekends.

Many women interviewed for the alumni magazine remember earlier times, 10 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends.

Women who were late too many times had to appear before the Women’s Judiciary Council.

Mandatory curfews in residence halls officially ended in 1970.

4. Dime Store

When S.S. Kresge died in 1966 at age 99, his company’s 930 stores included nearly 130 Kmart locations.

The first Kmart had opened four years earlier, in 1962, in Garden City.

Kresge, founded in Detroit in 1899, ran dime stores, so called because products sold for either a dime or a nickel.

By the time Kresge died, the original dime stores had been closing for 10 years.

The nickel-and-dime prices themselves ended in 1917, when Kresge raised prices to fifteen cents because of World War I inflation.

In Jackson, the city’s Kresge store closed on Christmas Eve in 1974.

Nike Missile Bases

Michael Willie served at the Union Lake Nike base in Commerce Township, and at a Detroit-area Nike base in 1968 and 1969, according to Detroit public radio station WDET.

Metro Detroit had 16 Nike sites between 1953 and 1974.

WDET describes each base as a radar area plus a missile launch site where the weapons were stored.

Rouge Park, Alfred Brush Park and Belle Isle were among the sites.

Remnants of the sites are in parks, picnic spots and soccer fields today, Local 4 reported in 2022.

5. Teach-In

Merriam-Webster dates the word teach-in to 1965.

The first teach-in ran from 8 p.m. March 24 to 8 a.m. March 25 in Angell Hall Auditorium at U-M.

The professors behind it had first aimed for a work moratorium, or a strike.

A U-M exhibit names anthropology professor Marshall Sahlins as the creator of the concept.

The professors whose names appeared on an appeal to their students faced backlash.

The teach-in then gained traction at other universities.

6. Big 8

Tune to 800 kilohertz and you reached the radio station CKLW, which became known as the Big 8.

The station was based in Windsor, Ontario, across the Detroit River from Detroit.

The signal finally came to rest at 800 kilohertz in 1941.

Paul Drew was hired as program director in 1967.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications credits Drew with establishing the tight Top 40 format that led CKLW to dominate regional ratings.

In the late 1960s, the station’s mix of U.S. and British rock went up against WKNR, a major Detroit AM rock radio station.

7. Department of Conservation

Michigan’s Department of Conservation became the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in 1968.

The department said the new name reflected widening responsibilities.

The DNR describes its mission as the conservation, protection, management, use and enjoyment of the state’s natural and cultural resources.

Michigander

Merriam-Webster dates Michigander to 1838, more than a century before the sixties.

It defines the word as a native or resident of Michigan.