Braces In The Fifties

Back in the late '90s and early '00s, there was a multifaceted orthodontic related site on the internet called M's Mouthwear. One of its features was an archive of braces-related stories, including a section of accounts of real life braces experiences.  That site ceased existing sometime during the early '00s, but recently I have been able to retrieve some of the real life braces stories from that site using an internet archive. Soon, I plan to post the M's Mouthwear stories I was able to retrieve for your reading enjoyment. (UPDATE: M's Mouthwear Stories is now up on the right side of this blog ⇨⇨, at the bottom.)  One of the very best accounts in the collection was called "Braces In The Fifties," a true account of having to wear braces in the 1950's, back when they were truly rare. I am posting this particular story because it fits very well with my goal for this blog: to make it a place of sharing orthodontic experiences. Here's the story below. Enjoy. Braces In The Fifties

This is a true story. I had just turned thirteen in November of 1953 when my mother took me to Dr. Richard. Orthodontic treatment was very rare, by today's standards almost unheard of. There were 300 children in my school and up to this point the only kids I had seen with braces consisted of one guy with a thick bar across his teeth and his sister with a similar appliance. One girl in my class, Donna, had bands that were very narrow and went almost unseen very high on her teeth. I remember her brackets being like two tiny bars that the archwire went through. She only had a bar going across the bottom teeth. You had to be close and she had to smile wide to really see them. There was a definite social stigma about braces. Up to this time the closest orthodontist was an hour's drive away. Braces were very expensive. My treatment cost about $3000, but that was 47 years ago and many pay the same amount today. There was nothing like orthodontic insurance. Dr. Richard had just opened his practice in the next town. My father's business was doing well and our dentist convinced my mother it was important for me to get treatment. Dr. Richard would only discuss the treatment with my mother, I was not consulted or told about anything. The first appointment he just looked at my teeth. The second appointment was the day after Thanksgiving. Here he took X-rays and molds. I was the only patient in the office each time. Nothing happened for a month and I thought I was lucky and my mother had given up on the idea. I had fought against going to an orthodontist, not wanting to wear the dreaded braces in any form. The day after Christmas my mother woke me and told me I had a 9 o'clock appointment. I hated the thought of losing a vacation day and just wanted to go sledding with my friends. Off we went to see Dr. Richard. I sat in a treatment room and heard him talking to someone in another room. She was crying about something called an extra-oral appliance, about which I had no clue . When he was done with her he walked in and spent about a half hour putting pieces of thick rubber between my teeth. I was told he would see me in a week. Now when they first went in I didn't think much about them, they looked a little funny but if I didn't open my mouth too wide, no one could see them. About an hour later though, my teeth were throbbing badly, and that lasted about three days. The Monday after New Year's, the first day back to school, my mother woke me up earlier than usual, and told me I had another appointment and would be going to school late that day. By this point I asked her if they were going to make me wear braces and she said yes. I started to complain again and she said it was only some wire and metal and to get dressed and stop whining. We got to the office at 7:00 and I was ushered right in to a chair. Dr. Richard finally started to describe the appliance.. All the bands had been hand formed and welded by Dr. Richard to fit my teeth, there were no preformed bands yet. He then welded a bracket on the front of the band, and now he was going to cement them in place. That was the last thing I wanted to hear, with pictures of Donna in my mind. He was also going to band both arches, which made me even worse than Donna. It took about four hours to do. When he finally gave me a mirror to look at I almost died. These were nothing like Donna's. They were wide bands on every tooth, set closer to the bottom of the teeth so there was no way to open my mouth without revealing the braces. The bottom teeth were almost completely covered with metal. I had never seen anything like them and I hated the look. He told me in two weeks he would put on the archwire and the extra oral appliance that he said would provide the force to move the teeth.. I was in too much shock to listen and didn't have a clue as to what an extra oral appliance was. I was in an absolute panic that I had to be seen like this. My mother drove me to school and I pleaded with her that my teeth hurt and not to make me go. They hurt a little, but I just did not want to be seen. No luck, I got to school at the end of math, got my note from the office, and spent the next half hour in the bathroom trying to figure how not to show the bands when I was talking. The bell rang and I went in for science. The class was surprised to see me since everyone thought I was sick and at home. I was determined not to talk at all, but the teacher called on me first. I tried to mumble the answer, which got her mad and drew more attention to me when she told me to speak up. When I answered I could hear the murmur go through the class that "He has braces on." Everyone was staring. At lunch I tried to hide in a corner but no one had really seen braces like mine before and I was either pitied or laughed at, neither of which I wanted. The bus ride home was just as bad, I felt like a freak. By the time of my next appointment I hated being the kid with those braces. My mother told me to ignore everything and they were good for me, which I didn't care about, I just wanted my mouth back. All I saw was a mouthful of metal that everyone thought was funny to look at. It was 3:30 and as I was walking into the building I saw a girl stop at the mirror in the hallway outside of the office, reach into her pocket and put a piece of wire in her mouth. It had two arms that went around her face and she attached a strap to each arm, and then went into the office. My mother had parked the car and we walked in. The girl was sitting and reading a magazine, my mother went back into the office and I just stared at the contraption on her face. It was the first headgear I had ever seen She asked me if I was new and when I answered she saw the braces on my teeth. I asked her what it was she had on and her reply scared me "It's my extra oral traction appliance. I have to wear it 14 hours a day. I just got it two weeks ago." Her name was Sally, we dated through high school and everyone thought it was very funny that the two "magnet mouths" were attracted to each other. She didn't mind them half as much as I did. We married a year after we graduated from college. It is my only positive memory of my orthodontic experience. When he put the arch wires on they were stiff wire. He had to bend them each appointment to move the teeth, so every time you left the office you knew you were in for some pain. When you needed new arch wires you were in the chair for at least an hour as he unwired the old one and rewired the new one. It was a very time consuming process, once every three weeks for almost 6 years. He took out a facebow and showed me how to put it on. Then when I though I was going to get the same thing Sally had to wear, he took out the headcap with J-hooks and started to put it on. I almost ran out of the office and it took my mother to drag me back in while he finished putting it on. Rod Serling hadn't invented the Twilight Zone yet but I was convinced I was there. My mother was very specific about wearing it for the full 14 hours every day and generally made me wear it more. I wanted to shrivel up and die. She kept track of the hours herself and If I got behind she made sure I wore it outside the house. I wore that headgear until the end of my sophomore year in high school and the braces until I was a freshman in college. More kids started wearing similar braces, but they really didn't become common place until the sixties. Every where I went I was stared at by people who had never seen braces before I hated them every day I had them on. My niece just started wearing braces and when I told her the story she asked me to write it out so she could post it. At first I did not believe this would interest anyone until she showed me all the files and pictures. I get a real kick reading about these people who like wearing braces. Believe me. 44 years ago you would have hated it.