So, first, is this right? Are there East Coasters out there who know about and used Pee-Chees?
And if not, then please let me back up. Pee-Chees were, on one level, ordinary school supplies. They were yellow-orange folio folders with pockets on the inside that would fit no more than 20 or so pages each of letter-sized paper. The inner pockets had all kinds of helpful stuff, like metric conversion tables and weights and measures (which prevented me from ever learning how to convert cups to pints to quarts to gallons). They were cheap -- either 39 or 69 cents, if I remember correctly -- though they didn't last long, particularly in rain or sweaty palms.
On another level, Pee-Chees were basically the canvas on which adolescence was writ. The cover scenes of wholesome midwestern 50s vigor (a tennis player, two football players, and three relay runners) were so impossibly square that they begged revision, and the low-grade paper stock obliged. Pee-Chees, unlike vinyl binders, took and held pencil and ink, and you could actually erase the pictures by rubbing them with a pencil eraser or a moistened finger. If your Pee-Chees didn't instantly sprout thought or speech bubbles; if the tennis player didn't grow tentacles and an afro; if the runners didn't find themselves sprinting from monsters or flames or social outcasts; if the football players didn't settle into unfurtive intimacy -- there was something wrong with you. Pee-Chees became transitory displays of artistry and temporary records of hormonal tides, a frothy accumulation of names and phone numbers and visual puns and scrawled pre-smartphone flirtation quickly washed away by the next crisp, unfraying PeeChee.
I'm sure that places where Pee-Chees were not ubiquitous must have evolved some way to vent the teenaged energy that Pee-Chees conducted. But until I know what that was, it's hard for me to believe that you non-Pee-Chee people haven't been deprived of an essential part of American adolescence.
Never heard of it. (Phila.)
ReplyDeleteI'm a lurker on this site and thought I'd share that they weren't in Texas, either. Big Chief tablets, yes, but no Pee-Chees.
ReplyDeleteNoVa - never saw these, never heard of them until a character had them in a book I read a few years ago.
ReplyDeleteGrew up in New England, and never heard of them.
ReplyDeleteI find this story implausible. Where is this "Rhode Island" anyway?
ReplyDeleteGeorgia---no Pee-Chees. Though we did have peaches.
ReplyDeleteDuvall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWmVTbWHgFc
East Coast. No Pee-Chees. Trapper Keepers were the way you divided the Haves from the Nots.
ReplyDeleteIs there an online repository of contemporaneous defacements?
iowa. trapper keepers, not pee-chees.
ReplyDeleteLong Island, and never heard of them either. But I also reacted strongly to the anachronistic Rubik's Cube reference (as did another commenter, with whom I saw the movie). (We also wondered about the Walkman reference, but apparently those were introduced in 1979, so it was possible.)
ReplyDeleteNever heard of these in NJ.
ReplyDeleteThey're all over the place, but not collated or curated, as far as I can tell. Google Images is your best bet.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, Trapper Keeper? Those were, like, $5? Where I'm from, that means you were fancy. Not all of us could get towed to school in gold-plated chariots.
I am a West Coaster (Coastian?) and I could buy and knew of Pee-Chees, but I was a Trapper Keeper girl. Selecting my Trapper Keeper (pink, purple, a character, glitter -- the CHOICES!) was a big part of getting ready for the new school year.
ReplyDeleteAh, the Pee Chee. I get instantaneous flashes of the Pee-Chee times table (top of right hand vertical pocket) whenever I am forced to do multiplication in my head. Trapper Keepers were for the moneyed set.
ReplyDeleteAnd the binders themselves were tiny. I was among those who got the Trapper Keeper folders for a normal-sized binder.
ReplyDeleteYeah, pretend you didn't have them, that's fine. I am the only person in ANY SCHOOL IN THE UNITED STATES who didn't have one. (I am trying to stay internally consistent, and thus I think I need to stand on that point, which I made (repeatedly) (forcefully) (and of course, unsuccessfully) in the stationery aisle of the supermarket.)
ReplyDeleteNortheast Ohio. Never heard of them. I was just starting high school when Trapper Keepers came out and somehow I got one.
ReplyDeleteOhio - yes to pee chees and I never had a trapper keeper until it was required by our 8th grade teacher (my mom was cheap, cheap).
ReplyDeleteMinnesota. Trapper-keepers, never heard of pee-chees.
ReplyDeleteI recall many (though not all) of teachers banning Trapper Keepers, not because of financial issues, but because of noise--until they started using the magnetic closure, you had to open velcro to open the Trapper Keeper, and that was a noisy affair.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely PeeChee on west coast jr high, but not sure about Chicago area high school
ReplyDeleteLong Island. Never heard of a Pee-Chee. Certainly knew about Trapper Keepers, though I cannot remember whether I had one.
ReplyDeleteMy artistic endeavors mostly involved trying to color in all the white spaces on the covers of my black-and-white composition notebooks.
I grew up in Florida, and I've never heard of this Pee-Chee thing until this very moment. That's a name begging for adolescent adjustment, like the great grocery stores of my state. I had a Trapper Keeper in elementary school, but by high school, we went paper folders all the way, so they could be written and drawn on, natch. We usually carried one with just blank paper, and then a second class-specific one, to each class, so, two blank canvases on which to unravel the daily drama of surviving high school. Your folder was also a less-obvious way to jot quick notes to your neighbor.
ReplyDelete90s kid. I'm feeling slightly deprived here, but I did get to ride to elementary school on my Razor scooter.
ReplyDeletePhilly suburbs -- I remember trapper keeper branded folders which were a heavy paper with coating and pockets, but I don't remember ever owning the actual trapper keeper. They were hole punched, and stuck in a three ring binder, if I recall.
ReplyDeleteOne of my three "disciplinary actions" in high school was because, after the teacher emphatically stated that no one was to speak for the next 60 seconds, I spent that time ripping the velcro on my Trapper Keeper. To this day, I maintain that I did nothing wrong.
ReplyDeletePee-Chees were everywhere in the Bay Area until the Trapper Keeper came along. One of those products that I saw a million times and never bothered to read the label.
ReplyDeleteWow. I grew up in the L.A. area and also assumed that everybody had Pee-Chees. Just asked my husband, who has always lived in New Jersey, and he said, "I have no idea what you're talking about." I've always kind of been looking for them when school shopping for my kids, but I guess I'll never find them here in the East. Do they still make them anywhere, or are they a cultural relic?
ReplyDeleteMagnetic closure? Jesus christ. Why didn't you and the rest of the Thurston and Lovey Howell family just hire underprivileged youths to hold your folders shut? You know what held my Pee-Chee shut? Gravity. That's not to be confused with what held it together, which was off-brand scotch tape. Magnetic closure, Velcro. Good lord.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, Terri. This is flat-out messed up.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in rural NC....never heard of Pee-Chees till today. We did have Trapper Keepers, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were passe elsewhere by the time they got to us.
ReplyDeleteNorthern Indiana, in the dark ages (early 70's), long before Trapper Keepers (which I've heard of) and Pee-Chees (which I've not). We all carried ring binders. In junior high, I sewed a cover for my ring binder out of the same material I used to make myself a denim pantsuit. Could I have been more nerdy?
ReplyDeleteSuburban Philly, had Trapper Keepers and paper folders. I only knew of Pee-Chees from some YA novels I read that took place outside Seattle.
ReplyDeleteWent to school in Colorado, New York, Florida, Australia, Nebraska and Texas. No Pee-Chees. And I remember Trapper Keepers but didn't do those either. Weirdly in my Texas high school everyone who was anyone (and many who were not) carried huge faux leather binders with a zipper and your name embossed in gold on the front. This held paper, folders, a couple of books - basically everything you could possibly need. For some reason my mother felt it was very important for the new girl (me) to have one so I could fit in. And we were a military family - this was a big expense - even more than Trapper Keepers. On the upside, it did last throughout my three years of high school.
ReplyDeletePee Chees were everywhere in Bay Area middle school. Trapper Keepers were too fancy for my mama and we mostly used binders repurposed from my parent's graduate school endeavors. In retrospect, that's the kind of family tragedy that will get me to buy an iTrapperKeeperPad for my own daughter.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice that the off-brand tape was secure enough to protect your Pee-Chee as you walked ten miles to school in the snow year-round uphill both ways.
ReplyDeleteChicago area, and never heard of them until today. Christina was all over the place growing up and and born in 1969, so I'll check with her when she gets home.
ReplyDeleteNo, we were poor, but we wouldn't have been caught dead rural.
ReplyDeleteI asked for and received a Trapper Keeper for Christmas, because I've always loved office supplies. I still remember it- purple cover, pink on the inside... I was 10, and it was awesome.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of a pee-chee until... just now.
Like Becca, I went to school in Florida, and I had never heard of a pee-chee prior to this thread.
ReplyDeleteFollow the trail of donuts, and turn left at the donut. That's Rhode Island.
ReplyDeleteJeez, even I had a Trapper Keeper.
ReplyDeleteThe Barthe de Clements books?
ReplyDeleteI went to jr high and high school abroad and kids had both (most kids had West coast-dwelling relatives).
ReplyDeleteSince we were in Asia we also had the benefit of super cutesy Asian school supplies and we wrapped our textbook in cutesy paper which then got defaced. My friends and I also made collages to cover our notebooks out of teen magazine cut outs. I might still have one somewhere.
At his speech at the Netroots Nation close when he announced that we were going to Providence in 2012, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse highlighted the concentration of Dunkin Donuts.
ReplyDeleteI read this as Sanche de Gramont and imagined Louis XII-XIV hauling around Pee-Chees. Which, of course, was wrong -- they were definitely Trapper Keepers.
ReplyDeleteWeighing in for Motown, Trapper Keeper all the way.
ReplyDeleteGrew up in Florida too, and likewise never heard of 'em. Relied heavily on NFL team folders. Had a Trapper Keeper one year and thought it was a piece of shit, not worth the money or the heft.
ReplyDeleteHere we go, Hollywood making crap up again.
ReplyDeleteLong Island, never heard of a PeeChee...
Christina knew them in Oregon, but not in Ohio.
ReplyDeleteFancy pants!
ReplyDeleteSeriously this is mind blowing to me. How did not everyone have pee-chees?!?
ReplyDeleteEastern Washington, and yes to Pee-Chees and I had no idea until today that not everyone had pee-chees. No idea. This seems like an elaborate lie from the east.
ReplyDeleteOH! And I recall you could get them in colors other than the goldenrod mainstay but the other colors were WAY more scarce. I was super envious of people who had the aqua color.
ReplyDeleteNew Jersey. Never heard of Pee-Chees until just now. Most people had Trapper Keepers. I had standard three-ring binders. The sturdy blue kind. Sometimes they were even hand-me-downs from my older siblings. Oh, the indignities of being the fourth (and youngest) child. Sigh.
ReplyDeletePee-Chees forever! I remember when they updated the wholesome 50s athletes to vaguely more modern-looking ones too -- it was a travesty. Don't know if they're still around, but I plan to force them on my kids if they are.
ReplyDeleteTotally remember those! I bet there are a few in a box in my parents' house in San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteI also grew up in Eastern Washington and loved my Pee-Chees. I am flabbergasted to learn that it was only a west coast thing!
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly right. I couldn't remember the titles or author but you nailed it.
ReplyDeleteWe had Pee-Chees in Denver. Pee-Chees and Big Chief tablets were the whole elementary school world until Trapper Keepers came along.
ReplyDeleteTrappers were one of those things that only kids could see the shine on. Many parents thought any three ring binder ought to serve. Some parents even offered -- with love in their hearts and the best of intentions -- to hot-glue a velcro closure onto any number of regular three ring binders rather than purchase a single Trapper because "look, Mom already has all the stuff right here in her sewing kit!" Such parents were also frequently 12-18 months late appreciating the importance of having an Atari 2600, actual Sperry topsiders rather than knock-offs, or red-tagged Levi 501 jeans rather than "irregular" orange-tagged Levi's 517s from the "outlet" store. But, enough bitterness and recrimination.
I can't find any examples on google images, but the real joy of Big Chief tablets was peeling off the top layer of a fully vandalized signature-red cardboard cover to reveal a fresh and pristine layer of its snow white interior. Then you could draw an X-Wing on it and have an X-Wing tablet. Or a Colonial Viper. Viper Tablet ftw.
Everyone equating Pee-Chees with Trapper Keepers, knock it off. Pee-Chees are "folder class"; Trapper Keepers are "binder class".
ReplyDeleteYes, last time I went to Staples it took me two hours to get out of there, why do you ask?
(In Las Vegas, we totally had Pee-Chees, though they were more often used by boys than girls. At my age, there were a lot of Lisa Frank folders floating about, but I just used plain solid colors.)
I had a Trapper Keeper AND Pee Chees. But as you well know, I went to school in a castle.
ReplyDeleteWait, there were other colors? My mind is also blown.
ReplyDeleteSanta Monica schooled here (a few years after the Brat Pack, though), definitely Pee Chee territory.
ReplyDeleteAlso, surprisingly (or perhaps not), the illustration most likely to sport an added on scribbled penis was the tennis player...
They sell them on Amazon! But only for astronomical prices (I remember 39 cents, too), and only the lame-o updated version (not Miss Tennis-Player-Skirt-in-the-Air, as Isaac posted above).
ReplyDeleteFor those who don't remember the colored versions that came along with the updated pictures, they're on there too.
They actually still sell them, for about $1.59, in the bookstore at the community college where I teach. I get student portfolios turned in using these all the time, and (being originally from Kansas, but now out West) I had no idea their significance.
ReplyDeleteI heard about Pee Chees in some YA book I read around that age. I could deduce from context clues that they were some sort of thing like a Trapper Keeper but not really.
ReplyDeleteAnyone want to help my age-addled brain remember in which YA book/series the characters namechecked Pee Chees? Like, I remember it being a minor plot point about name-brand Pee Chees vs off-brand substitutes or something.
To add: At first when reading whatever that book was I couldn't figure out what a Pee Chee was and I thought since it sounded kind of like MonChiChi that it might be some sort of stuffed animal/doll/figurine.
ReplyDeleteWatts, I mentioned them above and Jenn C said Barthe de Clements. I believe it was Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade. Was it Jenny? I know Elsie was the heavy girl who became beautiful and fell in love with redheaded Jack, who dropped out of school to put cedar shakes on houses. Elsie's mother was wretched.
ReplyDeleteSame books?
I grew up in Oregon, so I'm aware of both Pee-Chees and Trapper Keepers. I think I had a trapper-keeper at some point, but I preferred the binders with the plastic slip covers so that I could put my own pictures (or pictures torn out of magazines) on the cover.
ReplyDeleteI remember that title - Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade - that's the likely culprit.
ReplyDeleteThey do not insert secret or additional advertising in our material.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we sing some English songs, and I encouraged the students practise their English through the way of singing.
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