We had the equivalent of "nerds" but they weren't called that back in the 60s. Ngrams shows a curious spike for "nerd" in the early 1800s, but it's not used in the same way. The big spike occurs in the 1980s, and is attributed to Dr. Seuss, who used it to describe a character in If I ran the Zoo. The movie Revenge of the Nerds cemented it into the vocab as a synonym for tech types. See also here.
I was a nerd in the 60s, but we (and others at my high school) referred to that clique as simply "lab coats." I'm pretty sure that was a local euphemism.
And yes, we had "jocks" and "farmers" (this was the Midwest) but not "grits" or "heshers." We did have one clique you didn't mention, and that was "greasers." Those were the hotrod and bike fanatics. You could reason with a jock, but you never messed with the greasers.
I must be blind but I read the Rolling Stone article and I see no explanation of "rolling in the deep" by Adele or anyone else. Please help. Thank you.
We always called the kids described, as stoners. They had a hacky-sack club, they wore beat-up jeans x days in a row, a faded holey T-shirt bearing the AC~DC/etc logo, had hair that hung over their eyes, etc. Even if they didn't do drugs, they hung out with pro-legalize thinkers, were thought to have consumed alcohol, did smoke, would skip class, wore wallet chains, and were either pierced or still deciding what to get pierced or where to get their tattoo.. I was a loner-nerd-goth (minus the sense of style) blend, myself.. (Wichita Falls, Texas, HS c/o 1996)
Grant Barrett said:
Also, what's the meaning of the phrase "rolling in the deep"?
My buddy introduced me to the term "Rolling deep" a year or two ago. To him, it means something like "with a large group of people". For example, you might say "Don't mess with me, I'm rolling deep." which means: "I've got a large group of people with me so watch out!" It seems like both a defensive position (strength in numbers) as well as a bit of a threat ("you're outnumbered").
Having grown up in rural Louisiana, I used the word washrag my entire life and never thought twice about it until just a couple of years ago. I took a weekend job at a very high end home-goods store in a wealthy suburb of Boston. Because of the look on a particular blue haired lady's face when I slipped and said "washrag," that word hasn't come out of my mouth since.