Flashback 1986 Norwester

 

I don’t recall ever seeing this photo of our son’s junior year in high school.  I guess they didn’t get any copies.

Temperature to match 1954!

Today (and yesterday) in central Ohio we’re supposed to match the temperature records for 1954! I think it will be about 72, depending on where you are, and I hope to get out for several walks. We get our weather about a day after Illinois, so I’m thinking it was warm there too in November 1954. I was a sophomore in 1954 at Mt. Morris High School so I pulled out my school annual (white, padded cover, Mounder title in red, 1955) to see what was going on. Tina Kable would walk from her home on North Hannah, stop at my house on South Hannah, we’d walk up Main Street and pick up Kay Alter and Priscilla Drummond.

In the fall months we also stayed in touch the old fashioned way—through our school newspaper, The Hilltopper put out by the journalism class. By doing this group project they learned writing style, proofing for mistakes, how to paste-up pages, typing copy and running a mimeograph—probably not useful skills today, but teamwork is always important. I see names from Facebook like Bob Rawes, Donna Coddington, Ralph Dollinger. On a warm November day we’d all walk together after school on our way to Felker’s for a cherry coke searching for our names in the Hilltopper.

By November, the annual staff had already begun preparations of this book by getting advertisers, developing a theme, taking photos and planning the art work. I see some Facebook or email list members I recognize like Joyce Kinsley, Bob Rawes and Jerry Wallace. A promotional sign says the year book cost $2.75! That was a good buy—mine is 60 years old. There’s even a photo of my sister Carol (d. 1996) whose grandchildren are on Facebook so I can keep up with their activities.

I’m looking through the names of the varsity football team who played that fall and see a number of people on Facebook or local e-mail lists, some deceased (Jim Mongan, Phil Egan, Gerald Blake, Stan Messer, Don Satterfield, Pete Smith), and some who seemed to have dropped out of sight. The junior class that fall presented “One Foot in Heaven” on Friday, November 19. I see Bill Allenfort, who is still active in community theater getting a beard.

And there’s the student council learning the basics of representative democracy with cute freshman Carol Samsel and junior Murray Trout (deceased). The Council organized all the Homecoming activities, sponsored dances and provided the concession stand. They sent delegates to district and state conventions—sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

We did have professional lyceum speakers for assembly in those days, but also our in-house thespians provided entertainment. It was a big group—I see Jerry Wallace, Harold Hanke, Mike Balluff, Joyce Kinsley, Connie Frey, Sally Olsen, all of whom are on Facebook.

The fall of 1954. It was warm, and so are the memories.

Yearbooks and Annuals

I don't know what generates the ads on the right side of my screen on Facebook, but this morning noticed one for yearbooks. I have my four high school yearbooks, The Mounder, from Mt. Morris High School in Illinois, two Illios from the University of Illinois (I was married by the time I graduated and couldn't afford one for that year), one from Manchester College, The Aurora,  in Indiana, and three from Mt. Morris College, Life, 1929, 1931 and 1932, my uncle Clare's, my mother's and my father's. The college closed in 1932 and merged with Manchester. We also have my husband's yearbooks, The Arsenal Cannon from Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis, a school that was larger than the town of Mt. Morris, and Tech's memorial yearbook for the first 50 years. One of the best things about yearbooks is reading the crazy stuff people wrote in them!

722 Jogging my memory for exercise

A reader has asked me why I don't write more blogs about our hometown. So I decided to pull out my freshman yearbook to see if anything rang a bell. I have recorded these remarks exactly as written, with blanks, missing words, misspellings and grammatical errors. One is from the reader who suggested I write about home. The challenge, if he decides to take it, is to determine which one is his (at age 16)?

Good luck and have fun when you deliver papers.

Best wishes to a swell girl, but you really were a pest.

How’s your horse?

How about the times at G.A.A.?

Good luck to a neice girl.

Remember the talks about “you know who.” Was I a help?

We didn’t even have fun at your house, did we?

Best of luck in trombone playing.

Since I can’t of anything to write I’ll just say Good Luck. So Good Luck.

Good luck to a swell girl with only three more years of slavery.

Don’t flirt with any boys while you have a boyfriend.

We’ll suffer together through hic, haec, hoc again this year.

To a wonderful girl--I hereby nominate you for student council next year.

Remember when I had that party out to my house? I was with ____, and you were with___ ? (blanks are actually in the original and I have no idea who this person is talking about)

Remember the real cool parties we have had. All we do is sit around and eat and “gab.”

Set besides you on the bus.

My old study hall neighbor. We got along pretty good when you & Sara weren’t jabbering.

So there you have it. Memories from the old, home town.


"The Campus"

Update: He e-mailed me the correct answer. After 50 years, he was able to identify his own comments dashed off at a yearbook signing event (I think we didn't get the yearbook until summer so the Spring events would be in the book). It's also quite possible he wrote the same thing in every girl's yearbook, which made it easier to remember.

To a real swell guy

There's a nice article on yearbooks and Darilee Bednar, a woman bookstore owner who collects them here. I look to my right and see on my office shelves our little collection of yearbooks, four Arsenal Cannon from my husband's high school, four Mounder from my high school, one from Manchester College which I attended one year, The Aurora, two Illio from the University of Illinois which we both attended, three Life from Mt. Morris College, where my parents, grandparents and uncles attended, as well as the parents of many of my friends, a First Fifty Years 1912-1962, for my husband's high school published in the mid-1990s, and a War Record of the people from my home town from Alberts to Zumdahl who served in WWII, with single page biographies and photos, published in 1947. Yearbooks are a treasure, and I'm glad to learn that someone is making a special effort to preserve them.

On Father's Day this year we had dinner at our son's home. I brought along my husband's high school yearbooks to read to the children what his friends had said about him 46 years ago. We got the giggles reading how many times someone wrote "to a really swell guy," or "hellava swell guy," or "real swell fellow," or "it has been swell knowing you." In my school, we translated "swell" as "dill" and "dilly."