Central High School Archives

October 5, 2013October 6, 2013

1967 Cheerleaders

I’ve been working on a non-Cape project, so you’re on your own to put name to the faces of the 1967 Central High School cheerleaders. (You can click on the photo to make it larger.)

I don’t have a copy of the 1967 Girardot, and I don’t know if the photo ran in The Missourian, so I didn’t have a quick way to ID them.

Older cheerleader posts

(The posts, not the cheerleaders are old.)

UPDATE

Nancy Gerecke was quick to provide the names: from left Mary Hirsh, Debbie Baker, Brenda Parsh, Pam Beard, Jane Dunklin, Chritie Seabaugh

Someone else pointed out that Brenda Parsh had been murdered. I remember that very well. Brother Mark and I rigged up a panic switch that Mother could push that would set off an alarm loud enough to alert the neighbors if she heard someone trying to break in. The murder went unsolved for 31 years. You can read the details in The Missourian.

October 3, 2013

Posters and Paintless Brushes

The negative sleeve says 1963 Safety Campaign, but the billboard has 1964 stats, so, who knows?

Hokey set-up photos were standard at small papers. So, what’s a tip-off that this is a fake? First off, I never saw Al Spradling III, left, that interested in anything before in his life. Secondly, we have Ron Marshall and Carolyn Penzel diligently painting a sign without looking at it and with nary a paint can in sight.

I cringe to think I shot this photo and the one that follows. I may not have sold my soul for $5, but I sure rented it out a lot of times.

Billboard features my pictures

Looks like my wreck photos (including the ones that got me started in the news biz) were big during Safety Week. A picture of Joanne Bone in front of another bulletin board featured a bunch of my crash pictures.

Notice how Ron is carefully applying paint to something that had been created with a stencil (and without looking at it). I knew Ron was slim, but he’s so thin he hardly shows up from the side. He, unfortunately, is another of our classmates who is no longer with us.

Coming events

Sometimes the stuff in the background is as interesting as the primary subject. The Coming Events board is cut off, but I can see there is going to be a basketball tournament; an 8 a.m. meeting with [someone] Robert Edgar; the district teacher meeting, the Red Dagger Play, Safety Week, Senior Class Party, the end of the quarter and what I assume to be Easter (not Spring) break.

The motivational poster on the right assures students that “This may sound like ‘OLD STUFF’ When the Great Scorer comes To mark against your name, He’ll write not ‘won’ or ‘lost,’ But how you played the game.” The Great Scorer might do that, but I don’t recall Coach Goodwin ever saying that.

October 1, 2013November 17, 2021

The Truth about Locker Rooms

Since I didn’t know exactly where this photo was taken, I was going to toss it aside. Then I got a closer look and I saw what was on some of the shelves. (You can click on the photo to make it larger, but if you do, I suggested deactivating the Smell Emitting Diode on your computer first.)

Those rolled-up towels contained fermenting gym clothes. I wonder if this could have been taken near the Tiger Den on a Friday, traditionally the day when you were supposed to take your PE clothes home to be washed.

Of course, many of those rolls got stuffed into lockers and recycled again and again. That’s probably why the school got new lockers when it was converted to a junior high school.

As you may have gathered from earlier posts, I wasn’t exactly a fan of PE.

Guy shower experiences

When I saw those rolls, it brought back all kind of olfactory twitches. Now, despite teen movies, I was never privy to how girl locker rooms worked, but we guys were herded into gang showers where earsplitting hoots and hollers echoed off the tile walls like a bad prison movie. At least once during this session (which I tried to complete as quickly as possible), there would be something that sounded like a space shuttle lifting off, followed by a sulfurous cloud of methane gas that rolled off the tiles in a green cloud, prompting another Neanderthal to try to best the earlier contribution.

How I envisioned the girls’ locker room

I envisioned my female counterparts being ushered into individual cleansing facilities where there would be soft music playing, the water would come out at the perfect temperature, towels wouldn’t be needed because each compartment would be equipped with air-drying fans and there would be a gentle spritzing of the perfume of the girl’s choice on the way out. Attendants, probably freshmen, would take care of nail and hair maintenance and see that clothing was restored with nary a muss.

The physical education portion of the hour would last about 8 minutes, with the remainder of the time being taken up with the ablution process just described. I’m not sure if the freshmen were actually required to peel the grapes for upper classwomen or if they did it of their own volition.

That must have been the tradeoff for having to wear those ugly uniforms.

I can’t wait to hear how close my vision came to reality. Girls?

September 29, 2013

1963 Charleston Debate Trophy

Looks like the Central High School Debate Club had a good run at the Charleston tournament in 1963.

From left to right, Calvin Chapman, advisor, projecting his JFK persona; Fred Wilferth, principal and co-owner of the Jackson skating rink; John Mueller, my freshman debate partner; Bill Wilson, the other candidate who was beaten like a drum by Jim Feldmier in our run for Student Body President; Rick Meinz and Mike “Dink” Daniels. You can see a tiny, tiny me taking the photo reflected in the window inside the door.

“Meinz would rat me out”

I can remember being at a state student congress in Jeff City and passing a note to Dink that a couple gals from Sikeston or Charleston or somewhere wanted us to go to dinner. “I’d love to,” he responded, “but Meinz would rat me out to Bunny [his girlfriend].”

You can tell by the mischievous expression on Rick’s face that he would have done it in a heartbeat, too.