Category: Students

I was elected / selected / appointed Captain of the Trinity Lutheran School School Safety Patrol in the 8th Grade in 1961. Got to wear a special blue-trimmed badge. For some reason or another, I think I might have had one or more lieutenants who had red-trimmed badges to differentiate us from the peons with plain silver badges.

I’m fifth from the left in the back row. Kent Verhines is to my left and David Hahs and John Hilpert are to my right in this 1961 school yearbook photo. Ronald Dost is on the right in the front row. I think everyone else was in lower classes and beneath the notice of us upper classmen.

We learned how to fold and roll up our Sam Browne belts so you could hook them on your belt with the badge still attached. My Captain status gave me the ability to slip out of class to inspect my troops and issue demerits if I caught them slacking off. I was a little disappointed that I never caught anyone sleeping on duty. The troops were allowed to think I was authorized to use my Tuf-Nut knife to conduct a summary execution if that occurred.

Homemade Safety Patrol movie

I must have gotten permission to take the family’s Bell & Howell 8mm movie camera to school one day. Looking back at it, I didn’t do too bad a job of shooting a variety of different angles and situations. A few closeups and some better acting would have made it better.

In that period between the time Mother picked out my clothes and the time Wife Lila came along to spare me from sartorial suicide, Central High School classmate Wayne Golliher was the guy I turned to. He worked in a Main Street clothing store, Al’s Shops.

Al’s Shops

Al’s, on the corner of Independence and Main St., billed itself on the side of the building as “Styles for the young at heart.”

Francine Hopkins and Wayne

I’d walk into Al’s and tell Wayne, “Give me three of everything that’ll go together: shirts, ties, pants, socks…” Underwear was something I could handle myself. How could you go wrong with basic white?

You might think it was strange that I would trust my wardrobe to someone who dressed like Wayne, but he managed to talk Francine Hopkins into donning similar duds in December 1966.

Note how he suggested vertical stripes to make her look taller?

Candidate for high school royalty

See how conventionally she dressed when Wayne wasn’t helping her make clothing decisions? Those stripes might have earned her a place on the podium. Francine was crowned Basketball Queen, but I’m not sure what this event was.

All I know about this photo is that the negative sleeve said “Picasso’s Clown 5/6/1967.” I scanned Missourians for two months after that date and didn’t see anything that looked like this.

It’s an art class somewhere with a live model, but I don’t know if it was a high school class or one at SEMO. The two young women look vaguely familiar, but I’m not going to toss out a guess.

Anyone? Who, what, where, when and why?