Laura Folsom Archives

June 21, 2014

Goldwater Signs and Ugly Negatives

These negatives were so gnarly I almost didn’t post them, but there are lots of familiar faces, so I’ll just have to ask you to overlook the spots and amoebas eating our classmates. This looks like some kind of debate function, but I don’t understand all the Goldwater signs.

Click on the photo to make it larger and see who you can spot. I see Laura Folsom, Margaret Randol, Skip Stiver, Linda Stone, Pat Sommers, Mike Seabaugh, Chuck Dockins, Georganne Penzel, Joni Tickel, Kathy Slinkard, Bill East and Joe Snell, among others. Based on the mix, I’m going to guess this was taken in the fall of 1964 and is made up of the classes of ’65 and ’66 and ’67.

Ueleke, Folsom and Randol

The only ones I’m going to venture a guess on are John Ueleke, Laura Folsom and Margaret Randol. I don’t know if the older women were teachers.

Goldwater and green file boxes

Lots of Goldwater buttons and bumper stickers. I was a Barry fan and got to shoot his campaign stop in Cairo. The girl in the center must have been a debater. I still have a dozen or more of those green metal 3×5 and 4×6 file boxes full of notes and arguments.

Amoeba revenge

This young lady’s legs are being eaten by film amoebas for the way she is disrespecting the photographer. The bemused blonde has held up quite well, but actually laughing, well, that’ll earn you the photographer’s revenge.

I KNOW I should know the boy in the left background, but I can’t pull his name out of the mist.

Mystery man

The man on the right is another one of those faces I recognize but can’t ID. Ideas?

January 17, 2014

The Folsoms

One of the blessings and curses of Facebook is the feature that tells you who has a birthday coming up. Seeing Linda Folsom’s name pop up reminded me that I had run across this photo of her in a box last summer. The original was a Polaroid taken by her brother, Steve.

I made a deal with Steve

Linda and I dated briefly (the briefly part was her idea). Steve was a fellow photographer on either The Tiger or The Girardot (or both), so I cut him a deal: I’d give him a roll of Tri-X 35mm film for him to shoot informal candids of Linda.

(Whenever I tried to take her picture, she’d threaten to pummel me with my Pentax, something I noticed girls, including Future Wife Lila, were prone to do.)

Steve is the guy with Central’s most unique eyebrows on the left. You’ll have to go to my Mad Men of CHS post to get the IDs of the other guys.

Rat Fink Steve didn’t bring back 36 photos of Linda. In fact, he must have used the roll for something else, because all I got was the single Polaroid above. I wouldn’t tell him, but I always liked the way he captured her smile.

Other Steve photos

Steve the debater
Steve in the Red Dagger play. I think he’s in shots 18, 67, 69 and 70, but I’m not sure about all of them.

The Twin Game

Linda had a twin sister, Laura. The night I walked up to the door for our first date, Linda and Laura played the twin game with me, challenging me to pick the right one. Their grandfather, who must have seen this game before, was standing behind them. He give me the high sign without them seeing him. It wasn’t long before I didn’t need the grandfather’s clue to tell them apart.

Laura is the girl on the far right in the front row of the bus headed to an out-of-town debate trip. This link has a bunch of the students identified by readers. Click on the photo to make it larger.

Betty Folsom

I was looking for some photos of the twins’ mother, Betty, who taught English and Journalism. I came up blank on any photos, but I DID find this press pass she signed for me.

It was fun reading the Facebook comments of the younger relatives of Linda, Laura and Steve who had never seen the trio in their high school days.

March 6, 2012

1964 City Election at Central

The negative sleeve said “1964 City Election.” When I looked at the film, I couldn’t figure out why cops featured so prominently in the photos until I saw the sign “Vote YES Policemen’s Firemen’s Retirement Fund.” They must have been campaigning.

The last half of October and the first part of November 1964 was missing from the Google Archives, so I couldn’t get any details about the election. In the absence of real news, let’s look at some interesting things that show up in the backgrounds of the pictures. Click on them to make them larger. (I can blow them up larger than you can, so you might just have to take my word for some of the observations.)

The house on the corner of Themis and Caruthers has a sign in the front yard that says “Leible.” Scope out the car to the right of the policemen. It has an old-fashioned gumball machine on the roof and a big fender-mounted siren on the right side. There is no indication of what department it might belong to.

Paging Kent Verhines

Mr. Goddard wants to see you in his office RIGHT NOW. Signs on the door say “Polls close 7 p.m. Central Standard Time;” “City Election” and “School Election.” If you look just above the boy’s head (I think it might be Mike Seabaugh), you can see “KENT VERHINES” scrawled on the brick. Handwriting analysts are being dispatched to the scene to compare handwriting samples to see if Kent is the vandal or if he’s being framed.

A view up Themis Street

This is a pretty good look up Themis Street. At least one house has a tall, tall TV antenna. I guess they needed it to see over the surrounding hills.

You can hear Linda Stone and Tricia Tipton describe growing up on Themis Street in this video shot at the last reunion.

Police car full of girls

Here’s another view of the unmarked police car. The driver looks like he has a uniform cap on, but all of the passengers look like high school girls. A pickup truck with L.R. Seabaugh on the door is parked on the right.

Could it be the Folsom Twins?

I can’t be sure, but the two girls in the car look a little like Linda and Laura Folsom. Or, it could be their twins.

Track team practice?

These guys don’t look heavy enough to be football players.

Election Day at Franklin School

I also made a pass by the polling place at Franklin School. You won’t see this view long. A new Franklin School is being built behind the existing building. When it’s finished, the old building will be torn down. Here are a couple of links to stories about the school and the construction:

Election Day Photo Gallery

There are a few photos here that aren’t at the top of the page. Click on any picture to make it larger, then click on the left or right side to move through the gallery.