When School Was Cool:1968

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Hello? A jukebox in your high school lunchroom? What a great way to burn calories after a meal of cubed ham and ambrosia. 

And lollipops, too? Sugar, sugar.

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 Bask in the sweet threads of Double V-neck and Paisley Prince, playing with electric race cars. Did they get class credit for this?

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 Even Algebra looks fun!

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Perhaps I spoke to soon. 

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23 thoughts on “When School Was Cool:1968”

  3. Wow. That first guy looks like some extra in a Star Trek episode. I never had a juke box in my High School cafeteria. I never thought school was cool. Necessary yes. Cool no. Interesting collection.

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  5. Matchbox cars?! Puuuuhlease Kerbey – those are electric race cars, I used to have a track and cars like that when I was young. It was the prize possession of the pre-teen and teen male. You were nothing unless you had an electric race car set. I even remember those plastic guard-rail clip ons. Whew.

    As for the jukebox – man they musta been rich kids. I didn’t know anyone who had a private jukebox. They were reserved for restaurants and public places where they could make back their cost from the change they collected.

    Fun post Kerbey – brings back memories. Am i getting old or what?

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    1. I’m a girl and have no idea what little cars are. My husband says electric cars have motors. I again don’t get it. Yep, you are seriously getting old, Paul. Everybody is old compared to somebody. Tell me about the time you dated Mae West in 1937. Just teasing! Let me go update the post with the real facts. Thanks for schooling me. Ha!

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      1. Yep, they do have motors. See the track in the foreground? There are two sets of two shiny strips with a dark slot in between each? There was a matching finger on the bottom of the car that fit in that slot and two copper electric contacts that sat on the strips., One strip was positive and the other negative as supplied by a transformer that sat beside the track and was plugged into the wall. There was a little DC motor inside the car that used that power to turn the rear wheels. The trick was that when you went too fast the car would lift in the turns and the finger would leave the slot and the car would crash right off the track. Hence the plastic guard rails on the turns to keep the cars from smashing when they came off the rails. Two guys (or gals) with controllers would each control a car and the race was on. The controllers fit the palm of the hand and had a trigger switch, The further you pulled the trigger, the faster the car would go.the first to get to the finish line without crashing won. I spent hours at a time playing with that (as you likely surmised). The track snapped together in sections with contacts at each joint to allow power through. You could buy sections and add them in to make the course bigger – with bridges and overpasses. So cool.

        ha! I see i rambled – that happens when you get so old. ha! Mae West was behind me in school …

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      2. Of course I realize Mae West was probably more your grandma’s age…Who did you crush on back in ’68, Paul? Like when you weren’t playing with the cars and the controllers and the racing, you must have fancied a celeb at the time, no? And what did you do with all those sections and cars when you went off to college/work?

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      3. I was being funny when I said Mae west was Behind (younger than) me at school. Ha?Ha? That’s a good question about where the race track went. I left a trail of possessions at my parents’ homes as I moved along through life. My Mum would eventually find someone to give my stuff to – i was never very possessive. It was not unusual for me to get thank yous from people i didn’t know for gifts i didn’t realize i had given. I once got a written thank you in the mail from the local library for all the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift books (among many) that I had donated. Ha! I had thousands of books and I kept them in excellent shape. I’m sure Mum relocated my race cars somewhere.

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      4. So you have well-deserved karma coming at you for maintaining the books in shape, not spilling soda on them and warping the pages. How nice to receive letters that you had no idea were coming–and odd at the same time. That sounds very polite and well-mannered of the recipients, so they must be Canadian. Or very Deep Antebellum South.

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