While it would seem curious now to make plans to meet up with friends at your local Walgreens or CVS, time was when drug stores had soda fountains and lunch counters.
These University of Texas students enjoyed coffee with friends, exchanging notes and cramming for tests, with a view of pills and potions behind the glass at Home Drug in 1948. Today, these brown bottles might prove too tempting for thieves, and certainly not appetizing for patrons in the booths. Did y’all ever drink a soda or take in a BLT at the local drugstore?
Delta Sigma Theta was founded 99 years ago at Howard University. This chapter of ladies studied as Jayhawks in Kansas. While Greek life itself has never mattered to me, what does matter is pictures. And I love this one. Not just the dresses and the hair and the double strand of something too jagged to be pearls, but I love old people names. Oreta, Betty Lou, Ivor, Cozetta, and even Dymple. Look at them subbing in Y’s 80 years ago, like they do today. (Think Kyndyll instead of Kendall.) And of course, there’s Dorothy Swope. I bet she traded that surname for another in the next five years, but on this day, in that dress, she was a Swope.
Yearbooks offer windows of potential. Young people on the precipice of adulthood, away from home, focusing their career paths, making friends, falling in love. Who knows what these women accomplished, how many people today remember their names? Maybe one reached 100 and still exists. But now they’re on the internet, forever preserved in youth, smiling in a time before Pearl Harbor, not knowing what would come.
No, that’s not a young Bing Crosby; it’s Joe Henjum, Band of the Hour drum major, “resplendent in his plumed bonnet.” I don’t have to tell you how his head retained warmth in that hat. It could also transport wine bottles, a leghorn chicken, or even a pair of Justin Ropers.
Musically inclined, Joe also played clarinet and saxophone. He met and married his college sweetheart, JoAnne there in college, and they enjoyed 56 years together. But I doubt he kept the hat.
It’s party time again, and the gang loves it when Alan’s punchmaster for the night. He might only be 20, but he knows where to score the Everclear and kick the night into high gear. Some have claimed that after two glasses, that wallpaper becomes 3D. They advise against a third.
Ah, the crisp air of autumn–not yet arrived here in muggy, dank … dare I say, sultry, Texas. Leaves are still green on many of the trees, and my hair is still frizzy with humidity. But Halloween, she comes. And with that, an obligation for children to trick or treat from home to home, virus be damned at this point. While I am not the sort of adult who dons costumes anymore, it is always fun to travel back in time to mid-century university life and revisit the apparel of yore. The couple above were captioned as “night-shirted mambo dancers.” They take it quite seriously.
But not as seriously as young love.
1947 Cactus
Next we have a gaggle of hoboes (also acceptable: hobos. Reminds me of the buffalo conundrum.) Yes, this is when it was acceptable to make fun of the homeless, before many of them were traumatized Vietnam vets. Back then, they were lovable tramps who hopped the trains–and evidently never left home (well, camp) sans hat.
Up next, a Li’l Abner couple, although little is the last word that comes to mind.
Finally, we have a prone mummy, an Indian brave and his maiden, Raggedy Ann and Andy, and others.
Do recall that Ann and Andy were siblings, so let’s hope this didn’t get weird at the end of the night. Did you know that the Raggedy siblings are over 100 years old now? Methinks we should bring the term “raggedy” back into play. It means shabby, so perhaps we could start calling interior design “raggedy chic”? Shabby chic with a hint of red yarn?
Here you see Horace offering his armpit to Shirley, who tries her best to look unimpressed, though the combination of pineapple pulp, hibiscus, and Polynesian breeze are an intoxicating aphrodisiac indeed. Phillip, downwind of him, seems overcome by the pheromones.
Don’t look now, but the fumes of anti-perspirant have attracted the coeds from down the hall! Everyone’s up for Aloha Fresh.
While tiki torches burn, Raynard and Viv spark it up. Aloha Fresh neutralizes that irritating side smoke, and even the stench of cheap domestic beer.
The truth is, no one wants to believe he or she has an issue with odor. But we’ve all been in cabs. It’s real. Better safe than sorry. Shouldn’t you be Aloha Fresh today?
I Don't Get It 