Category: Youth

Measuring for Caps & Gowns

1957 Tulia High School

Today is the last day of school for our local school district. I jogged past the middle school this morning, noting that the PE-uniformed kids would be absent from the track for the next three months. Facebook has been awash in graduation photos of friends’ children. It remains bittersweet to me that my own son was denied his junior and senior years due to the virus. Can you imagine not having a senior year? Remember all the amazing things you did those last two years of high school? His class spent them in their bedrooms, staring at a laptop. In any event, I salute the class of 2023 today. May you go out and make this world better.

Vintage Farmers Market

Science for Work & Play, 1954, Schneider

Billy ought not take one step forward or those blueberries are liable to tumble down along the sidewalk. In fact, all of the produce seems balanced at a precarious angle, as you can see, and as they can see. This entire page is about seeing. I see a well-dressed family at the grocery store, perhaps in their Sunday best. What do you see?

Textbook Time

Le Mirage 1969

As the new semester starts, students in the fall of 1968 rush the cashier with textbooks and other school supplies. Then it’s back to the dorms for a change of clothes because the Methodist Student Center is hosting a back-to-school party tonight.

Later on, it’s going to get groovy, man. Lose your shoes and let your hair down.

Don’t overdo it because you’ll have to be up early in the morning. Isn’t campus lovely this time of year?

Linda is delighted that the University Complex South just got the new typewriters in. They’re super intuitive.

Lily is excited to use the dictaphone in shorthand class, the wave of the future.

Don’t worry; teachers are always willing to help students with vocabulary words.

And students are willing to point out where professors may have spilled potato salad on their ties.

You can catch up with your old friends and talk Aqua Net. No boys will ever run their fingers through your hair again.

Go wild and take a modern dance class.

But before long, those term papers will be due.

So be sure to put on that thinking cap and make it another great year of academics!

Next Up, Nickel Jaw Breakers

Veach Grocery, Marietta, Georgia, 1962

Jimmy may be wearing loafers, but there’s no loafing going on here. He’s making sure he’s got the energy to keep loading boxes of atomic fireballs, Butterfingers, and Baby Ruths. Surely he’s got the metabolism to indulge in chocolate bars each shift. He might even snag a box of Pom Poms on his way out.

Fall Hazard

from Portrait of an Era

Young British women stroll through the city streets in the 1930s, wearing swimsuits their mothers would have never dared don. I can tell it’s not near Texas, as wet pavement is as rare a treat as a Yeti sighting–although ladies striding arm in arm in swimwear through a downtown district is rare itself. Actually, I had shoes like that once, in my cousin’s 1998 wedding, where I served as maid of honor. I believe they were satin. I did not wear them after rainstorms.

Perhaps it is my age, but even now, 90 years later, these suits still seem to leave little to the imagination. However, the women seemed pleased with their freedom, evidenced by smiles from ear to ear–and oddly even teeth, considering the source. Cheers to the days of youthful summers.

Water, Water Everywhere

The ’64-’65 school year in Alexandria, Virginia may have had some rainy days, but the students at Hammond High School made do. Whether it was tromping through puddles on the way to third period…

… or splashing dirty water upon their teammates, they persevered.

Yet even when the sun came out, they still seemed obsessed with water.

Perhaps it was simply cleanliness they craved, like rinsing the grime off the fins of a car.

Perhaps they wanted to watch their garden grow.

It appears the campus was never dry.

Even when they left campus, it was for water.

Class of ’65, don’t fall in!!

What Amazon Prime Can’t Do

America 24/7, 2003

When I was a little girl, an ad for Federal Express used a phrase I’ll never forget: when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. While I don’t know if these lovely ladies were delivered overnight, I do know a chivalrous deliveryman is assisting with their departure from his truck. Their prom dates look on from the sidelines, as well as hundreds more.

But that wasn’t the most interesting manner of vehicle at the 2003 Fairless Hill, Pennsylvania prom. No, sir. Not to be outdone, these two arrived via motorized stegosaur. Surely that beats limousine any day.

What about you? If you could do it all over again, which would you pick? A Fed Ex truck or a dinosaur?

Lotus Appetizers & Tunisian Coffee

Nat Geo, March 1937

Seen here are the adorable faces of Jewish pupils and their schoolmaster, who has just led them outside of a Tunisian synagogue to take their picture. These children were descended from Jews who fled the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century, to the island of Djerba.

Never heard of Djerba? Well, allegedly, it is the island of the lotus-eaters where Odysseus was stranded on his voyage through the Mediterranean Sea. Eating lotus left the natives in a perpetual state of bliss. Shall we go?

Well, if you’re a single woman, probably not. The men there tend to verbally accost the weaker sex, per travelsafe-abroad. com, which also advises all LGBT to avoid it all costs, as they are not welcome. It also suggests that should unwanted attention be cast your way, that you say, “Harem Alayki,” which means, “Shame on you!” Feel free to use it today, if your dog has made bad choices.

If, however, you are a straight male, as usual, you can go wherever you’d like. May I suggest the Hotel Meridiana? The help will happily pour you coffee in the lobby, while you can’t decide if you’re in the movie Aladdin, or at the Cheesecake Factory. Either way, you win.

Degree’s New Aloha Fresh Deodorant Kills With Undergrads

UT 1947

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?

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