The Truth about Locker Rooms

Books and gynm clothes 19

Since I didn’t know exactly where this photo was taken, I was going to toss it aside. Then I got a closer look and I saw what was on some of the shelves. (You can click on the photo to make it larger, but if you do, I suggested deactivating the Smell Emitting Diode on your computer first.)

Those rolled-up towels contained fermenting gym clothes. I wonder if this could have been taken near the Tiger Den on a Friday, traditionally the day when you were supposed to take your PE clothes home to be washed.

Of course, many of those rolls got stuffed into lockers and recycled again and again. That’s probably why the school got new lockers when it was converted to a junior high school.

As you may have gathered from earlier posts, I wasn’t exactly a fan of PE.

Guy shower experiences

When I saw those rolls, it brought back all kind of olfactory twitches. Now, despite teen movies, I was never privy to how girl locker rooms worked, but we guys were herded into gang showers where earsplitting hoots and hollers echoed off the tile walls like a bad prison movie. At least once during this session (which I tried to complete as quickly as possible), there would be something that sounded like a space shuttle lifting off, followed by a sulfurous cloud of methane gas that rolled off the tiles in a green cloud, prompting another Neanderthal to try to best the earlier contribution.

How I envisioned the girls’ locker room

Cape Girardeau Central High School girls in physical education uniformsI envisioned my female counterparts being ushered into individual cleansing facilities where there would be soft music playing, the water would come out at the perfect temperature, towels wouldn’t be needed because each compartment would be equipped with air-drying fans and there would be a gentle spritzing of the perfume of the girl’s choice on the way out. Attendants, probably freshmen, would take care of nail and hair maintenance and see that clothing was restored with nary a muss.

The physical education portion of the hour would last about 8 minutes, with the remainder of the time being taken up with the ablution process just described. I’m not sure if the freshmen were actually required to peel the grapes for upper classwomen or if they did it of their own volition.

That must have been the tradeoff for having to wear those ugly uniforms.

I can’t wait to hear how close my vision came to reality. Girls?

1966 Guitar Club

The caption in the 1966 Girardot reads “The GUITAR CLUB is new at Central. David Emory, Peter Zickfield and Donna Davis tune up their instruments in the Tiger Den.”

Sure glad to clear that up. I’ve been scratching my head over some random photos I couldn’t identify, including this one. I was thumbing through Wife Lila’s 1966 yearbook and happened to spot a bunch of my pictures in there, even though I was Class of ’65. I must have shot them as a favor.

Other Music-Related stories

 

Central High School Freshman Dance

I have two batches of negs. One was marked Freshman party; the other said Sophomore party. I’m going to break them up into two postings to make things a little less confusing.

Is this the 1966 Freshman Class?

I think I recognize some of these kids as being futures members of the Class of 1966. Anybody want to take a stab at filling in the blanks?

Was this the Tiger Den?

The sign by the door says “Book Exchange,” but this has the feel of the Tiger Den. I tried to get a photo of the Tiger Den when I was back in October, but that part of the building has been reconfigured into classrooms. The door was locked, so I gave up.

Soda machines with glass bottles

I ran a picture of this drink machine on my bike blog when I was advocating a glass bottle tax or deposit to encourage folks to recycle their beer bottles instead of throwing where I run over them.

There may be some Class of 65 guys here

I’m not positive, but I think I see some guys from my Class of 65 prowling around looking for freshmen girls.

Dancing builds up a powerful hunger

I’ll run photos from the Sophomore party tomorrow. I recognize a lot of those folks as being in the Class of 1965.