May 2010

May 20, 2010April 10, 2016

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.

May 19, 2010July 29, 2015

Cub Scouts at Arena Park

Virtual buddy Missourian photographer Fred Lynch dredged up a Frony photo of square dancing in the Arena Building from the 50s.

I have a variety of photos from the park, but these of Cub Scout activities were the first that bubbled to the top of the pile. I think the Scout leader sporting the drill instructor’s campaign hat is Rich Renfro.

The flags in the background look like the same ones in Frony’s picture. I wonder if they’re still there. They could have been 48-star flags in those days.

Game with wheel and stick

Outside the Arena Building, there was some kind of competition involving rolling a wheel with a stick.

How you hold your tongue is important

Pinewood Derby Gallery

Time has not been kind to these negatives, but I’ll throw them out here anyway. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

May 18, 2010October 19, 2011

Capaha Park Pool Party

I got an email this morning from The City of Cape Girardeau promising that the new Cape Splash Family Aquatic Center will be opening on May 20. (Whoever came up with that name must have been paid by the word. I bet everybody ends up calling it The Water Park.)

I showed some photos of it under construction last month (and discussed Jackson’s Lickitysplit Water Slide).

Capaha Pool Dance

Let’s don’t dwell on the future, let’s wallow in the past. This appears to be a dance on the deck of the Capaha Park Pool. I don’t have a clue what the event was, when it was held or why.

It had a band

It was a big enough deal that a real band was playing and there were lots of spectators outside the fence. Despite all of the electrical cords stretched across the pool deck, apparently nobody got electrocuted. I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that.

I DO remember covering a swimming event there one night with a borrowed electronic flash. The way old-time strobes worked was that batteries would charge up a capacitor so there was lots of juice just waiting around to arch across a tube, producing a blast of light that was thousandths of a second in duration.

I was walking across the pool deck when my wet finger touched the place where the charging cord would normally plug in. There SHOULD have been a cover over those contacts, but there wasn’t.

As soon as my finger completed the electrical circuit, all of the voltage stored in the capacitor tried to light me up like a xenon tube. Failing that, it dropped me to my knees like I’d been poleaxed.

It wasn’t life-threatening, but it WAS unpleasant.

Looking for non-fried memories

This wasn’t the only time I had something like that happen. I was walking across a wet football field one night when I was knocked flat. I assumed that I had stepped in front of a play accidentally, but there was nobody around me.

I got up, took a few more steps and it happened again. Turned out that I had a short in the 510-volt battery pack that powered the electronic flash. The massive charge was looking for a path to the wet ground, and I happened to provide it.

Maybe one of you who hasn’t had his or her short / long-term memory fried by high voltages will be able to tell us who these folks are and what they are doing.

May 17, 2010

End of School Year 1964

Now that I have friends and relatives who are or have been in the school system, I wonder who really is happier to see the end of the school year: the students or the teachers.

Here are some shots around Central High School on what appears to be the last day of class. Books are being turned in and lockers emptied.

Hallway and lockers in 2009

In addition to a gallery of photos from 1964, I’ve tossed in the shot above, taken of the hallway in our Alma Mater in October 2009. The lockers have been replaced, but the Old Gal still looks good for her age.

Gallery of photos from 1964

Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the photo to move through the gallery.