Appalachia Archives

I did a post yesterday about a football game played in a concrete stadium built built by the depression-era WPA in Glouster, Ohio, in 1940.

The town of Glouster, where the Glouster Memorial Stadium is located, and Trimble, the home of the Tomcats who play there, are part of an Appalachia that has been dying since the coal mines closed down and the railroads pulled up their tracks: about 25 percent of the roughly 2,500 residents of Glouster and Trimble live below the poverty line. What they DO have is a pride in and a passion for their football team.

Win, but win right

Homemade spirit signs encouraging the Tomcats peppered yards and were displayed by businesses.What I really liked was the way they emphasized sportsmanship, team and town.

Hundreds of towns people tried to keep the field dry with tarps a few days before the big playoff game. When it looked like they might have to move the game off the home field, they brought in a helicopter to blow it dry.

While I was editing the photos, I was listening on the Internet to police calls out of a Missouri community coming apart, while being moved by heartwarming pictures of a community coming together.

In case you missed it

Readership was, understandably, way down on Thanksgiving Day because you had more important things to do than read my ramblings. Still, I like these photos and this small town enough that I would encourage you to go back to yesterday’s post to see something that says more about Thanksgiving than Black Friday mania.

My favorite photo of the evening was the smiling girl from the Symmes Valley Band.

One of the things that impressed me most was what the losing coach told his players after they were defeated 55 – 8. (You’ll have to read the story to see what it was.)

Both teams showed a lot of class that Saturday night.

Missourian photographer Fred Lynch left a comment on my post about Paul Lueuders showing up at Central High School to take homeroom photos for the Girardot: “When I was in high school, I always liked working alongside a group photographer. I would take pictures of the kids ‘getting ready’ to be photographed when they didn’t think anyone was watching, or taking their picture.”

That got me to thinking about this picture page I did for The Athens Messenger November 8, 1968. The original assignment was to go to Hollister School to capture kids being vaccinated or something, but it turned out that local studio photographer Ralph Norris was there to shoot student photos, so I switched gears.

Once you got out of the Ohio University-dominated Athens and out into the county, you were in Appalachia, where poverty and worked-out coal mines were found down every back road. When I see people walking down the street sporting “Hollister” labels, I have a different picture in my mind than they do. (Like always, you can click the pix to make them bigger.)

Slicked-back hair and shiny faces

Like Fred wrote, it was fun to sit back and watch Ralph work with the kids. He had a gentle touch and put the children at ease. He wasn’t the master photographer Paul Lueders was, but he was a decent craftsman who had been doing his job for years.

My copy was short and sweet on the page: “Slicked-back hair and shiny faces were the order of the day at Hollister School Wednesday. That’s when photographer Ralph Norris came to take everybody’s picture. Here’s how it was.”

Pretty girls and a crown

Ralph and I would cross paths from time to time. He was a nice guy who was fun to talk with. I don’t think we ever exchanged any heavy thought, but I do owe him big for one piece of advice he gave me.

Covering Miss Rutabaga or something

He was the official photographer for some local pageant. I don’t remember if it was Miss Athens County or Miss Rutabaga or whatever. All I know is that it involved pretty girls and a crown. I went to the swimming pool to shoot the bathing suit competition. Hey, newspaper photographing is a tough job.

Now that I think back, I don’t know how I got the pageant assignment. That had boss Bob Rogers written all over it. He must have been out of town.

Anyway, Ralph pulled me over to the side and said, “It’s become kind of a tradition for the girls to throw me in the pool after I take the group shot, so you might want to be prepared to get wet – you know how all those photographers look alike – or to beat feet while they’re distracted by me.”

I managed to get a shot of him making a big splash, then exited quickly.

I should go look for those negatives

Now that I think of it, I need to go digging for those negatives. To look for Ralph, of course.

Cape Central High Photos

Ken Steinhoff, Cape Girardeau Central High School Class of 1965, spent half a century in the ink-slinging business for papers in Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida.

He retired in 2008 and has been spending time scanning hundreds of thousands of images because “photos once taken as news have grown enough whiskers that they’ve become history.”

Please comment on the articles when you see he may have left out a bit of history, forgotten a name or when your memory of a circumstance conflicts with his.

(His mother said her stories improved after all the folks who could contradict died off.)

Your information helps to make this a wonderful archive and may end up in book form.

Tag: Appalachia

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