1964 or 1965 Football

Central High School football players c 195This print of 1964 or 1965 Central High School football players wasn’t great when it was new, and time has faded it even more. Sylvester Johnson is third from the left in the back row.

Syl was one of the best athletes Central ever produced. After Principal Dallas Albers noticed the star player eying his suspenders during an assembly, he shot him a deal: he would award his suspenders to Syl at the homecoming dance if the Tigers won their homecoming game against Sikeston. Albers was so sure Syl was going to come through that he showed up at the dance wearing both a belt and suspenders so his pants wouldn’t fall down after paying off his obligation to Syl.

That’s Bill / Jacqie Jackson on the far left in the front row. I’m pretty sure I recognize some of the other guys, but I’ll let you tell me for sure who they are so I don’t have to run corrections.

Those blue marks

Those blue marks on the top and right margins are crop marks where the sports editor decided to tighten up the photo, probably because he wanted to be able to run the faces larger.

A couple of years ago, I hooked up with Don Gordon, my old Missourian mentor who confessed that he leaned on me whenever it came to doing page layouts. “I watched John Blue mark up pictures. He almost always put a crop mark on them. It might be just to whittle off an eighth of an inch, but he seemed to feel he hadn’t done his job unless he had touched the photo in some way. When I got a picture, I found myself doing the same thing. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I’d always take a little off the edges.”

“I knew that, Don. That’s why I always printed my photos with a little ‘air’ around them so that by the time you and jBlue got finished, the picture would be just right.”