A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

By the time I became a senior, I really felt like I was starting to figure life out. Primarily, I had friends. Not a huge number; I realize now I'm a bit of an introvert and prefer a few good friends to many shallow ones. But we had parties; we got together for things like carpet golf; we had a good time. And we did all of that without drinking.

There was a popular song those days called The In Crowd.

I'm in with the in crowd
I go where the in crowd goes
I'm in with the in crowd
And I know what the in crowd knows…

Although the song didn't mention alcohol specifically, we all knew that's what the in crowd was up to. And some of the kids in my class, I'd heard, actually drank alcohol (though it was illegal!) at parties that clearly would end in tears should I attempt to attend one. So my non-drinking friends and I had parties and get-togethers in which there was no drinking. The photo evidence says we had a good time anyway.

As good kids we did things like play carpet golf at the little course near the base of the Bridge of Lions. Here are Ed Friday; Mike Creech; my sister, Mary Joan; myself in back; Barbara Nagy; and Mary Steinberg, who I married a few years later.

Rosemary Hankins was also a friend. We had dated casually when I was a junior, and she was definitely part of my friends circle.

She was always cooperative as a photographic subject, so I wound up taking several of her. I have no idea what the point of the following photo was—it's conceivable it was for a yearbook ad for Captain Jack's—but when I developed it (remember, the original was black-and-white) I couldn't resist turning it into a cartoon.

I cut out a speech-balloon-shaped piece of paper and laid in on the photographic print paper before exposing it to light from the original negative. This left a balloon-shaped white spot on the print, which I could then write in with permanent marker.

So that left me with a hilarious and slightly edgy cartoon…that, I realized, I couldn't share with anyone! Because everyone I knew, knew Rosemary; and Rosemary was completely not like anyone the punchline would have applied to. In fact, she wouldn't even have gotten the joke, herself. And so I stuck it in the box with all the other photos and negatives. Hopefully, if she Googles herself and sees it now, she'll at least appreciate my 55 years of discretion.

Ethel Hankins was Rosemary's younger sister and my sister Louise's best friend. So she was also part of our friend group.

Here are some photos from a party we had. A non-drinking party. But we were such crazy teenagers! Real wild ones!

L2R: Rosemary Hankins, Diana Bishop, Mary Joan, myself, Linda Masters, Ed Friday, Barbara Nagy, Mary Steinberg, Mike Creech.

Diana Bishop was part of the Folk Trio at school, along with myself and John Palmes. She wrote a song called Dream of Peace, which we recorded at the radio station (as shown below, and yes, that's an original color photo and my socks really were that red). She later sold the song to the folk-pop group Up With People and, I think, actually toured with them at one point.