u/SkinTeeth4800

Junior high schools in our area during the 1970s, like this one, usually included grades 7,8, and 9.

As a kid, I thought it was a weird concept when the first middle schools popped up in town, experimenting with formats of 4th to 9th grade or 5th to 8th grade or 4th to 6th.

Most from this pile of pictures did not have handwritten notes on the back.

One of those I didn't zoom in on from the last page mosaic of photos is a poor quality, dark blue-green Polaroid Land Camera one (it was printed on the back) with "Ninth Grade 1971-1972 Per. 4th hr. Contest Winners".

The one in which a girl in the front row, right, wears glasses and and "I'm With Stupid" t-shirt is labeled "1975-1976" in pencil on the back.

The nostalgic, melancholy 1990s song by The Connells, " '74-'75," reminisces about members of a graduating class of American high school kids, twenty years into middle-aged deterioration and regret. Although those kids in the song are a slightly older generation, the kids from my found pile of photos exude some of the same nostalgia and recognition of the hopeful, hyperactive people we used to be.

When I was a little kid in the 1970s, I was surprised & annoyed that my family didn't have a family crest.

So I designed one that had a fish jumping over it. I had the family members vote on whether the family crest fish should be trout or salmon.

My grandpa had stronger opinions: "Why not Northern Pike?" That was his favorite sport & food fish.

In the 1990s, I found a postcard he & my grandma had sent from Florida in 1971. It had a picture of Flipper, the famous performing dolphin. Grandpa's message to me: "No, I didn't catch a fish THAT big!"

The golf ball matchbook has an address of a car dealership on it which hasn't been in that spot since (maybe decades) before I was born in the 1960s.

The little bottle is Pfluger Reel Oil.

The little green tin is "Ideal Split Shot" -- lead sinkers: "12 No. 7 Split Shot" "OPENS WITH TWO FINGERS"

"Herb-Ox Bullion Cubes -- Made By -- The PURE FOOD COMPANY -- Mamoroneck NY USA"

There is a bigger sinker and maybe a Bakelite bobber in the photos, too.

Wine corks as bobbers.

"Hoefer Lures for GAME FISH" "319 W. Lake St MINNEAPOLIS - - MINNESOTA on a box

Also:

"HANDI-FISH-HOOK-BOOK Pat. Applied For H.V. Burt Mfg. Co. Rock Island, Ill."

Actually Minneapolis, MN, United States of Kafkaism

The Kautsky ORIGINAL "Lazy Ike" -- Made in U S.A. -- 522 Central Ave. -- Fort Dodge, Iowa

Born in 1906. Pic 1 (all) is circa 1912. Pic 2 is the 1930s fishing trip (he's in the middle), Pic 3 at the business award ceremony (he's on the right) is 1954.

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But what rules do they play by now? OSRIC? LOTFP? Dolmenwood?

Bought in Wisconsin Dells, 2010s.

Clockwise from top:

*"Nelly" soap;

*"Night" bubble gum cigarettes;

*Cetlík from the pradelna with evocative verbiage like "Button mission";

*"MR. RAP DIPS" candy imported from Holland;

"Sfinx Kočičí Jazýčky" from Cokoladovny Modranska in Praha 4;

*"Kamikaze" chocolate cigs made in France, bought on Xavierova;

*"DALLAS" bubble gum with stickers from the TV show;

*Similar "DYNASTY" bubble gum with stickers & multilingual inscriptions-- TM "The Oil Company -- 1992";

*"NIGHT CLUB GIRLS -- with stickers žvýkačka" -- Who is the target market? Pre-teens buy the other gum;

*"DE SMURFEN" gum -- more of an expected product

*"SANDWICZ -- WARS Restaurant Center" -- from a trip to Hungary or Slovakia?

*"Fey" Muesli -- It's probably "Fly" but it sure looks like "Fey"

*"MACHO" cigarettes from Slovenia with Czech health ministry warnings on side

*"With Condoms... and NEVER without!" on a beer coaster -- on reverse are local telephone numbers for AIDS information in 7 Czech cities, including Prague.

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Unearthed these forgotten gems I had shelled out color-copying bucks for in the 1990s. I used to be really into Xerox collages & collecting tons of random bits of stuff for collages. This zine would have been called "RHUMBA: Magazine of Chance & Love". Feel free to make your own stew out of any inspiration here.

I would find these among the free Village Voice type newspapers on coffeehouse shelves by the window. The earliest ones would say: "300 hours of access to the Internet -- FREE!" Later, they bumped up to 1000 hours. The nice quality tins gave way to plastic ones, and then eventually little cardboard or paper CD sleeves.

When they were dumping free AOL tins on every damn coffeehouse window shelf, I may have emptied a few of them, painted a personalized scene on the cover with thick nail polish, inserted my own mix-CD burned off of Napster or something, and given it as a gift to friends or romantic partners.

"Salaries for District 156 range from $5,526" [circled in pen] "to $8,896 for those with Bachelors" degrees..."