Posted By Mark on Jan 15, 2015 | 3 comments

The Internet Archive is always a great place to have a virtual wander through if you’re forever finding yourself stuck in a timewarp of nostalgia like me. It doesn’t help you escape the timewarp of nostalgia – not that you’d ever want to because it’s nice there – but it does make it even more enjoyable.

So, today’s discovery has been the the publications of the Rutland Historical Society and, in particular, the Rutland High School Yearbooks. You might have been able to work that out from the title of this post because I can see you and you look smart.

It’s quite possible that some schools in the UK do yearbooks and possibly have for some some time but in my experience they’re a purely American phenomenon that I’ve heard about, seen glimpses of in films and on TV, and know next-to-nothing else about. This makes discovering scanned American high school yearbooks very interesting and for no other reason than it’s the year I was born in I’ve decided to take a nose through the Rutland High School Yearbook of 1971.

The inside cover and evidence that before there were fonts there were still fonts. And what beautiful fonts they were! Look at that “70-71” and picture any other decade in which a more suitable font wrote something appropriate to the era. You can’t! Mostly because you’re not sure what I’m saying. I’m not sure what I’m saying and I just wrote it. I think I’m saying it’s quite seventiesish.

A message from the superintendent Dr James Tinney. He knew that the students of Rutland High School were going to accomplish great things. But did he know know? Or did he get some kind of guidance through…

… astrology!?

No. It was neither of those things. He was just being polite. He couldn’t wait to see the back of them.

But who is them? I’m glad you asked.

David Cook. CRASH!

Jan Eastman. D.A.R. girl. I dont know what a D.A.R. girl is. I think it’s probably got something to do with her hair. It’s quite impressive hair.

Judy Godnick. Teensy-weensy bikinis and BIG MOUTH. Judy sounds like the sort of person I’d have liked. And she had a dune buggy. You never know when those will come in useful. You suspect it’s around dunes but you never know for sure.

David Alberico. One of the Fantastic Four. I’ve ruled out Invisible Woman but he could be any of the other three.

Richard Savage. Good head. Well, that’s nice to know. High schools were very progressive back in the early seventies.

Barbara McKirryher. Which boy this week? The guys. In front of the Manor.

Frances Thomas. Cemetery. Innocent? The bomb. I know you shouldn’t judge a person by their looks or by their random-seeming descriptions in high school yearbooks but in this case I think it’s safe to guess this may have been Rutland’s resident serial killer of the early part of the decade.

Lee Shelvey. Funny little hat. You’re wondering how funny it was, aren’t you? Well, he’s still wearing it in the photo. It’s made of human hair.

Mary Messer. Seen in the nurse’s office. Likes horses. These two things may be related. Only the nurse and the horse so traumatised it never rode again know for certain.

Harry Korngiebel. B-a-a-a.

Albert Maxham. Pumpkin Smasher. “Wouldn’t want to see him in a dark alley”. On the basis that only the nicest quotes about high school students make it into the yearbook, “Max” must have been a real charmer.

Mark Richards. Keeps the balls rolling. It’s a man thing. There’s a 50% chance you wouldn’t understand.

Beryl Phelps. Not so shy any more. Natural blonde. Found in the A.V. room. Putting two and two together I think we can picture a scene involving Beryl, nudity, and video equipment. Fine. I can picture a scene involving Beryl, nudity, and video equipment.

Charles Simpson. 427 Willys. That’s a lot to get through.

David Bride. Is your grandmother home? See, Wayne Rooney asks that question and everyone raises an eyebrow but it turns out to be a perfectly normal thing for a young man in the early seventies to wonder aloud.

It’s not just photos of students with short and unsettling quotes beneath them that makes up a high school yearbook; there are other photos with other captions too.

I’m not sure if the photo is of the high school vampire or if the photo caption was written by the high school vampire. The most important thing to take away from this picture in the yearbook is that Rutland High School actually had a vampire. That’s pretty good going. We only had a werehamster at my school. They always have to do things bigger and better in the states.

Do you remember when it was cool to make terrorism jokes about killing people in school and blowing things up? Ah, those were the days.

Back then every school had an LSD lab. In the 80s it was cocaine. In the 90s E labs were more popular. I’ve no idea what sort of weird drugs the kids are ingesting in schools these days but that’s because people are a bit freaked out by middle-aged strangers wandering around the places. What a world we live in.

It’s good to see high school satisfied the needs of young women who wanted to be educated in the ways of being the ultimate housewife ensuring that others were happy.

The rest of the yearbook consists of sports and extracurricular activities and then concludes with advertising. Lots of advertising. Lots and lots of it.

It’s the real ubiquitous advertising thing.

What’s that? We can sponsor a spot in your high school yearbook? Can we include a veiled threat in a message too? We can! Then you’ve just got yourself an advertiser!

A satisfied customer is our best advertisement. But apparently it’s prohibitively expensive to staple one in every yearbook so you’ll have to make do with this.

I was thinking of a regular, tranquil funeral home for when it’s my time but that was before I saw this advert. Tell me you’re not thinking about getting tossed when you’re dead now.

Not the best price. Not the cheapest. The popular price.

Do you remember the shoes that landed on the moon? Or the shoes that helped stop the Cuban missile crisis? Or the shoes that invented Pong? They’re all here at Ronay’s.

Paul is a dirty, dirty man. Paul needs to pay his cleaners a lot of money to keep him in tip-top condition. When you’re as rich as Paul’s cleaners sometimes you just feel like spreading the wealth.

The yearbook was digitised by volunteers from the Rutland Historical Society and the Rutland Free Library. It and others like it are well worth checking out.