On the tingling eve of the big high school football game, drama was being played out in thousands of U.S. cities and towns. Girl students swirl like autumn leaves as they lived and breathed their hopes and fears in high-pitched whispers. The biggest men in school, the football stars, brooded over their assignments and the hundreds of friends who were counting on them. Mass pep rallies in front of school or on practice fields built up the excitement. Coeds mooned over their heroes in class and the popular girls set their caps for coveted dates with the team’s star players.
The tension of the adult world – even college football – seems tame beside the bubbling pressures of high school football. In Lawrence, Kan., a city of 33,000, the pressure is even greater for the Lawrence High Lions have the longest current winning streak in schoolboy football – 45 games. As Lawrence, on the weekend reported in these pictures, prepared for its big game against Shawnee-Mission North, the 1,100 students urged the ream on with usual fighting, go-get-‘em slogans. But the players themselves faced things a little differently from most. Booted in the strict religious environment of Kansas, they attend a prayer meeting and Bible discussion at a barn outside of town, where on of them wisecracked, “He who playeth hardest beateth Shawnee-Mission North.”
Continuing with the subject of vintage magazine ads, below are some full-page clips advertising food and soft drinks. It’s interesting to see which products survived into today, as well as trace some common items to the days when they were first introduced. Advertising and marketing were pretty much absent during my childhood – people having to deal with shortages did not need additional enticement to buy things. I don’t recall seeing any commercials on TV or in print until the mid-1980’s. Now, when technology provides a way to block most TV and internet advertisement, I find myself marveling at these old ads, probably because they look so naive and amateurish compared to the slick ways the goods are being sold to us today.
We’ll start with this subtly racist ad for Aunt Jemima pancakes.
This post is brought to you by the Johnson County Central Resource Library’s new awesome microfilm reader.
Also brought to you by the library’s outstanding raise-deserving personnel.
The Iran Hostage Crisis was well-covered in the media, with reports and dispatches published and broadcast on a daily basis during the 444 day ordeal, but in the last few days before the Algiers Accords were brokered, the hostage news were back on the front pages of every newspaper.
*all the images should be readable, if you care to do so just click to enlarge.
