Tag Archive | Eisenhower High School Yakima

Fiddler On The Roof

Tradition!

November 3, 2020

Until November 3, 1971, this musical play could only be viewed on Broadway or in a community or school production. With the release of the movie, however, Fiddler On The Roof, cemented its place as one of the best musicals ever.

Prior to being made into a film Fiddler was a Broadway staple. The Infallible Wikipedia sheds a bright spotlight on its history:

“The original Broadway production of the show, which opened in 1964, had the first musical theatre run in history to surpass 3,000 performances. Fiddler held the record for the longest-running Broadway musical for almost 10 years until Grease surpassed its run. The production was extraordinarily profitable and highly acclaimed. It won nine Tony Awards, including best musical, score, book, direction and choreography. It spawned five Broadway revivals and a highly successful 1971 film adaptation and has enjoyed enduring international popularity.”

What’s so captivating about Fiddler is its unique story. The audience – from the first notes of the fiddle’s haunting tunes – is immersed in the pre-Russian revolution community of Anatevka.

Soon the viewer sees the world through the eyes of Tevye, a Jewish peasant ‘blessed’ with five daughters and no sons. Tevye narrates the entire play through words and song in an often humorous yet bittersweet evaluation of his – and his fellow villager’s – life.

What ties it all together, however, is the incredible music. From the foot tapping lament of If I were A Rich Man, to the witty Matchmaker, and the wistful Sunrise, Sunset, each song expertly captures the feeling of a unique time and place in history.

Fiddler – perhaps more than any other musical to grace the silver screen – is a serious film which explores the foibles of human nature and one’s ability to adapt to change.

I know I saw the film in the theater as a teenager and also a production of it at Eisenhower Sr. High (IKE) in Yakima in the spring of 1972. The IKE production, in fact, was the event which inspired my resolve to be in the choir since you had to be in that group if you wanted to perform in the musical.

I was in my ninth grade year – in junior high – when I wrote this diary entry on March 24, 1972:

“I went to ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ It was very good, we had front row seats and I felt like the lead was singing to us in some parts. It was really neat.”

First of all, a big thank you to my parents for being first in line and purchasing the front row seats. Second, that is not the most eloquent bit of writing, but I’ll forgive my 14 year old self…at least she captured the moments. I bought a book of Fiddler songs on sheet music and learned to play many of them on the piano. I even sang Matchmaker for a talent competition… I no longer recall WHY I thought this was a good idea (it wasn’t) or the specific event… but I was much more fearless then.

*A page from the 1972 IKE yearbook, Reveille, of the Fiddler on The Roof production. I wanted to be just like this group, on stage singing in a musical.*

Years later, when my kids got to about ages 8 and 11, I hatched an idea. The hubby and I ordered and installed an 8 foot by 8 foot movie screen. A speaker system was set up to create surround sound and thus we created a part time media center in our living room.

This all coincided with my discovery that the King County Library ‘rented’ to anyone who held a library card films on DVD and VHS. And when I say rent, I mean for free. The catch was that you had to put a hold on the movies you wanted and then wait until the email notice arrived advising that a particular one was ready to be picked up. Much less expensive than Blockbuster and with an element of surprise; we never knew which movie would be the one for any particular Saturday night.

And thus began my mission to introduce my kids to every musical ever produced. My budding film critics soon developed opinions about every selection I brought home. My daughter, for example, declared the musical Carousel as The Worst. Musical. Ever. Personally, I would put it up against The Fantasticks for that title.

On the night of Fiddler, the sights and sounds of 1905 Russia filled the room and the whole family was enthralled. For me it was as if visiting with an old friend for a couple of hours. I tamped down my temptation to sing along and once again enjoyed the wonderful story and characters.

Finally, when I had exhausted all the musicals available through the library, I asked my children one day of all those we had watched, which was their favorite? While I don’t recall what my daughter said, my son did not hesitate: Fiddler On The Roof. An opinion he confirmed recently.

As for me and my dream of being in the cast of my high school’s musical… well, that’s a story for next week.

To learn more about the incomparable Fiddler, one needs only to access The Infallible Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddler_on_the_Roof

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddler_on_the_Roof_(film)

L’Chaim!

Where Were You in ’62? American Graffiti

Aug11

1973 was the defining year for Baby Boomers

August 11

AMerican graffiti When one thinks of Modesto, California, it is likely to be associated with an American experience which occurred primarily from the 1950’s through the 1970’s. Having a car had become a status symbol and driving it among one’s peers – or cruising as its known – became an essential element of growing up. On August 11, 1973, the film American Graffiti was released, serving to enshrine the cruiser phenomenon into our shared culture.

The film was a dark horse hit that year, capturing five academy award nominations including one for best picture. It was George Lucas’ first film, show-casing his talent as an ‘outside the box’ filmmaker.

The original budget was only $600,000, which forced Lucas to use mostly unknown actors, a limited film crew, and to secure low cost contracts for the music. The lack of money kept the film from having an original soundtrack, only two cameramen, and truly launched the careers of Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford.

To encapsulate the main plot, we turn to the Infallible Wikipedia:

“On their last evening of summer vacation in September 1962, recent high school graduates and longtime friends Curt Henderson and Steve Bolander meet two other friends, John Milner, the drag-racing king of the town, and Terry ‘The Toad’ Fields, in the parking lot of the local Mel’s Drive-In in Modesto, California. Curt and Steve are scheduled to travel ‘Back East’ the following morning to start college. Despite receiving a $2,000 scholarship from the local Moose Lodge, Curt has second thoughts about leaving Modesto. Steve gives Terry his 1958 Chevrolet Impala to care for until he returns at Christmas. Steve’s girlfriend, Laurie, who is also Curt’s sister, arrives in her car. Steve suggests to Laurie, who is already glum about him going to college, that they see other people while he is away to ‘strengthen’ their relationship. Though not openly upset, she is displeased, which affects their interactions the rest of the evening.”

Rather than have a main protagonist, Lucas saw the four main male characters has being equal, all based on various stages of his adolescent self. Although somewhat cliché’ now, the four loosely represent the college man, the popular guy, the nerd, and the greaser. The entire movie takes place during the one night and culminates the next morning with information as to what happens with each of the four. At the time it was a unique storytelling method.

As word started to get around Universal Studios that the film was good, funds were put in place for marketing and other studio support. It paid off. Also from the Infallible Wikipedia:

Richard Dreyfuss as Curt Henderson

“Produced on a $777,000 budget, it has become one of the most profitable films of all time. Since its initial release, American Graffiti has garnered an estimated return well over $200 million in box-office gross and home video sales, not including merchandising. In 1995, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’ and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.”

Bob Falfa, aka Harrison Ford

Perhaps the thing I find most interesting about this film as well as others from the 1970’s (see my post from July 28^th on the film Animal House; link below) is that the adults in charge at that time truly did not understand the impact the Baby Boomers exerted on the culture. 1973, the year that American Graffiti appeared, there were 37 million teenagers and another 21 million in the generation were ages 20 to 27. For those 58 million people the storylines in American Graffiti resonated.

On the day the movie was released I was 16 years old, possessed a ten day old driver’s license, and lived in a city where the cruising culture was king.

This is the Yakima I remember as a girl in the 1960’s. I’ve seen this photo dozens of times and the bustle never ceases to amaze me.

Everyone there knew the term “Dragging the Ave” which meant cruising up and down Yakima Avenue. Initially, I was forbidden by my parents to drive on the Ave after dark. But, being the youngest of four, the other three had done an outstanding job of bending the rules for me and I’m not sure what, exactly, happened, but by the time I was a junior in high school, I was a regular in the Friday and Saturday night promenades.

One thing I never did was drag the ‘Ave’ solo. I participated with a variety of friends, but my frequent partners in crime were my two best buddies who – to provide them a bit of anonymity – will henceforth be called by their aliases Deborah and Cynthia.

On the particular night which stands out, it was Deborah riding shotgun. A warm summer’s evening and the opportunity to see and be seen was at its best.

SchoolLogo_1403 Now, in Yakima in the mid-1970’s, there were two major high schools: AC Davis and Dwight D. Eisenhower (IKE). Yes, there were other high schools in the surrounding communities, but those two were the biggies. We attended IKE.

To us, those who attended Davis were cross-town rivals and somewhat of a mystery; a forbidden fruit, if you will. Although we recognized a few who attended Davis, for the most part we didn’t know them and they didn’t know us. davis

So Deborah and I are driving along and, at one of the stoplights, a car carrying a couple of guys is idling next to my car and we engage in a shouted conversation between the two vehicles. Mostly it’s Deborah doing the talking out the passenger side window. There’s flirting and banter. The light changes, we drive on.

At the next light, or perhaps the one after, first names are exchanged. Then one of the guys says to Deborah, “what’s your last name?”

To which she replies, “Guess.”

The two of us giggle away as the guys venture forth with such answers as “Smith? Jones?”

Deborah replies, “Nope.”

More names are proffered then followed by the same question “what’s your last name?”

And the same answer “Guess.”

This went on for at least two runs up and down Yakima Avenue as the guys try to get us to stop and meet them in person. The name guessing continues until Deborah says to me “These guys are not very bright, are they?”

All because they kept asking the same question and never understanding that she was, in fact, telling them her last name. Every. Single. Time. By now you, the reader, should have ‘Guess’-ed it, but they never did.

Once we became bored with the game, I managed to ‘lose’ them and soon the night was over and by the time I was 19 or 20, ‘Dragging the Ave’ had lost its appeal, relegated to the status of a cultural reference.

Thanks to American Graffiti, that phenomenon is preserved. Future generations who happen upon the movie will, perhaps, regret that they did not live in the era of muscle cars, cheap gas, and summer nights dragging the Ave.

Although the tagline was ‘Where were you in ’62?’, it was the summer of ’73 and American Graffiti which was the defining year for the Baby Boomers.

The links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Graffiti

https://barbaradevore.com/2018/04/17/1965-ford-mustang

https://barbaradevore.com/2020/07/28/animal-house

The Oracle of Bacon

Sep4

One Degree or Another

September 4, 2018

kevin bacon kyra sedgwick Today’s historical event really isn’t that much of an event but more an excuse to write about a topic which amuses this author. First of all happy 30^th wedding anniversary to Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. They were married September 4, 1988. Unlike a great number of Hollywood marriages, their marriage has lasted three decades and, apparently, they’ve only ever been married to each other!

But as I said, that event is but an excuse to write about the cultural phenomenon known as the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”

The genesis of the concept first appeared in 1996 when four Albright college students watched two movies one evening, both of which featured Kevin Bacon. No doubt, as these things go, the four probably had been consuming alcohol when they began speculating on the connections between Bacon and other actors.

Bacon himself said in an earlier interview, in January 1994 with Premiere magazine, that he “had worked with everybody in Hollywood or someone who’s worked with them.”

From the Infallible Wikipedia, here’s how it works:

Kevin Bacon (Right) as Chip Diller along with Kent Dorfman – played by Stephen Furst in the classic Animal House.

“Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a parlor game based on the ‘six degrees of separation’ concept, which posits that any two people on Earth are six or fewer acquaintance links apart. Movie buffs challenge each other to find the shortest path between an arbitrary actor and prolific actor Kevin Bacon. It rests on the assumption that anyone involved in the Hollywood film industry can be linked through their film roles to Bacon within six steps. In 2007, Bacon started a charitable organization called SixDegrees.org.”

In the past 20 years, the concept has become a cultural phenomenon, and references to the game have been made in movies, books, TV and even a couple of parody songs. Despite his initial dislike of the game, Bacon himself has come to embrace it and, no doubt, it has been a benefit to his long career.

Also from the Infallible Wikipedia:

“In 2009, Bacon narrated a National Geographic Channel show ‘The Human Family Tree’ – a program which describes the efforts of that organization’s Genographic Project to establish the genetic interconnectedness of all humans. In 2011, James Franco made reference to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon while hosting the 83rd Academy Awards. In the summer of 2012, Google began to offer the ability to find an actor’s Bacon number on its main page, by searching for the actor’s name preceded by the phrase ‘bacon number’. EE (UK internet provider) began a UK television advertising campaign on November 3, 2012, based on the Six Degrees concept, where Kevin Bacon illustrates his connections and draws attention to how the EE 4G network allows similar connectivity.”

oracle To find any actor’s ‘Bacon Number’ you can go to this link: https://oracleofbacon.org/

Even those of us who are not actors and have never appeared in a movie with or without Kevin Bacon can, however, discern our ‘Bacon Number’.

I went to the link and then figured out ‘who’ I personally know who might have a connection. What I discovered: my Bacon number is Three.

Kyle Maclachlan in Twin Peaks

How? I went to high school with Kyle MacLachlan (he spelled it McLachlan then) at Eisenhower HS in Yakima. Kyle, for those who do not know, starred as Special Agent Dale Cooper in the TV show Twin Peaks and also as Paul Atreides in the movie Dune. He’s had a decade’s long, solid acting career. His Bacon number is Two assigned as follows: He was in a Twin Peaks episode with James Marshall who was in A Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon.

Michael Tucker

Or, I can get to Kevin Bacon through my brother who had a minor walk on role in the movie The Secret Life of Archie’s Wife (1990) starring Michael Tucker. Michael Tucker was in Diner (1982) with Kevin Bacon. So via this connection I also get a Bacon number of three. Kevin (0) – Michael (1) –Peter (2) – Barb (3).

Now let the games begin… what is YOUR Bacon number?

And a couple of links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon (Yes, there really is a Wikipedia page JUST for this!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Bacon (And one for the actor himself)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_MacLachlan (Yakima’s famous son has one too!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Tucker_(actor) (As does Michael Tucker)

I plucked this historical photo of Kyle (right photo, wearing the all black outfit) from the pages of my high school annual (I was the Editor so I probably handled this photo and, possibly, either wrote or made changes to the caption) in one of his early roles acting. He would have been 16 in this photo. Kyle M early years.jpg

… Barnum’s Animal Crackers

Apr18

… on the porch

April 18, 2023

This is an update to a Tuesday Newsday Classic from April 18, 2017

April 18^th… it conjures up that most famous poem by Longfellow which begins…

“Listen my children and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.”

But that’s not the important topic this week. Nor is our topic the catastrophic earthquake which all but destroyed San Francisco on April 18, 1906.

No, today we honor the Animal Cracker. Yes, April 18 IS “National Animal Cracker Day.”

The crackers were first imported to the United States from England in the late 19^th Century. They proved so popular that Stauffer’s Biscuit Company began production in York, Pennsylvania in 1871. It was in 1902 when they became known as ‘Barnum’s Animals’ and were packaged in the circus themed boxes which are so recognizable. Just prior to Christmas that year a string was added to the box so the cookies could be hung on a tree. Now, over 100 years later, the boxes still retain the string but I doubt many know why there is a string!

Some other interesting facts from the Infallible Wikipedia:

animal crackers “Barnum’s Animals Crackers are all produced in the Fair Lawn, New Jersey, bakery by Nabisco Brands. More than 40 million packages of Barnum’s Animals Crackers are sold each year, both in the United States and exported to 17 countries worldwide. The cookies are baked in a 300-foot (91 m)-long traveling band oven. They are in the oven for about four minutes and are baked at the rate of 12,000 per minute. About 15,000 cartons and 330,000 cookies are produced in a single shift, using some 30 miles of string on the packages. This runs to nearly 8,000 miles (13,000 km) of string a year. Those bright circus boxes are produced in three colors – red, blue, and yellow – with different variety of animals on each.”

I know all of you would be disappointed if I didn’t share some personal anecdote which relates to our topic. So with apologies to Longfellow, here it goes:

Listen my readers and you shall hear

of the midnight antics from Senior year…

It cost but a quarter for of box of treats,

Yes Animal Crackers for boys that were neat.

Up to the front porch of our desire’s house

My friend Snide and I always sly as a mouse.

A poem attached to each as a clue

Just “who,” it asked, “left these cookies for you?”

The unlucky ones found bushes and trees

Draped with rolls and rolls of contraband TP

Animal Crackers, though, were more easily bought,

Since, heaven forbid, we didn’t want to get caught.

The animal crackers caper was a one year thing for me. The summer before senior year I had been dating a guy, but he had gone away to college in September of 1974. There were some letters exchanged, but it became obvious that the relationship was all but over. So, along with a few select friends, we had lots of free time on Friday and Saturday nights, especially since we were not the party hardy kind of girls.

There was this one guy from choir that I was maybe, sorta interested in. But I doubt he knew I existed.

To be sure, I’m not sure exactly how the whole animal crackers thing started. What I do know is that Toilet Papering houses was all the rage in the 1970’s but it was also a messy thing AND you were likely to get caught. There was another challenge in that local stores would not sell large quantities of it to teenagers, so obtaining it was problematic. Did I mention getting caught was not on my list of good ideas? Did I mention that I DID get caught once which was motivation to not have it happen again?

So instead of TP, we found the boxes of Animal Crackers at the 7-11 on 16th and Summitview Avenues in Yakima. We would then write out the poems on paper and tape them to the boxes. Finally, under cover of dark, we would drive to the street where the guy we liked lived, park a half a block away, and then sneak up to the porch to leave the cookies. We did NOT ring the doorbells or make any noise whatsoever.

To this day I have no idea if these guys ever figured out who left the boxes. That’s not entirely true. In the spring of my senior year, having never gotten any traction with Choir Guy #1, I left cookies one night for a new one – Choir Guy #2 – who I had actually gotten to know during practice for the annual musical. I’m pretty sure HE knew who left the cookies. We ended up dating for two years. So apparently the great Animal Crackers caper worked at least once. And all for a quarter and a little creativity

For those who want to know more about these tasty treats I direct you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_cracker

*Eisenhower High School’s Football coach lived just up the street from us… and was frequently adorned with TP from loving students. Photo of his house from the 1972 Reveille Year Book.*

It’s A Hullabaloo!

Apr11

April 11, 2023

Hullabaloo

This is an update to a Classic Tuesday Newsday from April 11, 2017

Last week I shared the amazing feat of the Beatles and their five songs at number one through five on April 4, 1964. Well this week we are going to go forward two years to April 11, 1966. It was on this date that the last episode of the TV program ‘Hullabaloo’ aired. What? You’ve never heard of Hullabaloo? Neither had I but here’s what I learned from the always Infallible Wikipedia:

“Hullabaloo was an American musical variety series that ran on NBC from January 12, 1965, through April 11, 1966 (with repeats to August 1966). Similar to ABC’s Shindig! and in contrast to American Bandstand, it aired in prime time.

Directed by Steve Binder, who went on to direct Elvis Presley’s 1968 ‘comeback’ special, Hullabaloo served as a big-budget, quality showcase for the leading pop acts of the day, and was also competition for another like-minded television showcase, ABC’s Shindig! A different host presided each week—among these were Sammy Davis, Jr., Jerry Lewis, Gary Lewis, Petula Clark, Paul Anka, Liza Minnelli, Jack Jones, David McCallum and Frankie Avalon—singing a couple of his or her own hits and introducing the different acts. Chart-topping acts who performed on the show included Simon and Garfunkel, the Mamas & the Papas, Dionne Warwick, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Sonny & Cher, the Supremes, Herman’s Hermits, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, the Animals, Roy Orbison and Marianne Faithfull.”

I can guaran-darn-tee that my mother would have had that TV off in a heartbeat if this program came on. Of course my mother also banned us kids from seeing Gunsmoke and the Monkees (which, ironically, was the show that took over the time slot vacated by Hullabaloo).

My mother’s philosophy was that impressionable young minds needed to be protected from such decadence. Dancing like this, as a friend of mine commented recently, was not tolerated in the early 1960’s. And those who did dance in such ways must have been ‘those kind of girls.’ In some ways my mother was a feminist in that she objected to women being judged upon their looks and their bodies and certainly would have found this display quite inappropriate. By today’s standards, this compilation is rather tame.

Which got me to thinking about my own experience with dancing. Up until I joined the Rainbow Girls in 1971, I had maybe only ever been to one ‘dance’ – which would have been at Wilson Junior High School. Now, to call it a dance was really a misnomer. More like an excuse for the young teenagers to hang out in the cafeteria after school with the girls clustered on one side of the room and the boys on the other while loud music played. Occasionally some boy would cross the invisible line, a warrior marching bravely to battle, and ask a girl to dance. Mostly, however, the boys remained on their side and the girls on theirs.

But, back to the Rainbow Girls. Our group, called an Assembly, boasted over 70 members in the 1970’s and once every four months a new set of officers would be installed. This was, of course, cause for a celebration and the party afterwards was crowded and ALWAYS included a dance which featured, for several years, a live local band.

Unlike that first Junior High experience, people actually danced at these things! Well, at least the older girls seemed to while us younger ones hung out in a group we dubbed ‘The Wallflowers.’ But that was, not apparently, entirely accurate as my diary from May 29, 1971, chronicles my first Rainbow dance ever:

“…the best part (of the installation) was the dance. A.L. asked me to dance a fast dance which wasn’t that fun. Well we (who ‘we’ is I have no idea) were talking to ‘Becky’ and she decided to get somebody to ask one of five girls to dance. Well, BB asked ‘Sally’ and his friend asked me.”

I go on to write that the particular song turned out to be a slow one. And there was nothing WORSE than slow dancing with some guy you had never met. The whole experience apparently left my stomach in knots.

Okay, so maybe there was something worse. And that would have been the time I was dancing with a guy – initials of DW – who I had a bit of crush on. It was a slow dance which, when you have a bit of a crush on a guy, is a good thing. A slow dance, in the 1970’s, often meant that you had your arms around each other, eyes closed, and were swaying together to the music. All very romantic. That is until the moment when someone taps you on the nose.

That someone turned out to be my Dad who happened to waltz (literally) by with my Mom since they were chaperones! Talk about embarrassing. That event is etched in my memory. My parents are both laughing as they continue waltzing past. I was mortified but I think “DW” thought it was funny.

There were many, many more dances over the years which followed but there was something special about those first few. It was definitely a Hullabaloo!

*What dances in the 1970’s looked like for teenagers. From the 1974 tolo dance as pictured in the Eisenhower HS Reveille yearbook.*

Streaking!

Mar28

They Call Him The Streak

March 28, 2023

A cultural phenomenon swept through the United States in the spring of 1974, exposing the public to, uh, ‘things’ never before seen. I’m talking, of course, about ‘streaking.’

On March 28 of that year, one of the writers for the Tonight Show stripped down and streaked on air much to the surprise of host Johnny Carson.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/crime-history-streaker-flashes-tonight-show-host-johnny-carson/article/412541

This was not the first or the last incident and it may have been connected to the release
the previous day (March 27) of Ray Steven’s hit record “The Streak.” The song reached number one on the charts in May 1974 and remained there for three weeks.

Famous photo of the ‘Twickenham Streaker’ from April 20, 1974

Streaking took place at the Academy Awards, on college campuses, and at sporting events for several months. The record for simultaneous streaking was set at the University of Georgia when 1,543 students disrobed on March 7, 1974. By summer, however, the novelty was gone and streaking ran off into pop culture history.

Of course The Infallible Wikipedia has laid itself, um, bare, in sharing information:

“The high point of streaking’s pop culture significance was in 1974, when thousands of streaks took place around the world. A wide range of novelty products were produced to cash in on the fad, from buttons and patches to a wristwatch featuring a streaking Richard Nixon, in pink underwear that said ‘too shy to streak.’

Perhaps the most widely seen streaker in history was 34-year-old Robert Opel, who streaked across the stage of The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles flashing a peace sign on national US television at the 46th Academy Awards in 1974. Bemused host David Niven quipped, ‘Isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?’ Later, evidence arose suggesting that Opel’s appearance was facilitated as a publicity stunt by the show’s producer Jack Haley Jr. Robert Metzler, the show’s business manager, believed that the incident had been planned in some way; during the dress rehearsal Niven had asked Metzler’s wife to borrow a pen so he could write down the famous line, which was thus not the ad-lib it appeared to be.”

Of course, Ray Steven’s song lives on as a reminder of far more fun and innocent times in the spring of 1974. Here’s the YouTube video for all to enjoy!

Eisenhower Senior High School in Yakima – where I was a student at the time – was not immune from the phenomenon. I have a distinct memory of the school being all abuzz with talk that Mel C. had streaked during PE class! Mel was quite the character and of all the students in the school, he was absolutely the one to buck convention and go buck naked.

I knew Mel because, like me, he was on the Reveille staff. Between Mort, the editor in chief, the assistant editor, Dick, and Mel, the copy editor, yearbook class was never boring. Like the time Dick climbed out of one of the second floor windows onto a flat roof adjacent to the room, taking a desk and chair with him, and then sitting outside at the desk. It was Mel who locked him out there. The sarcastic wit and barbs never ceased with that trio.

Our adviser, Mrs. Scholl, seemed to enjoy the guys’ shenanigans and they never got in trouble. But in looking at the annual, not a single photo or reference exists to chronicle the day Mel C. streaked at Eisenhower High School in the spring of 1974. Either the event was a bridge too far for the administration or, since not everyone carried cameras with them all the time, it was not chronicled. What a loss. I think every student there wanted to see that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaking

Most of the 1974 yearbook staff. Mel C., Ike’s first, and likely only, Streaker is in the cowboy hat. Mrs. Scholl, our adviser, is the woman with the bun hairdo. To the left of her is Mort, right behind her is Dick W. This author is at the left side of the photo, sitting behind the gal with the plaid pants.

This article is a reprint of one which was published six years ago on March 28, 2017. The story from my high school days has been expanded.