The photos with an “a” as a suffix are from my paternal grandparents’ farm.  I mentioned in the previous blog how my granddad viewed himself primarily as a “cattleman.”  Here are some of his cattle.  Here he is.  He’s in great shape for his early 70s.  I saw him do a one-arm pullup when he was in his 60s. 

The photos with the “b” suffix are mug shots for the Cornell College yearbook, the Royal Purple.  I can’t immediately tell which year they are from, but I guess they are the first year we tried this.  I was the editor of the yearbook my sophomore year.  I had a great idea to get a mug shot of every student in the college – sort of like the high school yearbooks had.  The Cornell yearbook had never done it.  Dave Babcock and I worked out a strategy.  We publicized the photo shoot.  Every Cornell college student had to buy their meals from the college.  Nearly every student had to file through one of two entrances to get to lunch.  Dave and I posted ourselves on each of those two approaches and shot photographs of everyone who came through who consented.  We got nearly everyone.  I should have done a follow-up for those who didn’t go through that day but didn’t.

I hope I saved all the mugshots.  I hope they all followed me through the many moves over the past 50 or so years.  I doubt it.  Looking at the photos, I think that I missed out by not trying to know more people.  Look at these intelligent interactive faces.  I wish I had known the people behind the face.  I was hobbled by a severe depressive disorder.  If I could change anything it would be to let myself know back then what was going on.  Why did I feel so miserable?  What was I doing wrong?

I don't believe that these mug shot photographs are from my senior year's yearbook.  I was horribly depressed through my senior year and afterwards.  I hauled around the makings of the 1977-78 Cornell Royal Purple yearbook, but just didn't face wrapping it up.  I had saved the college money, money that I had intended to use to improve the quality of the yearbook's printing, by contracting for what is called "camera ready" art.  Nearly all other yearbooks were done by editors making illustrations of what they wanted the prepress production workers to do.  I knew how to do the prepress work, so I made all the pages ready to go.  And then I stopped working.  I had graduated.  I was married to Janet, who had graduated a year earlier.  She was attending graduate school in social work at Iowa.  I had to keep Janet and I fed.  I worked for the University of Iowa Hospital as a photo tech 1 in a radiological darkroom.  We then lived in an apartment in an apartment complex of 12 similar apartments in one building, among 10 identical buildings.  I needed to get the yearbook done.  I had received a letter from Cornell College that they were so concerned about the lack of the yearbook that they were going to audit the books to insure that I had not stolen any money.  I had not.  At no time did anyone ask why, why was it taking so long?  No one offered to help.  If I knew then what I know now I should have sought psychiatric help.  One of the missing pieces to complete the yearbook was the mug shots.  I had set a high bar.  Photographs of every single student, matched to their name.  After graduating from Cornell I moved to a house on Muscatine Avening in Iowa City.  We lived there for a year before the owner sold the house and we moved to that apartment in Coralville.  During the move, I lost the mug shot photos and identification paperwork.  This made me even more despondent.  It was bad enough living in an apartment in Coralville in a building of 12 identical apartments on a street with 10 identical buildings.  It was bad enough that my dear wife was restive in the marriage.  She wanted to open the relationship so that she could have female lovers, but her reciprocity was that I could have additional male lovers but no additional women.  We didn't get far along that path.  One night I dreamed that the missing photographs and paperwork were under a particular box in a particular closet.  I wondered in the dream whether I should awaken and go look now, but I was reassured in the dream that it would be there in the morning.  And it was.

The final set of photographs are of the River City Housing Co-op during a University of Iowa football Saturday.  These co-op houses were a few blocks east of Kinnick Stadium, the site of the football games.  Few of the co-op residents were interested in football, but we were swamped with fans swarming around us.  These photos are of a fall clean-up, painting the storm windows.  Jim Barfus circulates around the other co-opers handing out baked treats.  Jim was a founder of the Observation Club.  See more, be more.  Among the other founders was Seymour B. Moore.  He had an excellent sense of absurdist humor.  He was also among Cathy’s suitors.  He and Mike had a competition for her affection.  It was probably more about their competition than her affection.  I remember telling her this back in the day.  She repeated it to Mike.  He decided he didn’t want to take her to the Dresden Symphony Orchestra concert at Hancher Auditorium and gave her the tickets.  We had a lovely time together, and remember it fondly.