I shot the photos on contact sheet 50 for the Muscatine High School yearbook.  I don’t believe any were published in the yearbook. 

The 1974 Muscatine High School yearbook The Auroran has, as a featured student activity, yearbook itself.  Following the headline, “Photography poses problem,” the entry for the yearbook said, “Encountering a problem with photography, Yearbook had several late deadlines.  As with any annual, pictures are an important part of the Auroran.  Often a section designated to be sent to the publishers was complete with the exception of the photographs and had to be held up until the necessary pictures could be obtained.”

The yearbook only published one side of the story, that of the faculty advisor, Larry Kemp. 

The usual deal for the photographers was that if the yearbook bought your film, photographic chemicals and photographic paper, and you used their darkroom, the photographs you created became the property of the yearbook.  The problem was that I and other photographers of that era – David Richmond and Allan Six, to name two – shot a lot of photographs that weren’t for the yearbook but for ourselves.  So we bought the film.  We had our own darkrooms and we were getting tired of paying for chemicals we used on our own.

By our senior year, we suggested to Larry Kemp that we the photographers would shoulder the cost of supplies as we had been doing, but that the yearbook would pay us a nominal amount, I think it was a dollar, for every photograph that they requested from a contact sheet.  Mr. Kemp thought that this was a good idea.  It seemed to solve the problem.  We started supplying photographs as ordered by the editors by marking up from our contact sheets which pictures they wanted.

Then when the printing deadlines and the photographic bills came due, Mr. Kemp reneged.  He said that on reflection, it was a bad look to pay students for their participation in a student activity.  I viewed it as a recompense for my investment.  Mr. Kemp said that he would make good on refunding our costs of supplies.  By this time it was impossible to separate costs and verify with receipts.

Because he reneged, I removed every single photograph that was in the yearbook office and refused to give the yearbook anything I had shot.  There were sections of the yearbook that had already gone into production and photographs held by section editors that weren’t in the yearbook office so there are a few of my photographs in that yearbook, against my will.

Sometimes high school can be an education.  I learned a lot about professional photography and revered high school educator Larry Kemp from the encounter.

As my photography was winding up at the yearbook, the editors of the senior section were in a quandary.  It was up to them to figure out what our class colors would be.  I suggested that they have a poll of the seniors to figure out what their favorite color was and use the top two vote-getters.  I guessed correctly that the editors wouldn’t foresee that these two colors may not go together.  Our MHS Class of 1974 colors are purple and blue.

Photo #000528 has Michelle Maurath, the second young woman from the right, working with others to create our class float for the homecoming parade.  Michelle was one of my first crushes, back as a seventh-grader at Central Junior High School.  We sat next to each other at a table in art class.  We joked.  We seemed to enjoy each other’s company.  There was another boy, Dave Maxson, who was interested in Michelle and resented the attention she gave me.  His animosity came to a head at the town’s roller skating rink, after a school skating party.  Dave Maxson challenged me to a fight.  This was in the fall of 1969.  By this time the war in Vietnam had turned me into a thoroughgoing pacifist.  I told Dave that I wasn’t going to fight him.  He accused me of being a coward, and the crowd grew around us.  I told him that I wasn’t going to fight him and that it took greater courage to walk away from a fight.  This point was not well received.  Upon my refusal to engage young Mr. Maxson in a fight, I was deemed a coward, a faggot, and a likely target for any other bully wanting to make his mark in Central Junior High.  It was that event that began the bullying that lasted until high school when it evaporated in the cloud of marijuana smoke that we were sharing.  Dave's sister, Nancy Maxson, glared at me with hatred through our 35th high school reunion.  I wish that I had had the presence of mind to ask her why.

As a token of my attraction to junior-high Michelle, I gave her a pendant I’d purchased from Edmund Scientific Corporation.  The pendant featured a lenticular reflection that cast off rainbows – commonplace now but cutting edge science then.

At the end of the year, Michelle moved to Georgia.  I wrote her and she wrote me once.  And it was over.

I think it was at the beginning of my senior year that I was either sick or perhaps recovering from jet lag and indisposed in my bed.  Michelle Maurath and a few of her friends stopped by to let me know that she had moved back in town.  I think she may have even left her phone number.  When I awoke I deeply regretted not seeing her then.  I also became extremely shy.  I was way too nervous to call her or to follow up on her visit.  I knew/believed that my attraction to her was vastly greater than any interest she would have in me and I was not interested in more failure.  Eventually we ran into each other, but I’m sure that she thought I wasn’t interested enough to respond to her return.

We had some interaction during our senior year.  I remember that she too liked to go to a neighborhood semi-Mexican restaurant named Stan’s.  Stan’s was lackadaisical about checking IDs and consequently had a large following.  I remember watching Michelle chug down a pitcher of beer one evening.  Quite impressive!  I also remember the joy Michelle gave 17-year-old me when I saw her bicycling around Muscatine in hot pants on a hot day.

Michelle was one of three students from my high school class to go on to Cornell College.  She dated a friend of mine, Steve Pelletier, in freshman year and broke his heart when she dumped him.  Michelle didn’t come back to Cornell her sophomore year and I lost track of her.  I last heard that she lived again in Georgia.

The photographs referenced in this essay can be found in the Photos by Number gallery under 00050.