Thursday, September 05, 2013

Prone Position

This is an interesting 1942 picture of some Los Angeles high school girls practicing their marksmanship.  Wow !  Guns in schools…and no one was injured….they were taught by the R.O.T.C. Sgt. how to use the rifle ! 

EHHS had the same thing going on out in those wooden “temporary” buildings where the R.O.T.C. classes were held.  I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I wasn’t part of that activity but did have an interest in one or more of those R.O.T.C. sponsors.  Sorry to say, some of us weren’t too respectful of the boys, but I have to give it to them…their taste in lovely young ladies was exceptional !


As I’ve also mentioned elsewhere in the blog, getting a good opportunity to effectively appraise our young ladies’ figures was difficult in those days due to their wardrobe choices, which mostly mimicked their mothers’ 1940s garb.

So, one memorable afternoon after school, I had some (rare) free time to go out and meet one of the girls I was kind of sweet on…she and the others were on the range, I had to wait.  Now, I’ve always been a very impatient “waiter” but this afternoon was different.

I took a seat in back of them where I had an unobstructed view of the target range.  There, dressed in their R.O.T.C. shorts (or, maybe PE shorts…I forget) were several of our Class of 1963 loveliest, laying prone on the floor, armed, facing downrange, firing away at the targets.  Their shooting form was terrific and I didn’t mind the wait.

No clue if any of them hit the target.


Bang

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As the leading edge of the baby boomers, we even had those temporary barracks for class rooms even at Texas Wesleyan.

Gus said...

I have small paperback yearbooks for grades 4,5,6, at Richland Elementary which was undergoing a similar growth as Meadowbrook those years. Each class was given both a group picture and a page of individual pictures.

Those 3 little books clearly illustrate what was going on behind our '63 bunch. Where ours and the classes just ahead of us numbered 2 or less (some grades were combined for a year or two), every class behind us were 3. That's a 50% step-change in student populations in growing areas.

We had our "temp" buildings by 1955 or maybe a year earlier than that. Richland was built new and opened in 1953, a year earlier than Meadowbrook JH, I think.

I don't recall if MJH had temp buildings while we were there or not, but I've seen some pictures of EHHS (opened in 1959)taken before the temp buildings were installed sometime during our stay there.