Monday, February 04, 2008
High School & Muscles Part 1
The Bellingham School district in the 1950s and 1960s
had elementary schools with grades 1-6, junior highs
with grades 7-9 and the high school (Bellingham High
was for many years the only High School in the town)
consisted of grades 10-12. So by the time you hit high
school you were sophmore. I began my tenth grade year
in the Fall of 1963. Of course this was the time when
President John Kennedy was assasinated. I have already
covered this earlier but you can see this as a potent of
things to come. Namely these things were the increased
American involvement in the war in Southeast Asia and
the rise of the hippie/counterculture.
Perhaps the most important classes I took in high school
were the art classes. Art was taught by Miss Pearl Bartruff
who retired the year I graduated from High School. While
Miss Bartruff had lesson plans and required certain projects
from her pupils she also made allowances for students who
had a special desire to concentrate in a specific area of art.
She allowed me to draw some of my very overrendered
(a common problem with beginning cartoonists) lack of
concrete design and perspective, comic strip super heroes
in class. This was my Protector character battling the Viet
Cong in the then currently raging war in Southeast Asia.
Several of the pages (now lost) were even displayed in the
hall art glass showcase. There was my stuff for all the
world to see. That was a big deal as I had spend hours at
home and in class working over these labors of love. I
rememeber getting good comments on these comic strip pages.
While High School was probably as regimented as Junior
High it seemed at the time to be somewhat less regulated.
I continued my comics involvement in those years both
as a reader and collector and as a contributors to the early
comics fandom scene (again covered elsewhere). I was not
your normal kid who waited impatiently for the school
football or basketball games on Friday night. However,
by my junior year I sensed a needed to become more
physically fit. Up to that time I was content to be a bookish nerd.
had elementary schools with grades 1-6, junior highs
with grades 7-9 and the high school (Bellingham High
was for many years the only High School in the town)
consisted of grades 10-12. So by the time you hit high
school you were sophmore. I began my tenth grade year
in the Fall of 1963. Of course this was the time when
President John Kennedy was assasinated. I have already
covered this earlier but you can see this as a potent of
things to come. Namely these things were the increased
American involvement in the war in Southeast Asia and
the rise of the hippie/counterculture.
Perhaps the most important classes I took in high school
were the art classes. Art was taught by Miss Pearl Bartruff
who retired the year I graduated from High School. While
Miss Bartruff had lesson plans and required certain projects
from her pupils she also made allowances for students who
had a special desire to concentrate in a specific area of art.
She allowed me to draw some of my very overrendered
(a common problem with beginning cartoonists) lack of
concrete design and perspective, comic strip super heroes
in class. This was my Protector character battling the Viet
Cong in the then currently raging war in Southeast Asia.
Several of the pages (now lost) were even displayed in the
hall art glass showcase. There was my stuff for all the
world to see. That was a big deal as I had spend hours at
home and in class working over these labors of love. I
rememeber getting good comments on these comic strip pages.
While High School was probably as regimented as Junior
High it seemed at the time to be somewhat less regulated.
I continued my comics involvement in those years both
as a reader and collector and as a contributors to the early
comics fandom scene (again covered elsewhere). I was not
your normal kid who waited impatiently for the school
football or basketball games on Friday night. However,
by my junior year I sensed a needed to become more
physically fit. Up to that time I was content to be a bookish nerd.
# posted by Dino Don @ 1:46 PM 
