I’m back to putting my new desktop document camera through its testing phases. The workflow will improve. Presumably the quality of the photos will, as well. For now, though, I’m extremely pleased. Not the least of which because this is a better, easier, way to show you some ancient photographs.
What follows are a few more selected shots from the 1946 Glomerata. (The first few shots can be found, in the blog, here. The full collection lives in the Glomerata section, of course.
Let’s see a bit more of what was worth memorializing 78 years ago, shall we?
The cutline here simply says “electrical engineering students.” This is one of those photos that sits alongside the headshots, the sophomore class, in this case.
They look pretty old for sophomores, don’t they? (I spent some time looking for the guy in the middle in the faculty photographs … ) I suppose the age could be the post-war enrollment effect. If it isn’t that, we’ll surely see that soon enough.
At the beginning of the freshman class photos, we see this next photo. Even back then there were great efforts made to make sure the new students felt involved. Mostly by making the rats and ratlets, as they were still called, to learn their place and the rules.
These were the rules. Don’t walk through the main gate. Carry matches for upperclassmen. Learn the “Rat’s Excuse For Living.” Speak to absolutely everyone you meet. Attend all mass meetings. Learn and sing the alma mater. Know the landmarks. Wear your rat cap at all times. Learn the Creed.
This was the excuse for living: Insasmuch as any living creature, no matter how small or insignificant, has a right to strive for its existence, so I, a lowly rate of Auburn, lowest scum of the earth except those of Georgia and Tech, do hereby strive for mine. Thank you very kindly, sir!
It sounds like hazing, and probably it kind of was, but it was also an important part of the social experience.
You can see the guy’s rat cap on his knee. The way it worked was, freshmen had to wear this in the fall. If Auburn beat Bama, the rat caps could be put away. If the Tigers lost, the freshmen had to wear these until June. If you were caught without your cap, you were thrown in the hog pond. This whole tradition died out a decade or so after this guy wore his.
Including that photograph first in the freshman section probably says more about the editorial choices of the upperclassmen doing the layout. But they have let us down here. Don’t you want to know who this guy is? Surely he went on to a successful career. And that young woman, well, she’d probably rather we didn’t wind up here.
The two of them, after all, are the winners of the freshman “Tacky” Party.
You wouldn’t have to change much of his outfit to make him fit into a fraternity party today, I bet. Remarkable, really.
There’s a famous photo from a few years before where students had gathered to learn about the attack of Pearl Harbor. But now, on a sticky night in the middle of August, the students gathered to listen not to radio reports from speakers bolted on the roof of a car, but to university president Luther Duncan.
Duncan was the director of the Extension Service and became university president in 1935, a position he held until his death in 1947. He was a political animal, not universally respected in the office, but he sat there during a critical time for the university.
You’d like to think that there was some record of what was said on this night, when peace was coming at last. But the university has never been good at keeping those records. They aren’t listed among the library’s databases. Maybe there was less thought given then to memorializing such a somber, joyous moment.
This photo was apparently also from that night. You wonder what brothers, neighbors, boyfriends they were thinking of in some far off part of the world. You couldn’t fault them for wondering How long until we see them again?
This one is also said to be from the V-J announcement. You just know some of these kids told this story for decades. Where they were, what it felt like, who they were with, what it meant for tomorrow.
More of these things should be remembered and shared. It’d be lost on later generations of students, perhaps, but later generations of alumni would come around to marveling at it. Things have a way of persisting. Some of the things Duncan was fighting about, some of the things that he was appreciated for and hated for, still resonated a half century later when I was in school. Some of these more personal recollections would be worth noting, too.
One of the pageant winners, Yvonne Wallace. She was Miss Auburn that year. She’d been an education major according to earlier runs of the campus paper, but the yearbook says that, in her junior year, she was studying science and literature. Perhaps the courses of study weren’t dissimilar at the time.
Wallace was from Panama City and her name appears in a lot of these pageants. There was a woman with her married name who died, in Missouri, in 2021. Her husband, according to his obituary, also attended AU, sometime after the war. He was raised not too far from the campus. He’s not in this Glom. But, if it’s the right pair, he ran in some important professional circles. Board of this, board of that, vice president here and there and so on. His wife, was a socialite, also active in her community. I think that might be her. But it’s just a guess.
A few more slice of life photos. The cutline here is “All the mail has been put up.”
So go check your Instagram and TikTok, young ladies.
You know that shot is posed. Everything is just so and perfect, though it’d be nice to see some more of the guy back there handling the letters and care packages. Even still.
Some things we have long since forgotten about appreciating. Taken for granted isn’t even the right expression. Maybe it’s just … expected, these modern conveniences. A quick snack from a vending machine had to start somewhere. And from humble beginnings. Take a look at these candy machines that used to be in the dorms.
When people show off this particular version of the yearbook, they tend to show this photo. There are no names to accompany it.
Sometimes, her left foot seems awfully close to the water. You wonder if they stayed together.
This is part of a photo collage, which is what those white lines are about. I count 12 people in this car. That’s a dozen bad decisions in one photograph.
We’ll continue working our way through the 1946 Glomerata next week. (The photos I’m digitizing will all wind up in the Glomerata section, of course.) As soon as I add these there will be 20 on display, with many more to come.
