Lost Gallery: Back Page - Graduation Day

Here is a category that has grown in LOST GALLERY over the years. It's time for a page devoted to

Graduation Day.

It's a difficult and certainly long, journey to that final day of school. Here's that shiny new adult, dressed in the graduation ceremony traditional togs of the day, diploma in hand, ready to take on the world.

You remember how it was. As a parent or one of the grads, it was a proud day.

Note the pot belly stove on the left. This was from a good camera but an amateur photographer. The frame is tilted to the right.

NEW ADDITIONS

When it is twins, there's lots of pictures.

Here the young woman stands for her graduation picture with no cap and gown or diploma showing. We know the event because someone left a full description on the reverse.

There is also
BACK PAGE of LOST GALLERY about
CLASS PICTURES

Back when school pride was an undeniable element, when an education was a goal, not a sentence, when the small town high school teams were the featured entertainment every Friday night, signs like these were tradition. These “seniors” signs usually appeared overnight on the town water tower sometime around the local school graduation ceremonies. If the town’s water tower was inaccessible, it appeared instead on a board fence or on a wall of an old building. Sometimes it was a new sign. Sometimes if the old sign happened to survive a year’s weather, perhaps only the date was advanced. It was a senior class tradition; A bit of traditional vandalism, like out-house tipping or toilet paper wrapped trees.

The seniors often used whitewash, which was white and yes, often washed away in the next rain. But sometimes any available house paint from someone’s garage shelf would have to do. Some signs, and maybe some years were more permanent than others.

This graffiti is now more than 65 years old. This Senior Class sign itself is a senior.

Things change, yes they do. Things change, but sometimes not very much.

The most popular photographs An album of the most requested photographs in the Lost Gallery.

Area 51 and a Half You are probably not authorized to see these.

Don't take my picture! Oh! You DID didn't you! This is a collection of photographs that disappear on the way home from the photo processing shop.

And don't miss
Cabinet Card Gallery
One Man's Treasure
Penny Tales
Square America
Tattered and Lost
Vernacular Photography
The best
FOUND PHOTOGRAPH
sites on the web.

And for postcards try
THE DAILY POSTCARD.
POSTCARDY

THE KIDS It is always a mystery how a photograph of any of these precious children could end up lost or abandoned. Here are a few. You will probably say "Ooh..." at least once.