Picked up a curious booklet a couple month’s ago – a handbook of sorts for students of Milwaukie High School in Milwaukie, Ore., for the class of 1971-1972.
In it are various rules and regulations, facts, photos, and a calendar of sporting and other events. I’m sure there’s a wiki page now or at least a web site that spells out everything for students.
I was struck by how simpler things were in the early 1970s – almost quaint, at least from the booklet’s copy.
Example? From the “Things that are nice to remember” section:
“Demonstrate good social taste. Refrain from familiarity and petting in the halls and on the grounds.”
Ferchrissakes. Was this written in 1920?
It gets better with the dress regulations. The boys got off easy:
“Hair should be neat and trimmed – the guideline is that the shirt collar and ears must be clearly visible. Bermudas may be worn if they are neat and clean.”
The girls? They get three paragraphs on how to dress with lots of finger wagging.
Here’s the gist:
“Good grooming is basic to an attractive appearance. Culottes and culotted dresses are accepted if sufficiently full to resemble a skirt length. We would like to think of the class room time as a training period for developing an appearance that reflects good judgment. ”
And on it goes….basically if you show up dressed inappropriately you’d better have a note from your parents – you SLUT.
Here’s some imagery from the booklet:
“Hi.” Please see The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.
Definitely the coolest teacher on campus. The vice principal.
The coaching staff. Wanna be a wise guy with this bunch? Prepared to feel the wrath of the Milwaukie Mafia, pal. They will break you in two.
The Pony Pipers, gleeing it up at intermission.
Lost Oregon 
3 replies on “Milwaukie High, 1972”
Ha! Great stuff1
I am a MilHi ’71 graduate, long since fled to Los Angeles.
Definitly not the coolest teacher in school, that’s the Vice Principal! We did have some “hip” teachers though, I hesitate to name names, but one was a psychic that rated some page time in Norman Mailers Executioners Song about Gary Gilmore.
Gary’s brother Mikal was also a MilHi grad, he and his brother Gary lived there as children, Gary of course was a famous murderer, while Mikal went on to become a premier writer for Rolling Stone.
Is my uncle in there? I think that’s the year he graduated from MHS. Apparently he had his photo in either the paper or the yearbook because he rode his bike to school every single day of the school year. His name is Tim Appleton. Lemme know! -ha
My cousin David Wells is there on the circular stair, the sixth young man up from the bottom. Milwaukie High was the ‘almost but not quite’ high school (I graduated class of ’78) lots of working class kids, lots of marijuana, that 1960’s spirit dead and gone by my time. Most of us were just putting in time until we could graduate. I don’t look back on those times fondly, but I do like seeing it remembered here. (BTW I had that ‘psychic’ English teacher who had taught Gary Gilmore. It’s all she ever talked about!)