The Senior - 1974-1975

I think I like this ID picture best now.

In 1974-75, you needed 22 credits to graduate. After junior year, I had 18. If I took the full six classes in the first semester, I only had to take two classes in the second semester to get to 22. I wasn't opposed to getting more credits if there was a class I was interested in. I would have taken another computer science class in a heartbeat. That was my favorite. Computers were a different animal then. Ours was located off campus in a room probably bigger than my house. Don't remember how we were connected. You would work on your program for a while and then save it to a yellow tape. When you wanted to use it again, you would feed the yellow tape back into the computer and then go back and correct all of the errors because the tape feed was horribly unreliable. Fun times.

I went off-campus to a fancy studio uptown for my senior picture. We were told that the photographer will be able to clean up all of our blemishes but won't be able to do anything about our hair. I had my share of acne as a teenager but there were guys who had it much worse than me. All of the seniors have smooth skin in our pictures this year. The studio provided the tux. It was filthy and it stunk. The shirt had brown stains on it that I didn't even want to think about and I don't think I can adequately describe the stench emanating from the jacket. I don't know how many guys had worn mine since it was last cleaned but it had to be a couple of hundred. I don't remember how many pictures he took but I couldn't wait to get out of that thing.

And, finally, that plan to just take two classes for my final semester in high school was realized. I would get out of school at 10:10AM after trigonometry class and head home. First period was PE. Life was grand ... for about a week. I did not have a driver's license yet. Typically, I would take the streetcar to the end of the line, transfer to a bus that would take me to another bus stop, and then catch another bus home. The streetcar and the first bus were Orleans Parish. The last bus was Jefferson Parish. The Orleans Parish transit workers went on strike about mid-January that year. No streetcar, no second bus. I would have to walk. It was five miles to the Jefferson Parish bus stop. The transit workers were on strike for several months. Put a lot of miles on my shoes and my now-deteriorating knees that semester. The caption on the photo to the left is "Senior Robert Ferrara going home". Couldn't get it in the scan. I remember that kid taking the picture but, at the time, I didn't know it was of me. He had to be a freshman or sophomore.

Him: Sir?
Me: Kept going because nobody addresses me that way.
Him again: SIR?
Me: Who? Me?
Him: Yes sir. I'm taking pictures for the yearbook. Can I use yours?
Me: Sure.

When I was a freshman, one of the seniors had to take freshman physical science again in order to graduate. He was not only a senior. He was a star football player, who later played at Tulane, and is now an NOPD detective. We would break into groups of four to do experiments and he was in my group. We were in total awe of him. That kid photographer made my day. I don't give a rat's a$$ about the "sir" part but the reverence and respect he showed to an upper upperclassman, who was NOT a star football player, well, I hope he's doing well in life.