The Junior/Senior Prom

By Gary White

When I was a Junior at Cedar Vale High School we held our Junior/Senior Prom in the band room on the second floor of the old Bonnell building, which the schools had taken over for FFA, the manual arts shop, and a bus barn. We reached the second floor of this building by climbing a small covered stairway on the south side. This stairs were in a narrow, dark passageway between two adjacent buildings.

It was the Junior class’s responsibility to decorate the hall for the prom and I don’t remember what the theme was, but we had lots of crepe paper streamers that we were twisting and putting up across the space. My clearest memory of that evening was that I had a stapler open to staple crepe paper to the walls and window frames. Judy Huddle was working with me on that project and on a sudden impulse, I put the stapler against her upper arm and clicked off a staple, which penetrated her arm and stuck there. We were both shocked and I quickly extracted the missile, which left just two tiny dots of blood. I don’t know which of us was more horrified. I had dated Judy, either before or after this incident, and I am inclined to think that I might have been before. I don’t know if she would have dated me afterwards! Anyway, that incident stuck in my memory and probably in Judy’s.

Anyway, we finished the job and the band room was completely transformed, I think, into some sort of south sea island. The next evening we had a banquet in the school cafeteria, which was also decorated, followed by a dance in the south sea island ambience of the band room. We had hired a live band for the evening and everyone was dressed to the nines. The costume for such events was a suit and tie for the boys, and the “strapless evening gown” with lots of stiff mesh gathered into rosettes at the bodice and all over the skirt for the girls.

My date for the evening was a senior girl, Marilyn Holroyd. She was a Church of Christ member and not allowed to dance. Nevertheless, we enjoyed the refreshments and listened to the music. Not being able to dance was not a disappointment to me, since I had a fair amount of experience playing in dance bands, but absolutely no experience in dancing. I considered her to be a friend and had no romantic intentions toward her. We simply enjoyed each other’s company for the evening and I drove her home, which was not my usual experience in dating girls. I do remember thinking that she was quite beautiful in her evening gown for the prom.
The whole event seemed quite posh and glamorous to me and I thought we had done an amazing job of creating beautiful decorations for the enjoyment of the graduating class.