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This is Joe Manning. That's me on the left, and my buddy Rich. We were friends at the Air Force Academy, but not as cadets. We were assigned to the Air Force Academy Hospital. We're still close friends. This is in my dorm room. Note the trendy "big eye" painting by Margaret Keane. An old Air Force buddy who I tracked down recently sent me the photo, taken in 1965. I had no idea it existed. It's the only photo I have ever seen of me during my four years in the Air Force. It looks pretty freaky now. View full size. Fast-forward to 42 years later.
When I was growing up in Plymouth, N.H., the local theater would have a free matinee right before Christmas for all the local children. The theater owner/manager always gave away fruit and gifts...and one year he gave away pencil boxes decorated with that same doe-eyed little girl!
(If it wasn't the exact Keane image behind you in this photo, it was awfully close...it was the first thing I noticed!)
The second thing I noticed was that Rich was kinda' cute, in a Drew Carey kinda' way. I'll bet he did okay with the ladies after he finished your series of Coolness lessons!
Don't be too hard on Rich. Take away the Air Force issued BCD Eyeglasses (Birth Control Devices) and put a little more hair on his head and face (vs. the AFR 35-10 Haircut) and he'd have look befitting the best of the post-beatnik - pre-hippies of the day.
So your friend Rich would drop by your room for what -- coolness lessons? Evidently just getting started.
At first glance I thought: 50s college intellectual types; not Beats, but would have gone to City Lights Books and listened to Ginsberg read Howl. I ought to know; I was related to one. The Keane painting, though... means this would have been taken at your aunt's house or something. My other thought: writers for the Sid Caesar show; Mel Brooks must have taken the photo. But it's 1965, so forget it.
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