We didn't go through Nebraska but I was travelling out west that same summer, in MUCH geekier glasses (pretty much GI BCG-style of the period) and much more gangly. Nobody expected me to hold anyone's hand in pictures though. I made it to puberty before high school but one thing that made running cross country attractive to me (besides being somewhat good at it) was that we got through the showers long before the jocks got there.

Although I studied classical piano from about age 6, and branched to pipe organ at 12, I play violin and viola also because three weeks into my HS freshman year (I was 13 in 1966) an opening in the school orchestra came up and I was able to substitute that for goddam PE, and the jocks, and ...

the SHOWERS!!!

No kid ever learned to play a violin so fast.

Great picture, even though you may have hated holding hands! PE was also horrible here. Not only was I terrible at everything, but the teacher was happy to share with the whole health class how bad I was. This did not accomplish his aim, which I can only assume was to somehow make me do better via shame.

Looks a lot like the Pine Ridge of western Nebraska. My family owns a "ranch" out there (really a hunting cabin). The tree on the upper right appears to be a Ponderosa pine, which grow all over the Pine Ridge. I most likely have a picture of myself at that time, looking just like this.

Boy, tell me about it, Mvsman. I don't know about you, but for me PE turned out to be every bit the living hell I'd been dreading. At least I had some degree of ability with track & field type stuff - hill dweller's legs came in handy for running and jumping - but everything else? Forget it. Me to a football: What am I supposed to do with you? Nice shot - somebody in your family knew what they were doing, making sure there was some fill lighting here. As for the geekiness of your glasses, the young twenty-something gal at the Apple Store where I bought my new computer last week had on a pair much like that. I thought she'd gone back in time and swiped a pair of my father's. I thought this could use some color correction, so here's what I came up with.

In my 1981 CA high school band, we changed on the bus (co-ed).

Only jocks showered at school.

I had the same kind of glasses and wore the same cutoff shorts! And I can imagine that after my parents forced me to hold hands with me little brudder for a pic, I'd toss him down the steps just to even things up.

I joined the band in my Dallas junior high (1968) to avoid public showering.