The 1958 Junior Senior Prom

Here are some pictures made at the 1958 Junior Senior Prom at Abbeville High School. This was the first prom held in the gymnasium of the new high school.

Sarah Linda Schrimpf, Jo Johnson, Emily Kelly, Sally Thurmond, and Doris Poliakoff.

The dance floor. The only person I recognize is Richard Dyar.

Jimmy Rambo, Jo Johnson, Emily Kelly, and Johnny Lomax.

Marshall Leach and Sarah Linda Schrimpf. At the table in the background are principal and baseball coach Fox Boozer, English teacher Miss Evelyn Burrell, biology and chemistry teacher Miss Clara Lee McComb, and typing and business teacher Miss Dorothy Wright.

After the dance that night, we had a party at "the shack." This was a two-room ramshackle hut owned by Anne Nickles' parents Ovelle and Nook Nickles. It was located up Highway 28, over Park Creek, to the left down a dirt road, over a rickety wooden bridge over Little River, and up a hill. We called the area "Martin's Mill" because a long gone water mill was located near the rickety bridge. The place didn't even have electricity, much less water, not even an outhouse. I remember several of us going up there before the party to clean the place. There was a tall electric pole close by that Sammy Furman and Mike McCarthy wanted to climb to see if they could tap into the electric lines so that we could have power for the party. I convinced them to not get on the pole. None of us really knew how dangerous high-voltage electric lines are.

We didn't have a swimming pool in Abbeville before I was in high school. I beleve a major reason was the ever-present polio threat before the Salk vaccine. On hot summer Sunday afternoons, we often took off to Martin's Mill to play in the water where Park Creek came into Little River. "The shack" was just up a hill from this. The water in Park Creek was clear and very cold. The water in Little River was warm with a red mud color. There were some great sandbars to pitch blankets on. It was fun to hike up the riverbed to look at the old mill pond and damn where Martin's Mill had been. The mill pond and damn were about all that were left.

Back to my AHS Class of '58 page.

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