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Even in the days of student populations that were minuscule by today’s standards, even in the days when students brought their own tissues, pencils, erasers, paper, and other needed supplies (the school did, however, supply toilet paper and paper towels in the bathrooms) (at least in the girls’ bathrooms), funds were always needed for something or other.

So . . .

Our parents laid out for We, the students, sold:
* Krispy Kreme doughnuts
* magazine subscriptions (Mr. Merlin O. Powers, the FCHS Principal, (and no, we never once called him MOP) gathered us in the auditorium one year and rallied us by saying how much you could tell about a person, about a person’s parents, about a person’s entire family by the magazines they had in their homes. I don’t know about everybody else, but that really helped me sell the heck out of The New Yorker to my Fayette County neighbor.) (Yes, singular.)
* ribbons on game days (gold foil footballs with 2 ribbons attached underneath: gold and black, our school colors)
* yearbooks
* gift wrap
* books
* those big, chunky candy bars in the white wrappers that came in corrugated cardboard boxes with conveniently located handles at the top
* ads for yearbooks

And . . .

We held:
* car washes
* car bashes (50-cents would get you one swing at the car with a sledge hammer.)
* bake sales
* cake walks

We paid a buck 50 to ride the student buses to away games, and we bought tickets to all the games, too. Home and away. There were no student id cards, unless you bought the school insurance. And that didn’t get you anything, really.

Every club had dues, and when I discovered that any funds remaining in club accounts at the end of the year automatically got quietly dumped into the football fund, I spread the word and advised clubs to spend every – last – penny. (Unfortunately for next year’s officers, this meant no seed money, but that simply couldn’t be helped.)

One year we had a business manager on the yearbook staff who didn’t quite understand bank account reconciliation or ledger books or math or something. She just kept saying “Sell more ads” – at every meeting, she stood and said “Sell more ads” – and we did. We sold more ads. Finally, when all eleven businesses in town had not only bought an ad but upgraded to a full page size ad, somebody had the good sense to look over the business manager’s shoulder. Seems she’d made a few mistakes, and instead of needing to – say it with me, Sell more ads – we were, in reality, flush with funds. So we held a Spring Fling (complete with invitations), laid out for the Deluxe yearbook cover, paid for two color photos inside the annual, and took the entire yearbook staff out for a steak dinner at the Dairy Queen to celebrate when the yearbook went to press. We closed out that year with nary a penny to go towards football funds.

And you wonder why I was never elected Homecoming Queen.