The 1976 La Ventana

A few months ago one of DiscoTech!'s contributing writers convinced me that I need a new project. After all, I have so much time on my hands...idle hands and all.

What kind of a project? He convinced me to buy about 2 decades worth of Texas Tech"yearbooks" aka "annuals." For those non-Matadors - we call that volume a "La Ventana."

After my initial purchase I have gone on to purchase other volumes with the intent to collect them all - like they're Matchbox cars or something. And yes, Mrs. Moneypenny has thrown around the phrase "Complete waste of money." Whatever, I don't gripe when she spends $85 on "skin clarifier."

Anyhow - I pulled out an annual to show you guys how much fun this is (for me), so now you get to suffer like the rest of the family...

The 1976 La Ventana actually covers the 1975-1976 school year, so the Football team's Gator Bowl season is in a volume I do not yet own (please feel free to e-mail the blog if you have one you want to unload)...

This volume jumped out at me for a couple of reasons not the least of which was this page:

You see President Red Andrews, the Red Raiders had already become predisposed to the enjoyment of Bear Meat as a culinary delight. So much so that we whipped up on Baylor 33-10 that year under first year coach Steve Sloan.

Onward...

This year's annual is also unique in that is is not traditionally bound - it is actually a series of about 14 "magazines" that are held together with two metal binding screws (think of a two ring binder, but much classier...

The Sports are in the magazine "Sports Illustrated" with registered trademark and all...and the Greeks are bound in a magazine that I would have never expected. But, it was 1976 and the sexual revolution was underway...

As fellow contributor Ignatius J. Reilly would say "This is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." There's even a centerfold! She is of course clothed - but is dressed in full Playboy Bunny attire (not to be confused with Turtle or Johnny Drama's bunny attire).

Take that Baylor - Texas Tech was affiliating themselves with Playboy to the extent that they even got Hef's explicit permission to use the bunny logo and magazine header (I'm sure there's real magazine publishing jargon for that) in the University's Yearbook!

I'm still stunned - I don't think there's any way that such a thing would get published in our annual today...but it's still fun to crack on Baylor.

The cover girl above happens to be Annette Jones, a Junior from Fort Worth...she like sewing and whiskey and she just might make your gun go off...

Lastly I found a picture of our Chancellor!

I noted a few things here...

Chancellor Hance maintains wonderful eye contact as any politician should - but I'm quite sure he's a man like any other so the photographer probably held back the photo of Hance checking out this beauty's rack...so I'm quite sure an "A" was reported to the folks back home that semester for Photojournalism 2308.

Also, Hance is sporting the three piece chalk stripe which has returned to the scene...but sadly you can see the carnation on his lapel from Plainview.

Hope you enjoyed our family slideshow...now go tell Aunt Joyce to get me another drink - I'm losing my buzz.


PLEASE NOTE: You can click on any of the pages and make them larger - but the pics may enlarge to a such a size that you may need to adjust to a smaller size...if you want to read the text on the pages it will be sufficiently large enough to accommodate that.