Senior Year
1967-68
The year started out much like my junior year. I was having fun with my Herd friends, hunting, partying, pestering girls, and drinking too much. I had some fine teachers. My mentor from the fourth grade and mother of one of my friends was my art teacher. I had an exceptional English teacher. She was a young red-headed women with a smile that seemed to never turn off. She was encouraging and she was the first teacher that gave me the idea that English language had potential as art.
I had a steady girl friend that became steadier as the year went on. My friends and her friends merged. The rest of the semester is a bit of a fog. We started drinking throughout the week. I don’t remember drinking much beer as it seemed beer took a lot of time to drink and then the peeing, our objective was to get drunk fast and see what developed. Whiskey was my favored option but anything 70 proof or more would do. Much of the the school year was one of haze and hangovers. I faithfully maintained my job at the the grocery store and with my separate entrance to my room my parents were in the dark about my wayward lifestyle. Their concern was whether I brought home As and Bs and somehow I did. Art continued to play a major role in my life and I was greatly looking forward to starting my college studies in the Fall of 1968.
In early May of 1968 my girlfriend informed she was pregnant. In early June of the same year we were married at the courthouse. I was a husband at 17 and soon to be father.
Within days after the marriage we were up at my brother’s resort to work for the Summer. In September we were back in Aberdeen for me to continue my path as an artist.
Senior Year, acrylic on shuen paper, 9″x12″, 2021, Mark W McGinnis
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