Newcastle High School - Blue Racer Yearbook (Newcastle, OK)

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Thermostats across the nation were turned down during the winter due to heating fuel shortages. Schoolswere no exception, as Vicky Pierce shows. Phase ’7 4 Crisis 1973-7 4 was a strange year. Really weird. It started out nicely. Pres- ident Nixon was inaugurated w ith what seemed to be a solid American majority backing his plans for this term in office. The POW's returned from the prison camps of Vietnam to joyful families and public. But President Nixon's sol- id majority declined steadily with a succession of scandal revelations i n vo I v ing high- ranking White House aides, including allegations of the President's involvement. This strange and sordid affair, cal- led Watergate, was directly or at least conventiently respon- si ble for a I i e n a t i o n of the American people fro m their government.

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Energy Crisis 9°f ya, dowr £ ya Thais no reason to 5retor frown. Pufonyour b© st )eans, dads or gown Qraba0ooc( friend and Y , 55mph vvcjurvlv i owr i i—i iv ' AM . Newcastle School 1 Newcastle,! ’Oklahoma fez ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZi V 7771 V

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Making news most of the year was the gasoline shortage. Driving students felt the pinch along with everyone else in the U.S.A. One way to save was to drive at slower speeds, 50 or 55 m.p.h. A 55- m.p.h. speed limit was legislated in early 1974 to coincide with nationwide attempts to alleviate the crisis. Fortunately, an espe- cially harsh winter didn't hit, or heating fuel short- ages could have been dis- astrous. But, an especially hard tornado season pre- ceded it. They zoomed all around Newcastle, leveling n e i ghboring communities Union City and Blanchard. Thom Wood packages can- ned goods co I I e c t e d by Newcastle students for Blanchard tornado victims. With the POW's home, at- tention turned to the thousands of MIAsstill unaccounted for. Senior Jacci Titsworth w o r e a bracelet with the name of Spec. 6 Jerry Bridges, he not being one of the returnees or those accounted for. And the highly controversial issue of amnesty for the thousands of draft dodgers in Sweden and Can- ada was raised. Horror stories of torture in the prison camps of Vietnam leaked out slowly. The energy crisis most ur- ■■■! gently made its presence felt. I The skyrocketing price of gas and I other petroleum-related products, when they could be found, were further blows to money already stretched by the highest inflation since the Korean War. OPEIMING 3