Not Trader Joe’s Joe-Joe cookies, nor former Celtics player JoJo White. This is really a propos of nothing, except for looking at my high school yearbook.
\nWhen my sisters went to 4-H camp back in the late ’50s their favorite counselor was a girl from Fitchburg named Joanne Johanneson, aka JoJo. I met JoJo when I went to a week-long 4-H program out at UMass Amherst in the summer of ’59. I must have liked her pretty well, too, because I carried a photo of her in my wallet for years after – but remember this was the ’50s and I was a naive high-school about-to-be-junior at the time. You might guess from her name that JoJo was of Scandinavian descent, and she had long blonde hair to match.<\/p>\n
After I moved to California at the end of that summer, one of my high school classmates was Johnetta Johnson. I think I had a picture of her in my wallet, too, at least that’s my story and I’ll stick to it. When I looked at my high school yearbook recently, her picture jumped out at me. She had maybe the biggest, brightest eyes you’ve ever seen, especially in contrast with her dark dark skin. I don’t think she was ever called JoJo, but I thought of her that way.<\/p>\n
I sang a solo in a show we put on at the 4-H convention. Joanne wrote “What a voice!” when she autographed my program book. Johnetta was in the high school glee club; she and a couple of her friends used to talk to me at glee club concerts. She signed my yearbook “I’ve enjoyed seeing you around campus. Love and luck –“. Did I say naive? I don’t think it ever occurred to me to ask girls out anywhere other than school dances, and there weren’t many of those.<\/p>\n
Well, if anyone reading this knows either of those JoJos, at oposite poles of human pigmentation, tell her I remember her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not Trader Joe’s Joe-Joe cookies, nor former Celtics player JoJo White. This is really a propos of nothing, except for looking at my high school yearbook. When my sisters went to 4-H camp back in the late ’50s their favorite counselor was a girl from Fitchburg named Joanne Johanneson, aka JoJo. I met JoJo when … <\/p>\n