The Gööggeliheft - Or: How motorsport saved Latin lessons
When the unspeakable Latin lessons got really boring again, we liked to sink into reverie. Together with Stefan, my long-time classmate at Sarnen grammar school, we motorsport fans began to immortalize our impressions of Formula 1 in our exercise books. Whether it was Vittorio Brambilla in the orange Beta March, Ronnie Peterson in the JPS Lotus or Jody Scheckter in the six-wheel Tyrrell - of course, it was all far more exciting than the boring school lessons.
But then our Latin teacher suddenly tore the notebook from under my pen. "That's the end of this 'Gööggeliheft'," he rumbled through the classroom. I only got the booklet, which was still in good condition, back in the post with a kind greeting about 15 years later. Stefan was a bit luckier, although he didn't use his own "Gööggeliheft" like I did, but instead put his drawings directly into the religion booklet. All the notes from the school lesson then had to be written around the racing cars.
But maybe it was also because Stefan wrote the much better notes and therefore didn't need quite as much attention from the school as I would have needed ...
But there is another interesting aspect: in 1976, we were able to write down the racing cars solely from memory, but they are still recognizable today. Try drawing a current McLaren, Alfa Romeo or Mercedes-Benz from Formula 1 today without any model. The extreme shapes of today's racing cars with their sophisticated aerodynamics and thousands of slats and wings, plus the wild gluing of colors and lettering, would probably make us despair.
Question for you, dear reader: Do you have any drawings of this kind from times long past?
