Garden City High School - Mast Yearbook (Garden City, NY)

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cler appeared a few weeks later and put us right into the old Christmas spirit. True, we were unable to trip lightly to classes to the strains of Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, and we missed the Christmas Tree in the hall: but we were consoled by the Masquers Club pres- entation of The Beau of Bath and by the won- derful Christmas Dance of the 23. The day school closed, the orchestra and Glee Club com- bined their talents in a Christmas Concert which put us all in a holiday mood. In the meantime, the basketball quintet - the Blonde Bombers - in their darling red uniforms, were capturing all eyes at Friday night games, and making it difficult for us to de- cide between watching them, doing homework, or skating on Hubbell's Pond. But vacation in- tervened, and a spell of warm weather made us find other forms of amusement besides loaf- ing at the Pond. CAnd don't think we didn't, either!D We trudged wearily back to school, only to be told that the Seniors were to have their Mast pictures taken that week. Following the coy advice proffered by the photographer on those little cards, we all smiled sweetly C?D at the camera. Then mid-years reared their ugly heads, and many of our more ambitious stu- dents, hoping to graduate in lanuary, burned the midnight oil over the physics and English regents. Exams came and were gone, and re- port cards - well, let's forget them. CGood idea.-Edj Ianuary brought a definite deple- tion in our ranks, when many of our most out- standing members left for college and the armed services. We tried to adjust ourselves to this decrease, nobly quoting C'est la guerre : and having received our regents marks, we had an additional incentive to spend more time on our school work. The war brought other changes in our curric- ulum. A pre-flight training class was estab- lished: the Red Cross met once a week with Mrs. Petersen: and later on, a seamanship class I I I 1-fi cfax-- -11 Q yi i 3657? 3 559' l V 2 it W 46

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scrap metal, keys, war stamps, stockings and other materials began to make their appear- ance in the school. Parents are to this day searching for lost garage keys or precious nylons their unwitting offspring donated to salvage drives. But all in all, these drives were successful, and We felt ourselves more and more a part of the war effort - espe- cially When we saw the piles of old boilers, tin cans, and stove pipes we had accumu- lated. Editors of the various school publications began to look a little desperate as their dead- lines were reached . . . and promptly ig- nored by the staff members. But an excellent issue of Inkspots made an appearance around the Christmas holidays: and the dis- tribution of the Echo on Wednesdays really lifted our burdened spirits. The Mast staff was also trying to reach some agreement as to what kind of a yearbook to produce. We did, eventually, as you can see. Strains of music emanating from the audi- torium aroused our curiosity which was promptly satisfied at the record-breaking concert given by the Glee Club in November. Under Uncle Harry's able direction, this organization gave a rendition of I Hear America Singing which was really inspir- ing. The Fall Band Concert was also given at this time, featuring the famous Glen Brown Trio, which obligingly played almost all our requests, from Silent Night to Be- gin the Beguinef' The Senior Class sponsored the Thanksgiving Dance on November 7, and it was a great success. We were certain- ly glad of that, after we had spent the whole afternoon dragging in the huge, orange- be-ribboned, and slightly bug-ridden corn stalks which provided the main part of the meagre economy decorations. At F all Award Night on December 4, var- sity letters were presented, and the cham- pion soccer team received well-earned sil- ver soccer balls fwhich were soon seen around the necks of our feminine loveliesj. We remembered the glamor and the thrills of the fall season . . . the riot when the var- sity football team wore blue jeans to school . . . the excitement when Coach Smith was presented with a baby girl. And then there was McKibben's unfortunate injury in skull practice. CWe wonder if he'll ever live it downlj And what became of that proposed hayride on I-lallowe'en'? Was it the weather? CNO, cash.-Ed.j The first issue of Rumor Bomanus, our fa- mous Latin publication, made its appear- ance in the thick of basketball practice and preparations for the Senior Dance. Chante-

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was started by Mr. E. P. Andrews, under the auspices of the Coast Guard. Mme. Lucienne Olinger, an instructor at New York University, brought one of the theatres of war closer to us in an interesting and highly instructive talk on Algiers at a meeting of the French Club. Iust as we were settling down to a period of real, concentrated work, with much gnashing and chattering of teeth, Mr. Wassung declared a vacation from February ll-23, because of the fuel shortage. After we returned, fully rested C?j, the rest of the Senior pictures were taken and we held our elections for Senior Class offi- cers. Iim Dillingham was chosen president to replace Doofer Dunne, while Dick DeTurk was elected vice-president in place of Iack Cordes. March came in like the proverbial lion, but surprised us with some warm days, while we frantic Seniors waited impatiently for our class pictures. The boys received their awards for winter sports at an assembly. Then the girls gave everyone a turn by appearing in bow ties: after a few feeble protests that they were going to start wearing dresses, the boys reluctantly agreed that the ties were okay . The third quarter ended on April 2, bringing home the realization that only ten weeks of school remained. Senior girls, striving madly to make up those forgotten gym periods, rued those required afternoons that had been spent instead over a frosted float at Klipp's. Will we ever learn? Spring fever began to take ef- fect and the fancies of the few remaining boys lightly turned to what we lonely hearts had been thinking of all year. Colleges and busi- ness schools started their annual deluge of fan mail upon undecided Seniors. Should we post- pone our plans for higher education in favor of aiding the war effort by riveting, fighting po- tato bugs or milking cows? With these ques- tions still unanswered, we turned our atten- tion to the Girls' Indoor Meet. After the usual grilling weeks of rehearsal, the Girls of Gee M it 'xt X xv 3' af xgzui ffl- 'Q . ' Qi' Www itil x K ., ' It e il 3 :ifu in if is - is 47