Glendora High School - Bellendaine Yearbook (Glendora, CA)

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, 3 : l ' ' 0 0 1 IQ LA DALMA 55 FOAM AND SPRAY Compound 'gMercury X I have only five minutes to tell you this story, for the warden will come then to take me for my last walk. Yes, I'm glad I killed him, I would kill him again if I could. You want to hear about it? I'll tell you. lack was my roommate in college and my closest friend. We always worked together in chemistry and had special permission to do advance re- search in the professor's own laboratory. For a week we had been concentrating on mercury compounds. Unfortunately Iack became ill, so I continued the work alone. Each night I gave him a complete outline and report of my success. One day I stumbled upon an un- known mercury compound in an elect- ric arc. I won't tell you what compound it was, everybody thinks I'm crazy, but I'm not quite crazy enough to tell the secret. I had to use the electric arc to get a temperature high enough to produce the reaction. The compound was a fine gray powder, innocent to look at but terribly deadly. I made a cat inhale some fumes from it, and in half an hour its flesh was as decom- posed as it would ordinarily have be- come in four days. I was astounded. I revealed my discovery only to lack, who wanted me to report it to the pro- fessor and let him help me study and analyze it further. What extraordinary power lay iwithin my grasp! What dazzling possibilities opened! But when I started to tell lack of a plan by which we could make our fortune, he :ighty shuddered and refused to listen-told me I was crazy. Concealing my dis- appointment at his coldness, I left him and went to a play, thinking he would have changed his mind by the time I returned. Approaching the frat house some four hours later, I could see the profile of an officer silhouetted on our window. At once my suspicions were aroused, steathily I went up the back stairs and into my pal's room which was just off our sitting room. With infinite care, I removed the tobacco from Iack's pipe and sprinkled some of the new com- pound, Mercury X, into the bottom of the bowl. I then put the tobacco back in and left the pipe as he always left it, at the head of the bed ready for the next smoke. Casually, then, as if Iack's betrayal of me meant no more than a shadow in my path, I went out the way I had come in and entered our sitting room by the front door. The oflicer immediately jumped up, and as he took hold of my arm asked, Is this him? -Only three minutes left. I'll have to hurry- Yes, and you had better be careful with him, my pal muttered, he is desperate. Before I could struggle free, the officer had a bracelet around my wrist, and we sped away in a police can to the ward of observation at the in- sane asylum. , A day later, the nurse went into hysterics when I laughed at the news of my roommate's horrible death. I was obliged to attend the inquest held two days later.

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s D A I ' ' ' 0 c IQ LA FDALMA 55 7 TALES OF THE SEA -by EMERSON LANDON What a name, Black Mouth! It was given in Spanish to the canyon which we know now as the Big Dalton. The wise old padrcs named it in 1839. When the Azusa and Glendora com- munities were young, the early settlers did not have to go far for wild gameg in fact, deer and antelope abounded throughout the whole of our valley. Treasures! Between the years 1874 and 1875, two million dollors' worth of gold was removed from the San Gab- riel canyon. Warning! Don't try to obtain riches now from the sands that were gleaned for gold more than fifty years ago. Citizens of Azusa, do you realize that your fair city had three different names previous to the one it wears now? Those three names were Bent- on, Mound City, and Gladstone. The Hrst schoolhouse built for pion- eers in Azusa would hardly be accept- ed now as a car shed, it was comprised simply of uprights, crosspieces, and a brush roof. The second school in this commun- ity was an adobe shack with a dirt floor and with backless benches con- taining from 12 to 15 students when the school was first organized. A few years later, the pupils were moved to a new location, where the Center School now standsg the enrollment had grown, by this time, to 114 students all of whom were under the direction of one teacher. Where the Intermediate School now stands, a distillery was constructed in the year 1870. Our American fathers were sensible, but I won't mention the natives. During the eighties, the better people moved out of Azusa, for there were 17 saloons at that time. The honey bees that inhabit those neat white boxes which we never in- spect closely have not always been known in this valley, for in 1855 a cer- tain Captain Gordon imported the First domestic or Italian bees into this country. No wonder the San Gabriel river, below the canyon mouth, shows evi- dence of a great volume of water, in one winter, sixty inches of rain were reported to have fallen. In 1888, the great Santa Fe arrivedg three years late it was for Glendora, since the town had been laid out in 1885, but the city authorities did not refuse a little more prosperity. Tell any old timer to go down to Luckey's and then tell him to think back 61 yearsg possibly he'll re- member that Methodist establishment, the first Protestant church in this dis- trict. The Azusa Valley Bank, organized in 1891, was the first to be established in this valley. lily

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5 , , 5 I ' I 0 1 O . IQ LA DALMA 55 The only part of my life that I would like to live over is the day at the cor- oner's jury. I would like to hear the piercing screams of the women and see the looks of horror on the faces of the men again as the report of the coroner was read. I will tell you the story as the police had the evidence pieced together. After he had taken me to the hos- pital, the officer returned to our rooms to question lack about my recent ac- tions. In the meantime lack had smok- ed his pipe. Walking into the room he saw lack, whose back was toward the door, sitting with his elbow resting on the table. As his cheerful salutation elicited no response, the officer walked around to the opposite side of the table. There he saw the most horrible sight of all his life. lack was dead. The flesh had begun to slide down from the bones of his face as if it were a wax figure too near a fire. His eyes were wide open, and the eye balls were a brilliant yellow. His mouth was ajar, revealing his teeth to be a purplish green, while all his outer skin was a greenish gray. His body had to be wrapped in canvass before it could be put on a stretcher and taken to the morgue. When the autopsy was per- formed the following day, his skin had formed a hard crust. If touched with only slight pressure, the skin would crack and push aside, laying naked his flesh which was decomposed into a soft greenish yellow pulp. His bones, which were purple, had started to crystalize. His hair had all dissolved, leaving bubbly black spots on his head and eyebrows. Oh, yes, you wanted to know how I was convicted. My roommate always kept a diary of which I knew nothing. In it he had told of my discovery and what it would do. Thank God, at least he didn't tell what it was made of. Well, I finished just in timeg here :omes the warden to take me for a walk. I'm going to have a shocking day. NOTE: It was not the warden com- ing, but the nurses and interne coming to take poor Bill, my roommate, who had temporarily gone out of his mind, to the operating room. The operation was successful, for the vetebra, which was out of place and pressing on the nerve center of his neck, was put in place. Bill is our star half-back and will be able to play in the big game a few weeks from now. I, lack, have related this just as Bill, who thought I had betrayed him, told it to me in delirium before his operation. GORDON BURNHAM, '33 eighty-one