Oakwood Collegiate Institute - Oracle Yearbook (Toronto Ontario, Canada)

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WIND IN THE TREES DIXIE ROAD Wind in the trees, mournfully sighing, What is the message thou waftest to me? Wind in the trees, trees that are dying. Come thou from over the wild, stormy sea? Yes, I can sense it, the tang of the ocean. Salt, briny waters that eddy and fall. Yes, I can feel thee Wind, ever in motion Wrapping around me thyself and thy all. What do you say, Wind sadly whining? What is the message from over the sea? Sayest thou someone is weeping and pining? Is someone pining and weeping for me? Haste thee Wind, haste thee! Carry a letter. Carry it over the green, dashing sea. Take it to her that is weeping, and greet her, Tell her I love her as she loveth me. Go, thee Wind. Go, yet do not go asighing. Whistle not sadly among the dead trees. Tell her not now that her true love is dying. Tell her not all of the message. Wind, please. TedReid DEATH CHAMBER The room was cold and drab and bare, A sink, a table, a bed, a chair. Not a window to let the clean light in To cleanse the hole of filth and sin. The air was thick and it stank of drink, (Bottles lay in the dirty sink). And smoke curled up and wreathed around From the pointless roof to the littered ground. And scuttling round the room, a rat As bold as brass, and more than that. The only sound, the old bed ' s creak, (More smell than sound with the whiskey ' s reek, Tobacco fumes, and moulding bread. And sweat and rats alive and dead). But among it all a person dwelt. Struggling now with the pain he felt, A WORN old man on the iron heap That he called a bed, where he tried to sleep. And between his drinks he looked and cried, And a throaty cough,- he turned and died. Ted Reid Two hundred miles we ve rolled this night, And but for auto s brave headlight, Virginia ' s hills would have swallowed us. On, on, up, down-round we followed The twisting white unbroken line. Passing neither farm nor city. No other car, no highway sign; Sore we yearn ' d a place for coffee. Then in the bosom of the hills Far down below — a blinking light — There nested in the sable night A town With coffee Haze fills At Hazel ' s all-nite restaurant The clinking mugs of porcelain Bold smells of twelve-inch hot dogs haunt The air, while Peter takes great pain In heaping relish on his ' dog ' In recess from Night ' s starless fog. Tyrant Whistle from nearby mines Exacts the men of midnight shift As four-to-twelve in exodus — Muckers, drillmen, And from the drift — Shuffle into Hazel ' s Grill. The hum becomes a din Of sizzling hamburg on the pan bleeding genial greasy smoke; The ting-ting mixing of the food And florid laughter At some miner ' s joke. Clack-clucking of pin ball machines Competes with noisy juke-box jive. Among the conflux Hazel dodges. Bringing apple pie to teasing men, Along the counter dust-faced miners Sit sucking hot spaghetti through smacking lips One cup more of Hazel ' s coffee Pete wipes the mustard from his chin And nods he ' s ready to begin. As we pull out, old coloured man Stands staring In amusement At our stunted ' 50 Austin. Morning in North Carolina New pigments stain the eastern sky; They rend Night ' s swarthy firmament And gild the roofs of share-crop farms. Straight on lies her southern sister. Then flat Savannah And the sea. A. Aarons 93

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What ' s your beef? Ir. Snell: Neurotic nervous running in the halls. Miss Dunlop: Inaudible students ! Mrs. Wilson: Marking long essays. Mrs. Donaldson: Nothing I could report. Mr. Gilbert: Interviewers who come in at two minutes to nine. Miss Warren: Pupils looking at the clock while I ' m teaching. ' Miss Havey: Mornings! Mr. Hobbs: Nothing. I ' m too easy to please. Mr. Gordon: The failure of students to try out for school teams. What was your biggest mistake in teaching? Mr. Hobbs: I put a boy to sleep in one of my classes and left him there. He woke up in the middle of an all-girl class. Mme de Cirv: I ve made lots of them. Miss Dunlop: Can ' t think of anything risque. Mr. Smith: The time I got so angry that I hit a pupil over the head with the bible. Mr. Oke: Nothing humorous happens in my class. Mr. Snell: Trusting my first grade 13 study. Mr. Reynolds: One day I held up an historical picture for the class to see, and everyone started laughing. It turned out that I was showing them the wrong side — a picture from Esquire of a very beautiful girl. What do you think of the students generally? All of the teachers spoken to consider the students of Oakwood the finest, but some only agreed with qualifications Mr. Dunlevie: Entertaining. Mr. Gordon: Hopeful. Mr. Stein: Generally Mr. Hepburn: Students haven ' t changed in a hun- dred years. What do you like about Oakwood? AH of the teachers like the staff in Oakwood (won- der why?), but some have other reasons for liking the school. Mr. Gilbert: It ' s close to home. Mr. Snell: The sense of anticipation one gets on approaching each class. Mrs. Shime: The weekends. Mr. Stein: The cosmopolitan atmosphere and he- terogeneous student life. What would you suggest to improve the school? This was a dangerous question to ask (Big Bro- ther is watching!) but most of the answers were printable. Mr. McKinney: More young women teachers- Mr. Brooks: More people should take grade thir- teen Latin. Mr. Snell: Less neurotic nervous running in the halls. Miss Dunlop: Escalators. ' Mr. Lobb: There should be no School Spirit Week —every week should be it. Miss Warren: Can Oakwood be improved? As you see by these answers, the teachers are human after all. Editor ' s note: — All material censored from this article may be had by sending 25 j: in coin or money order (no stamps, please) to Scandal, in care of the Oracle. All teachers wishing to re- trieve their incriminating comments can do so by sending a S25 money order (no coins, please) to Blackmail in care of the Oracle. Read that chart said the draft-board doctor. What chart? asked the draftee. Right snapped the doctor. There isn ' t any. 1-A. Man to family, climbing out of car: Well, we finally found a parking space. Does anyone re- member why we re here? Tourist at Museum of Modern Art: Why on earth do you suppose they hung that picture? Companion: Probably because they couldn t locate the artist. HE: Girls are better looking than men. SHE: Naturally. HE: No, artificially. Teenager to doctor listening at her heart: Does it sound broken? Be it ever so homely, there ' s no face like your own. Love: A game not postponedbecause of darkness. Man: Did someone lose a roll of bills with a rubber band around it? ' Everyone within hearing distance: Yes! Man: Well, I just found the rubber band. : c + + + + + + + + ++ + Harried wife working at desk, to husband and children: Well, I worked out a budget. But one of us will have to go. HE: We certainly had a good time last night for only 10( , didn ' t we? SHE: Yes, I wonder how my little brother spent it? Student: I worked out the quest ion six times, sir. Teacher: Fine. Student: Here are the six answers. ' 92

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m EfiCAPING fiLAVE My hands are red from the brick and stone, I ache in every joint and bone, My back is tired, my feet are sore. How much more, how much more, how much more. They whip me if just once I slip. Yea, I shall die by the crack of the whip. To think of escaping, you have to be brave. But I ' d rather be dead than a laboring slave. As soon as the morning ' s work was begun Towards the forest I started to run. Yes! - they saw me in my dash And the hounds were on me as quick as a flash. I raced and raced with burning feet I could heor their barks through the torrid heat. If caught, I knew my fate, A whipping - then those Pearly Gates. Just a hundred yards where the water falls. There ' s a deep dark canyon with sheer rock wails. I set my goal to reach it ' s slope On it ' s cliff was held my only hope. My master was near in sight. But too late, for I had ended my flight. On the edge of this cliff I trembling stand With no place to go, and death on hand. Sandwiched between two ugly deaths. To go over the cliff or to be unmercifully slew OH LORD! - My fate I leave to You! Ted Miller CITY RAIN Grey rain pearls on slate streets, Dull beads sliding down sooty city walls. Mud-ringed puddles, trickling gutters and Rain-wind spattered greasy window panes, Water-sodden news, a papier-mache mess. Cowering damp-breasted pigeons high on rain-swept fifth avenue ledges. Itinerant bum, wine-ridden, a black blotch on o grey satin street. Trailing a writhing reflected and forlorn shadow. Dripping undrained tenements, dripping sterile steel- and-glass offices. Drips. Kingsize drips, fliptop drips, grey three-button madison avenue drips. Fizzling faulty lurid neons, lightships in the dismal murk. Times square neons, bowery neons, new york neons whose Serpentine reflections have danced for aeons In the water-washed streets. Jon McKee AMBER The crisp sharp smoke of burning leaves that starts the mind And wreathes the trees in sombre hues of greys and blues ignores The small boys taxiing along concrete leaf-spattered sidewalks With both lungs at full revs, so that the dusty stillness Shatters with their shrill exhausts. And a pigeon here, too lazy to fly, saunters along with his feather collar Turned up, watching a scampering juvenile breeze Catch the leaf-smoke and wind it tight round that staid old oak On the corner lot, and jerk it once As the shrieking scrape of a rake Signifies its tortured progress over a cement sidewalk when its master For the soke Of cleanliness sacrifices more senile wrinkled leaves to the gaping maw Of the plump spark-spitting fire-god in the gutter. Finally, utter desolate Silence arrives, disguised as Night Too late, alas, to stop one lone escapist leaf Which rolls, slides, bounces, bowls and glides Happily down the street. Jon McKee 94