Quincy High School - Goldenrod Yearbook (Quincy, MA)

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pened twenty years ago. How times have changed! ! (I think I haven’t said this before.) The 1917 edition was singular in many ways. For one, the World War was not even mentioned once. However, that is the only singular thing I can remember right now. Came the edition of June. 1928. Sad to relate, bustles had gone, but short skirts were the thing. Dat ol’ debbil,” slang, had a strong foothold on the unfor- tunate inmates. Girls were all trying to imitate Clara Bow. the It” girl. As from the beginning, the little sophomores were the butt of the juniors, the juniors were the butt of the seniors, and the sophomores were also the victim of their conceit. Time marches on! June, 1929. As the lunches were pretty crowded with vermin and as waste papers were being strewn around, the result of the seniors playing basketball with it, a third lunch was instituted. As a result, more vermin crowded the corridors and the seniors played the same sort of basketball more than ever. Cafeteria lectures were ardently given by cafeteria-cleaner-uppers” and look at the results today. The speeches must have had a double meaning. The joke department, thanks to the advancing generation, was considerably improved, though the seniors’ wit, if such it could be called, was absolutely withering in some remarks. For instance, one “bright young thing suggested that all the discussion about sophomores and seniors be ended, because the young Frankenstein would give to the world a mixture of both, a junior! ! That is what I call an insult, but worry not, the day will come. Again time skips gaily along and 1930 brought the next June issue. The only thing to recommend it was the beautiful if satiric display of cartoons. The cartoons depicting the sophomores and seniors were marvellously true to life, but of course those of the juniors were only miserable caricatures. All this may seem to you only a review of all the past, but not passed-up. Golden Rods. However, this is only helping me to recall enough courage to express my worthy opinions of the magazine as a whole. So, here I go again. The Golden Rod of June, 1931 was fortunately blessed with a beautiful cover. That means, of course, a girl graced it. This issue was also unfortunately unblessed with the homely but kindly (I still know that It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie”) visages of the seniors. They had conceitedly voted to have in the graduation issue their pic- tures and their addresses. (No, no phone numbers of the opposite sex!) This made the magazine larger and the purchasers thought that they were getting more for Eighteen

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■4CY. MASS HThfc QoUdoi (Rod - JZltenany Ma coen By HAROLD BERTRAND Under very unpromising conditions I will attempt to unburden myself in re- gard to the Quincy Senior High School s famous literary masterpiece, the Golden Rod. For forty-five years the Golden Rod has ranked high in the minds of all, espe- cially our great seniors. In 1891 the first issue came out. It was a little pamphlet with no girls’ picture on the cover (ah me), and it was very thin. The jokes were ex- ceedingly uproarious, an example of one being “Vacation again, (ha! ha!).” The stories were those of an artist, each be- ginning with a very effective opening sentence and ending happily. Quincy’s “new” high school was being planned. It is now the ’ old” high school. How time flies! ! The girls wore half a dozen petticoats and bustles. The boys wore high collars. Both species thought that they were “classy.” Tsk! ! Tsk! ! How misinformed they were. And so merrily the Golden Rod rolled along. Up through the nineties” it went. Then came the 1900’s. Tripping blithely ahead, the Golden Rod came through the turmoil of the World War, unscathed, unbeaten and with the jokes as bad as ever. The spring of 1911 brought another Golden Rod. In the fateful football game with Brockton, the habit of losing reared its ugly head and so — we lost. A more interesting thing appeared. Every pupil worked his hard head off to get an E.” You must think that they were crazy. Well, maybe in other ways they were, but did I tell you that E” meant excellent,” not very poor”? The edition of 1916 would be a joy to those things called “sophomores who infest our school. In 1916, strange to say, the sophs were not the butt (I said this before) of the juniors and seniors. Why? Because in those ancient days fresh- men, even a lower order of insect life, were the victims. The freshman looked up to the sophomore as sort of a god. Of course, you must remember that this hap- Seventeen

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their one-fourth-of-a-dollar. Also the upper classmen instituted a new department entitled As We Used To Be. This was a collection of photographs from pre- historic times, when the institutors were in the hey-day of their infancy. After looking long and hard at them most everyone mentally changed the title to Photos We Shouldn’t Have Posed For.” If the seniors had the idea of putting them in for a laugh they certainly succeeded. Well, so much for that. For a few years each graduation issue had a class will. Up to 1932 they were in a serious vein, but in that issue they blossomed out with a new sort of subtle humor, replete with hints to the faculty. In 1933 the seniors monopolized the magazine and so I will just “skip it . The Golden Rod of June, 1934, introduced (I think) The Expecter, the imagin- ary newspaper which humorously showed what outstanding members of the gradu- ating class were expected to do in the future. I must, in all fairness, say that the senior who suggested and the ones who wrote it did a pretty good job. Meanwhile, all through the years the literature had been getting better and better. “A Day at Merrymount Park” had graduated to “Omer Morin’s Trip to Mars”. The same with the jokes. “Vacation again, (ha! ha!)” was now changed to sarcasm, the pre- dominant form of humor. In 1935 the magazine grew more prosperous and much, much funnier. The Expecter was changed to The Outlook. Brockton, in the words of the magazine, slaughtered Quincy Interviews were a part of the Golden Rod, which helped a lot. The 1936 June edition was the crowning achievement of forty-five years. It was superb, but Brockton won its annual football game against a crippled but game Quincy eleven, the score, 20-6. The Golden Rod, ns long as I have seen it, has really meant a laugh a minute to me. It s a fine magazine all through and deserves every prize it won. However, next year, I shall look down on the juniors (I hope) and the sophs, too. That edition. I fervently pray, will have those angelic headlines: Quincy Slaughters the Shoe-City ”, but I guess that is hoping for too much. In fifty-five more years my grandchildren will write another essay on the hun- dredth anniversary of the Golden Rod. Till then, the magazine will win fifty-five more prizes and everyone will be truly able to say: “Here’s to the Golden Rod, the best there is.” Nineteen