South High School - Southernaire Yearbook (Cleveland, OH)

Page 33 text:

WHEN WE WERE YOUNG AND GREEN- HOW DO YOU GROUND A PLANE? Life is full of paradoxes. “The shortest distance between two points— the 10th grade math teacher prompted, “is a straight line, ’ you supplied. “The shortest distance between two points—” the 12th grade aeronautics teacher prompted, “is a curved line,” you finished. And you were right. Not once, but twice. Take landing in an airplane. Before you took aeronautics you might have done it any old way. Now you know. You would circle the landing field to the left and come in” in a straight line. You have seen airplane parts close at hand, too, and learned about the controls, meteorology, horsepower and tail winds. And all the while you were exercising your super-vision, seeing, through pages of problems and formulae, laws and rules—the spread of silver wings against a wide, blue sky. Big, and noisy and filled with sawdust. The novice looked around the woodwork room, at power saws, joiners, lathes, drill braces, band saws and benches, with the interest of the very innocent. A man, the teacher, was coming toward him. I’m woodwork. It's on my card.” Mr. Yingling wiped his hands on his apron and looked over his sjjectaclcs. Hello. ‘Woodwork.’ You may as well get busy”. He handed him a stool. “Take this to the finishing room. “The finishing room! The novice giggled apologetically at the stacks of lx ards in the lumber room into which he had betaken himself. The finishing room was small, filled with furniture of all kinds. The agreeable smell of varnish stained the air. He placed the stool near a dusky corner where a newly varnished desk gleamed, sultry and beautiful. The novice touched it reverently. He was going to like woodwork. He sighed, and closed the door gently, hurrying back to find the wood stretcher and skv-hook some of the boys had requested. Jn a dusky corner a newly varnished desk gleamed, despite a large, raw fingerprint. 31

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M STANDS FOR MUSIC It’s a far cry from the first time as a sophomore, green and impressionable. you tingled to the throaty drum beats of the Sotithemaires as a spotlighted singer bent toward the mike— or. waving a jieanut bag excitedly at the hand that paced the gridiron, sang loudly, and incoherently, the school song you hardly knew. That horn you were half afraid of is putty in your hands now, and Mr. Gould has been discovered to be—of ail things—a fellow musician. March. 1943. The bulletin had read “Instrumental Concert.” It was more than that. Last things always are. Von blinked at the colored lights and scraped your chair a bit on the stage. You patted the glistening nose of your trumpet and murmured, Well, Baby, this is it. But it wasn't. For music doesn’t end in final concerts. Every future strain of “Running Through My Mind. every pungent note of the Caisson Song” will prove more than mere melody. They will lx: the sound and sight of sunlight, spotlight, and shadow; of the Southernaircs Serenade ; of marching feet across a gridiron. M stands for Music—and Memory. THE ODD ROOM It was one of the oddest rooms of the building, and though the sign above the door read Lecture Room we never thought of it as such. The floor led halt way up to the ceiling in a series of shallow steps from which exi erimcnts on the long, black counter were viewed. On “Lab” days, the prescription was mirrors and pins, thermometers and buckets of snow, lxattcries and electric lights—in double-period doses. There were quick quips and quizzes from Mr. Ifoffman. Mr. Tippie's happy smile and torrid tussles with “laws and formulae, text and workbooks and mimeographed tests. We were alternately elated and miserable—and we're not trading the past for all the colors in the spectrum. 30

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POTHOLDERS DON’T HAVE BUTTONHOLES THE BIGGEST JOB The afternoon sun glinted on gleaming, well oiled presses, on sloping cabinets and rows of type. Boys were everywhere. Hunched over the stone with rules and reg-lets and sticks , draped against window sills, arranged over cabinets, poking at assortments of type or meditatively contemplating a squeak in the proof press. And always present, the gentle art of conversation. Record cards. Mr. Carruthers was saying, hall passes, dispensary permits, tickets to all activities, commencement programs. re| ort cards— Oh, said the reporter, alternately scribbling (red pencil) and glancing meekly around, and what do you consider your biggest job? The conversation had Ixrcomc a mild roar. Mr. Carruthers made a face at the offenders. K c e p i n g you guys quiet, he growled. From ] Kit holders to suits is a long jump. Now that the noise of battle (sewing machine) has ceased, and the weapons of warfare (needles, shears) have been laid down, we wonder how we made it. There was that maze of crooked seams and fasteners sewed top side down, and hems that puckered and ripped. But even those were not as bad as losing the last piece to the pattern. We have reached the height of accomplishment. Before the inquiry had been, Oh, Mary. A new dress. Did you make it? And the last always with the brazen air of certainty. Yesterday the question was different and we said. Not at Higbee's! I made it.” We are glad. We smile -even at Mrs. Maeder. Miss Holaday. and Miss Frischknet. Please don’t ask us about the abnormally large buttons on the suits. Don’t even mention buttonholes or camouflage. It would ! e humiliating to be shoved off the pinnacle of success by a buttonhole. —And besides, potholders don’t have buttonholes. 32