Analy High School - Azalea Yearbook (Sebastopol, CA)

Page 16 text:

By Ruth Meeker First Prize T HE morning was exceedingly warm, the summer had come and scarcely a b reath of wind blew across the fields where the men were working. At the house everything was quiet, A woman of about fifty years of age was scrub¬ bing the porch. Her face was lined and wrinkled, and her lips were compressed into hard lines. Finally she stopped working and, pushing her hair back, stared sourly at the golden sunshine. “Land sakes,” she muttered, “this here weather makes me so tired of workin’. Here I’ve jest done the same old work year after year for ’bout twenty years and I haven’t had a single holiday. I’m jest that tired. Hi¬ ram is so sot on gittin’ money, he can’t think of nothin’ else. I’m jest sick to death of it all. I guess maybe I’m goin’ crazy but I would like to go fishin’.” She sighed and went on with her work but her mind was elsewhere. Soon she stopped and said, “I’m an old fool I s’pose, but I have got a notion to go fishin’ and that’s jest what I’m agoin’ to do. I aint goin’ to tell Hiram ’bout it either.” A sparkle came in¬ to the woman’s eyes as she bent over her work. At noon, Hiram came wearily in to dinner. He was a tall, lanky man with a good-humored looking face. As he sat down he seemed to notice, for the first time, the lines in his wife’s face. Her eyes, too, looked dull and tired. “Mandy,” he said, “hadn’t you better drive into town or somewhere this afternoon? You’ve been lookin’ kind of peaked lately. A drive would do you good.” Mandy shook her head silent¬ ly; she couldn’t think of giving up her fishing trip. As she was tying on her bonnet, after dinner, she said again, “Mandy Harris, you’re certainly an old idiot but you’re jest bound to go fishin’. aint you? Yoiu.’d oughter be ashamed of yourself.” Nevertheless, she dug out her husband’s fishing rod (which was quite old and rotten) and started forth. When she got to the creek, the cool, fresh air, and the water gurgling lazily along, soothed her temper and she al¬ most pitied her husband laboring in the hot field. She soon ( 12 )