Analy High School - Azalea Yearbook (Sebastopol, CA)

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out the gas, and when they had gotten gloriously drunk seen all the sights that this cosmopolitan city could offer, Useless became lonesome and expressed a desire to see his relatives in Springfield, Connecticut, and he accordingly went with his old carpetbag, his high boots and his big sombrero, becoming an object of curiosity to the passengers on the trains in the East. , . . , In Springfield he found some nephews and nieces who looked upon him as a profitable investment, each trying to outdo the other in entertaining him. But he soon became tired of the fol-de-rols, for the stilt collars choked and chafted his neck, the tight-fitting shoes hurt his feet, and he was eternally letting slip some cuss word that made it rather confusing for the party. He could never eat without using his knife instead of his fork, and when it came to the soup he always made enough noise to drown the con¬ versation. The family at length despairingly left him to his own resources, and he soon found a beanery at the lower end of the city, to which he would go and gorge himself upon his favor¬ ite dish. As winter drew on the stuffy houses with their red-hot s+oves stifled and gagged him, the numerous people bothered him, the food choked him and the extravagance with water, for a quart of the precious fluid may mean your life on the desert, worried him. He wanted his old clothes, he wanted his jacks, and, Oh! he wanted the desert. A few days later he did not come down to breakfast, and one of his nieces, half comforted in the thought that he had passed away in the night, went up to find the cause. On enter¬ ing she found the bed unoccupied and her estimable uncle vanished. One morning there arrived in Bodie an old familiar figure who was joyfully hailed by the inhabitants. How good it was to be affectionately cussed and to be marched up to the bar, and have the bartender address him in the old familiar way. Useless again startled the natives of Bodie by giving to a San Francisco Orphan Asylum his entire fortune, retaining only enough to grubstake himself. Then one morning, as the heat waves were beginning to dance over the waste, there came down the lone trail a man and two burros, and disappeared in the sage. That was the last seen of Useless. 14

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JWrt Rat MO knew where be came from or when he arrived in AM Bodxe ’ nor dld anyone care. After he had hung around L camp long enough to gain the sobriquet of Useless and to be grubstaked he set out in the search of the Great Mother Lodge. tt aft er day, with his two burros for his companions, Useless picked inquiringly at the dull rock surface, and many a time had the blood rushed to his head and his heart beat wildly when he dug out a rich shovelful of pay dirt, but the next shovelful would be barren, and the next, until he knew that was a touch of irony on the part of Nature. But when the blistering sun sank over the desert, leaving the great waste of sand and sage brush sharply defined in the clear air, and when the stars shone like huge candles, there arose a feeling of peace and happiness in the heart of Useless, and as lie fried his bacon he addressed his remarks to his .lacks, who always answered him in the affirmative by wrig¬ gling their ears. s Time passed, leaving little of its mark upon Useless ex¬ cept that he became a little more bent and more hopeful, until head SP ° ke ° f h ‘ m laughed and P oin ted to their For truly the desert had gripped him, gripped him with her tenacious hold, and while hating her and her merciless cruelty, tor ’tis only on her bosom can the strongest survive yet he loved her as his home, his as much as that of the wolf and the buzzard. Then one momentous day Bodie was stirred clear to her foundations, for the rumor had spread that Useless, the “Rat of the Desert,” had struck it rich on a huge vein of ore. Surely this was enough to startle any of the natives, for Useless had so long been deemed a harmless lunatic that the thought of him striking pay dirt was surprising. Then came another surprise. Useless and his grubstaker a local saloon man, had sold out to the Bodie Mining Co. for one hundred thousand dollars, and had set out to see the sights ot ban b rancisco and, as Useless expressed it, “to see what a tree looked like and where water wasn’t the color of coffee.” After they had nearly asphyxiated themselves by blowing 13

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Perhaps a deadly sidewinder bit him, perhaps his jacks stampeded with his water; who knows? Only the desert, and she does not care to tell, but there is no doubt in the minds of idlers, as they discuss the matter, that Useless was drawn to his death, as the nail is to the magnet. Bodie has been in ashes for the last thirty years, and the mines are forgotten, but still in the seeking there is oftentimes more joy than in the reward. —Lee Walker. little jitar Jlratmcr Daddy says you’re a star on high, And you wander way up in the sky To guide the angels with your light So’s they won’t have a bit of fright To play in Heaven when it’s night. But I’m awful lonesome, little star, And when I gaze at you so far, So far away up in the blue, I can’t help thinking you’re lonesome, too. So don’t you think if you might try The Lord ’ud let you leave the sky To come on Earth and play with me?— ’Cause I’m jes’ sure we could agree. Hand in hand we’d walk the shore And be jes’ playmates evermore. And in my sand along the sea We could build a kingdom for you and me. And we’d let the other stars come, too, If they ’ud tell us really true Where all the little fairies grew, So’s we could get one for me and you— Or else perhaps we’d get us two. And when we got our kingdom thro’ There’d be the fairies, me and you, In a little home jes’ all our own Where the bestest breezes have always blown, Down beside the great deep sea, Jes’ the fairies, you and me. —Don Walker.