Banning High School - San Gorgonian Yearbook (Banning, CA)

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= an ancient cowboy hat which he told me he kept for senti- mental reasons as it was forty years old the third of April. Steve wasn’t far behind Mary when it came to talking and he did love to tell fish stories. If he once got started you couldn't tell whether he would catch a halibut or a man-eating shark next. Steve had a suit case full of fishing tackle with which to catch anything from minnows to swordfish. He would pull out some hook and get reminiscent and launch into a story telling of the largest fish that he had ever caught on that par- ticular hook. ‘‘Here’s one,’ he said while showing them to me one morning, “‘with which | caught four hundred pounds of halibut in three hours on the Santa Monica Pier.” Steve and I went fishing one day but neither of us caught anything. After all the fish stories he had told me | expected to see him catch all the fish that we both could carry. As we were going home we saw some contented looking cats lying around on the wharf, and Steve remarked that they probably lived high there. When we got back to camp, Mary, in great excitement related to us a story that some woman had to!d her abcut a l ot of starving cats down on the wharf. Nothing that Steve or I could tell her would keep her from taking a can of roast beef which she had opened and found slightly tainted down to feed those cats. This meat Mary had intended to use for dinner in making what she called “elegant stew,’ but it was a little too much spoiled for that. She said that there were lots of people who would like to have it; for instance the Armenians, but since she couldn't get it to them she would give it to the cats—‘‘poor things,” she knew it wouldn't hurt them. She dressed up in her best khaki suit and hat, put the meat in an old suit case, and started for the wharf which was nearly three quarters of a mile away. In about two hours she came back mad as a hornet. She said she had walked all around that pier, around the piles and everywhere, and could not find a single cat. Steve told her that those “‘blickety blank cats didn’t wade around in the water, but stayed on top of the pier and anyway the cats weren't starving. Never before or afterward did I hear Steve use such language. I didn’t know that he had such words in his vocabulary. Even after all this Mary said, “‘I’ll not be foiled, I'll go back tomorrow.” In one of my talks with Steve he told me about losing his glasses and how he finally found them. He had hunted high and low for them but couldn’t find them anywhere. He pulled all the blankets out of his pup tent, looked into the cook tent, searched under the seat of the Ford, and even got Mary to join in the hunt. Steve had told me how religious Mary was and so when she said “‘Steve, you’']l have to pray to find those specs,’ he was not surprised. Then Steve prayed that he Page Twenty-three

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After he had gone Aunt Matilda put her arms around Betty and kissed her lightly. “Betty, child,’ she said, “please forgive me for the way | have always treated you. [| have been just a stubborn old lady for a good many years and | want this vacation to be one of the jolliest you have ever known. Do you think you could forgive me for my actions toward you?” “Oh, Aunt Matilda,” cried Betty, “Tve been just a horrid— Aunt Matilda interrupted by saying, “The incident of the suit cases brought back to me something very nearly like an accident which happened to me when I was young.” It is needless to say that Betty stayed all the vacation time. Every minute was spent in gay and jolly fun in which Aunt Matilda was always included. Mildred Wenger ‘24. PRIZE ESSAY Steve and Mary The real name of this old couple was Stephenson, but he called her Mary: and ske called him Steve, and we learned to do the same. The first time I saw Mary she was leaning on an old broom with which she had been sweeping the ground around her camp. Whenever you find a woman leaning on » broom, looking idly around, you can be sure she is looking for someone to talk to, and Mary was. She loved to de two things better than anything else—talk and show off her cats. She had three with her on this trip—Minnie Mince, Maudie Mince, and Malty. She said that maybe they would buy a ranch in San Diego some day and that they would keep the cats to catch gophers on it. Steve had made a special box for them to travel in. Half of it was covered with chicken wire—I suppose that this was the living room—and the other part was closed. This half was where the cats slept, and in this box all three rode in state. During the daytime the cats were tied to trees, and at night they slept in their box. There was wild excitement whenever another cat came around. One night the cats got into a fight. Mary called it a ‘riot.’ The “‘riot’’ was started by a big black tom cat who bit poor Malty, and Malty in her excitement bit Steve who was trying to pacify them. Steve had to doctor both himself and Malty. He told me that in the Civil War the soldiers used equal parts of tobacco juice and turpentine well mixed on their wounds, and this was what he put on both his own and Malty’s bites. Steve was an old fellow of about sixty-five years. He wore Page Twenty-two ey ”

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might find them. Then he started to think where they might be. He had looked everywhere he could think when sud- denly he had a happy thought, which was, “go look in youy fishing tackle.’ So he dumped his hooks, lines, reels, and grappling hooks upon the grcund, and lo! in the very bottom of the suit case were his glasses! “‘And all that,” said Steve “comes from praying.” While I was packing the tents on the last morning of our stay, Steve told me why he had come to California. He said, “IT broke away from society back east to come ou t West where a man’s a man for what he is.’’ Steve looking sadly around went on, “The West's getting almost as bad as the East now, though. If I only was younger I would hit for Mexico right now.’ Then he told me how much money he had made and spent. He said, “‘] made sixty thousand dollars in six weeks once, and I'd spent it all before two weeks were gone. I've got oil land near the Ridge Route that the Standard Oil wants mighty bad, but I don’t care anything about money, so | guess Yl] just sit around a while longer and see what happens.” We finally got packed with Steve's able help, entertained all the while by his stories of high finance, and left camp with those two old people who spent their summers camping along the open road, making friends with everyone, wishing us good luck on our journey. Steve, all smiles, was waving us a friendly hand and Mary was leaning on her broom; the cats were tied to their trees, and the Ford was standing in its ac- customed place. Frederic S. Wing, '23. PRIZE POEM The Magician As I gaze enrapt with wonder At old Grayback tinged with gold, It seems that voices whisper Of stories long untold. Of legends vague and mystic That happened long ago, Before the Aztecs bravely With their swords beat back the foe. Nay! E’en before the cliffman In his rock-walled canyon bower, Fared forth with club and hammer To capture and devour. Ah! No, I can’t express it, Just that thought which comes to me Page Twenty-four