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

Page 28 text:

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

Page 27 text:

= 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

Page 29 text:

As I gaze on rough old Grayback, When the sun’s low o'er the sea. When the sun is low at setting, And the sky seems dripping fire! Tis then the bards would sing it With sweet voice and golden lyre. They would sing of all the beauty And the legends long untold. When the canyons of old Grayback Are crimsoned with sunset gold. —tTracy Pierce, °22. Those Poor Teachers I am a poor unbeguiling bachelor of sixty years and have a scientific turn of mind. My chief joy is Physics, which | teach in a small California town’s Union High School. I have always had a great love for the young life of our nation and I still do to some extent, although my admiration for their animal spirits has diminished in some respects, enough one might say, to have made me constantly fear their outbreak- ings. I have a deep instinct which | must tell you about. [ call it an instinct yet it cannot be classed as such entirely. One might call it a belief, a realization. It is that feminine minds are too frivolously inclined to understand and appreciate so deep a cubject as Physics. Physics is made for the masculine mind and only the masculine mind. It should not be mixed with femininity! My opinion is solidly set since last year. I have set myself the task of writing th’s story to warn other Physics teachers, especially the younger ones, against this prevailing evil. It happened this way. We have twins in our school. Yes, they are twins and live up to the traditions concerning twins. They look, talk and act exactly alike. My class meets just before luncheon every dey. This is most trying for my young students. Their appetites grow with the minutes. These twins seem to have a double portion of appetite. Their usually sunny countenances always held a hunted look after about the first half period. Indeed, | was so touched by theiy pathetic looks that at times | refrained from calling on them to recite, at least during the last half of the period. And as their last name began with W (Walters) I could not be ex- pected to call on them early in the period. But I am wandering from my tale. One gloomy day, Page Twenty-five