Bay Ridge High School - Maroon and White Yearbook (Brooklyn, NY)

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And Phantom Shades By ANN HARDIE And phantom shades that hover round in dreams Come full of sorrow, bringing vain delight, For vain it is,-when one Sees seeming shows of goods, And gliding through his hands the dream is gone, After a moment's space, On wings that follow still Upon the path where sleep goes to and fro. day. Until the light began to fade he had been content to laugh; and since now sighing came more easily, he became wistfully pen- sive to the point of sighs. There was no surprise with his sadness, for every day passed thus; always it had been dusk when he would relish being another man. At times he would Wildly wish to be far from the city in which he dwelt: he could not leave. At others he must reacquaint himself with the philosophers now dead: he could not read. More often he wished himself not alive, with them, but he could not keep from smiles at these moments. ' Life was for him, but not all of living. He could not think Clearly when night was approaching. He sometimes dreamt upon far chimneys that were there before his eyes, but could not say of what he dreamt: there was no action in his dream. This day dreams would not come to him and thought was gone. He left the house and made his strange way through the darkening streets wanting to be further away, further away. Heavy shadows came and covered him and for that he was thankful. He should have liked to have said: nl am wonderfully alone with my thoughts, but he could not. Although he knew that thought was there, he could not feel its presence. , He knew, when he had reached the lighted streets, that the people were knowing that his walk was aimless. It was evident, he realized, that he was abnormally accustomed to the places that he passed since he looked at nothing. Some sense led him to turning at the end of a walk; and kept him from death beneath the cars. He stepped into the path of one approaching and said not: uHow close am I to death, but nHow kindly he has looked at' me. I should have smiled at him. Once, he knew that he had been quite close to a speeding trolley car. He could hear, as from some world other than this, the voice of the operator, screaming to him. He could hear, too, the shrieking of the wheels on the tracks, but then . . . he was a poet, and there was a remarkable rhythm to all of this motion around him. Suddenly he became aware that it had never been unfamiliar to him; GRAY was the light that tell about him and gray was all else for that tContinued on Page lU7l Sixty-seven

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The Joyful Hours By LOUISE OUTLAW hh REMEMBER, I remember I Do you remember? Will you some day, when your grand- children are seated around you by the fireside, tell them of the joytui hours you spent, when you were young, in Bay Ridge? Will you tell them with a wistful smile for the youth that was yours, of the first day you came to High School, and how important you felt when you descended the snow-topped hill down to the Annex door? It was all so strange and newebut pleasantly so. At first you couldn't accustom yourself to the traffic routine and the strict silence of prefecte so different from grammar school days-but as time passed, you got in step with the rest of the world-for the Annex was your world then. It was like a little community that heard news from the outsideethe Main Buildingethrough the medium of the Ridge Echo, but was little affected by it. You had your own life, there in the Annex. A life that included raiding the pantry for cheese tid-bits and putting on one act plays in English. Remember Bee Thien as Silas Marner? The snow effect was produced by a generous sprinkling of Lux. And in between acts a wheezyr gramophone kept the audience entertained. Do you remember writing your autobiography? What tireless endeavor was expanded upon that objet d'art! How thrilled you were when yours went to the Main Building to be exhibited! You trooped all the way up there to gaze proudly upon it . . And soon you grew a little venturesome and decided to print your own paper. Remember the debut of the tiYounger Set ? Ieanne Brand was Editor-in-Chief. The business staff haunted the Annex exits, selling the three-cent epistle, in which Norma Cary and Helen McCulloch collabo- rated on their first laugh-provoking story. The Main was giving an opera-ttPatience ein the Academy of Music. You went in your iiSharpie socks and felt terribly unsophisticated when you saw the senior usherettes so gorgeously arrayed and perfectly poised. One day you were sent to the Main to see the ceremony celebrating the installation of the stained glass windows. It was a solemn, breath- taking occasion, and after it was over, you went to the Ioan Corridor and stood looking at those shining windows . . . You were beginning to see a little more clearly now; life was beginning to take on a new meaning . . . Then, before you knew it, you were leaving the Annex for the Main Building. You were sad, you were glad, you were frightenedethe Main Building was such a big place. You bade good-bye to Miss Lederhil's cats and thought regretfully that you would no longer be able to sit on the floor in study . . . or listen to Miss Iremonger's Hfrog stories. Sixty-six tContinued on 103

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Climbing Kittens By BETTY LINDQUIST hh HeOH, there goes another perfectly good pair of stockings. All 0 because of , but wait, a good story always begins at the be- ginning. When we first saw her, she was caught in a neighbor's basement. Dirty, dusty, and thin, she looked as though she hadn't eaten for days, which was probably true. Sis and I fell in love with her, dirt and all, but Mother . . . Well, we finally broke down Mother's sales resistance, or cat resistance, or whatever it was, because after much persuasion on our part, she finally let us keep Sister, although she stoutly maintained that one cat is enough for a family in the city. Sister flourished under our loving care, and became a beautiful, sleek coal-black member of the feline category. When we discovered she was to have kittens, we became wild with joy, for now we would have our own kittens to play with and fondle and love. If we had treated her well before, she was treated as a piece of costly china now. Sister had all she could possibly want to eat and more. Nothing was too good for our pampered pet now. I remember well the afternoon the little darlings arrived. The snow was whirling around outside, with the wind blowing great gusts against the window. Sister had long since been provided with a cardboard box, which she would have none of, and which Patsy, our other spoiled pet cat, promptly monopolized. However, by dinnertirne, she had presented us with four descendants, two black, two grey. l was frankly disappointed in them. They looked like so many mice, instead of fluffy kittens. But I bore up bravely, and tried to love them anyway. Sister was very glad to share them with us, those first weeks. She would look up and beg us to tell her what a good little mother she was, and how lovely her babies were. But when they were about three weeks old, and big enough to scratch tContinued on Page lOSl Sixty-eight