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

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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

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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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Something Happens Something usually does when Norma Cary and Helen McCulloch go off on c: hunt- to Europe, no less! Here's their letter to Pam Blenc-owe. EAR PAM, D Here's hoping you've got a strong constitution and not a weak heart, 'cause a letter from us must be a big surprise. We decided on a joint lettereyou see, we've been in Scotland almost a day now, and the Scot's idea of thrift has already so taken possession of us, that one stamp is all we can possibly bring ourselves to use. tAfter all, two pence half penny is nothing to be sneezed atj . I guess we'd better tell you about the Rex first. We can't begin to explain the thrill we got as the boat slowly slid away from the pier. Norma was feeling rather weepy, but after the first meal, she perked up. We used plenty of energy playing deck tennis, shuffleboard, and swimming in the Lido pool, but promptly replenished the lost energy by devouring yards and yards of spaghetti, and topping each meal with pastry and bisque tortoni. When we had only six courses, we began to feel neglected. All was harmonious between us till we both began to compete for the attentions of practically the only unattached male aboard la southern plantation owner whose sparsity of hair belied his rumored age of thirty, and who, for the purpose of losing twenty pounds, made his daily repast solely on lamb chops and pineapplel. But after we learned he couldn't truck, we lost all interest in him, and again became friends. The boat docked on the fifteenth of May, in Naples. The most striking thing was all the uniforms; practically every male we saw from the tender age of five to fifty, sported a uniform. The plumes on some of the officers' hats would have made Mae West's insignificant. Our hotel was directly opposite the Bay of Naples and, by standing on our balcony, we could see Mt. Vesuvius and the steady stream of smoke it emitted. Next we went to Rome via third class railway. We became very indignant when we saw that American Express had made reservations in third instead of first class, but when we asked about it, we found the only difference between the two was that in first, there were pictures on the compartment walls. So . . . we rested our eyes on each other instead of someone's weird conception of Dante's Inferno, and saved our lira. tContinued on Page lOZl Sixty-nine