Boys High School - Epitome Yearbook (Reading, PA)

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58 THE EPITOME Class Prophecy GEORGE R. ROSEN W'hen a fellow graduates, everyone seems to become suddenly interested in his future. The first th-ing they all want to know about him, when they hear he is about to leave school, is W'hat's he going to do now? Around com- mencement time your hear lots of folks wondering what's going to become of all these boys, now that their play days are over and they're face to face with the cruel world. Occasionally you run across an optimistic soul who warms your heart with something like this. Yes, your class is a fine crowd of promising young men-,' but yo-u you-ng people of today are such a giddy lot,' I just wonder wherc you'll be twenty-five years from now. I was reading in the paper only this morn- ing that 8521 of the inmates of Sing-Sing are boys under twenty-one. Now, usually, if a personiwouders what's going to happen twenty-five years from the present, the only thing that he can do about it is wait and jind outj but, remembering that most of you would find it rather difficult to keep track of all of us for such a long period, we decided to hustle things up a bit and reveal the whole story to you here this evening in the form of a little glimpse of our city in 1952. W' e got the information for this thing from a Hindu snake-charmerg so if you don't like pa-rits of it, you can't blame it on us. To tell the truth, I don't think the Hindu was any too honesty so please don't get offended if it sounds a trifle in- sulting in places. . Here it is: - It is night. Penn Square is lit up as bright as day by the huge, dazzling elec- tric signs hanging from the gigantic skyscrapers that line both sides of the street. Up in the air swarms of airplanes are flying about. Out in the middle of the square an immense mob is gathered around a platform. On the platform a man with beautiful teeth is biting the heads off of rattlesnakes. It is Marshall Huey. On the platform with him are Arlington Britton and Russell Bankes, and besides the platform there stands a fellow who looks very much like Jake Maier. These four are in the rattlesnake oil business, and the way they run it is quite a paying proposition. Huey does the entertaining, Britton the talking, Bankes hands out the bottles, and, while the attention of everyone is fixed on them, jake goes around among the crowd and picks pockets. Further up the street passionate strains of music are floating out of the Burning-Ankle jazz Palace, owned and personally conducted by Richard Jenkin- son Essick. The chief bouncer in this place is John D. Corbit. The music is furnished by the Flame-Faced Five, Charles Vincent Regis Wynne, conductor. Herman Rudolph keeps a filling station in the lobby. He sells hot dogs and hamburgers. Across the street is the Raymond Althouse Hoffmaster theatre, where Fred Kaufman and Burton Iones are starring in one of Willard Irwin's plays, entitled Us Angels. Here the music is furnished by Arthur Ericksen, who plays the piano with his feet. It is a player piano. Harold Hanley and Henry Harris are charity workers. They gather up the fruit and cabbage that the audience throws at the actors and deliver it to the poor. ' Alongside of the theatre are the Nifty-Knob Tonsorial Parlors, owned by Samuel Spadafora, who, in spite of his musical aspirations, has become a barber. Henry Frederick, his assistant, specializes in girlish bobs for men. The shoe- shining around the place is done by Gerald Ullman. Meredith Thompson, the owner of the Cash and Carry Meat Market, is be- coming quite prosperous. He now has two clerks-Lester Keiper and Luther

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THE EPITOME 57 President's Address of Welcome Mothers and dads of the students of the Class of 1927 February, we bid you welcome to these, our class night exercises. W'e take great pleasure in having you with us this evening because our presence here this evening is due mainly to the innumerable sacrifices you have made and the many hopes you have cherished for the success of your sons. To our relatives and friends present, we extend a hearty welcome, realizing too that a part of our success is also due to the interest you have shown in our development during these most formative years of our life. XVe bid you welcome to these exercises tonight in order that you may see some of the qualities developed in us by our High School training. We shall strive to express these qualities by maintaining, for the most part, a spirit of mirth throughout the evening. These devlopments are due mainly to the influ- ence our home and faculty had upon us. Having ever held high ideals before us. and, with our motto, Sit Veritas Dux -Let Truth Be Our Guide-in our mind, our members enthusiastically entered the fields of athletics, oratory, and scholar- ship, greatly sacrificing to attain the highest possible score in these activities, VVhy? For their own honor? No, chiefly with the idea of raising to unlimited heights the glory of their Alma Mater, dear old Reading High. Loyalty! Faith! Pride! These qualities combined in any youth will always tend to make him a better citizen-the aim of our present day High School. Tomorrow is Commencement: the completion of school education for some of us, the beginning of a higher college education for the rest of us. But, in a larger sense, regardless of whether we engage in our vocation immediately or whether we enter broader fields of knowledge, Commencement means exactly the same thing to all of us: the happy realization that now start those critical tests of the fibre that was woven during the past. And I, with you, am sure that the members of ,27 Feb. will, in later life, make for themselves a name, just as they have done in their' High School days-a-name to be praised highly for its merit. And so tonight, sad with the thought that our good old High School days are over, but happy that we now shall have the opportunity to prove ourselves in practical life, we again welcomeyou, and promise we shall do our best to make this evening most enjoyable to you.

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' THE EPITOME 59 Parker-working for him. Ruhl Heifner came into the store the other day and said that he wanted to look at the biggest ham in the shop. Keiper turned toward the otiice. Oh, Mr. Thompson, he yelled, there's a man out here wants to see you. Wilmer Maurer has become mayor of the city. His slogan is, Bigger and Better Corrupt Politics 3 He has a council of three members-Fred. Miller, Donald Reed and ,Iimmie Rhein. They are very well paid. They get ten dollars a roundg a dollar extra for every knockout. Martin Silverman and Israel Noch are the respective heads of the water and iire departments. Noch left the Penn Street bridge burn down the other day because he couldn't get the fire plane started. Later it turned out that two of the firemen-Harry Merkel and John Seifarth-had removed the motor and used it to build a radio. City Hall is still the same old brick eyesore at Fifth and Franklin. The three members of the Bureau of Public Buildings-Robert Weiherer, George Zerbe and Richard Miller -are at present considering a plan to move it into City Park onto the site where the jail now stands. Fred. Fidler says that he doesn't want them to tear the jail down. He hates to be moving all the time. Riley Moyer and Hen Perella have become great sportsmen. Riley has one of these sooner dogs-sooner bite you than not. Russell Stuard and Frederick Schussler are running a drug store. Schussler is the soda slinger and Stuard is the druggist. They have a perfect system. When Schussler is done with the customers they are so sick that they have to seek medical aid from Stuard. When Stuard is done with them, he turns them over to Fred Rodgers. Fred is an undertaker. Ding Schaeffer, who always was fond of he-man jobs, is at present running a boarding house on Sixth Street, which he calls the Victoria, Roger Rohr- bach, who is-marvelous to relate-still a bachelor, recently took up hisquarters in Ding's establishment. After the first night he left, however, reciting this poem, with which he had been inspired during the night: . ' O Victoria, delight of the roaches, The home of the louse and the flea, The shrine of each blood-thirsty bedbugg O Victoria, you're no place for me. Leroy Hafer is chief of police. Not long ago two hoboes, who gave their names as Dick Glauner and Raymond Fritz, were brought up before him, charged with fighting. It appeared that they were arguing about the correct way to spell f1sh. Glauner said that it was spelled phish and Fritz insisted that it was fyche. The argument grew so heated that it almost became a riot. It took the two huskiest cops on the force-George Kieh-l and Allan Klopp-to establish peace. ' Eugene Keifer is head of the trolley company. He's had a lot of trouble lately. One evening the Oley Valley car failed to return from its run. On in- vestigation he found that the motorman, Alfred Edye, and the conductor, Elwood Eshbach, had sold it to John Adams, a Boyertown farmer, for a chicken coop and had absconded with the money. Keifer is determined to bring them to justice, and for the purpose has hired Reading's cleverest detective, Neil Brown. Sidney Abels is still interested in oratory. He is a train announcer at the outer depot. Not so long ago james Lindenmuth, a baggage man on the 5.15, threw an anvil off the train and hit John Dohner, the station master, on the head. The accident cost the company a great deal of money, for the anvil was com- pletely ruined. Edward Kiefer also works for the railroad. -He walks along in front of the 5.15 and shoos the cows off the track. . Stanley Gottschall is running a hash house in West Reading. He does all his own cooking, so you can imagine what kind of place it is. He is truthful in his advertising, however. for over the doorway he has this sign: Eat here and you will never eat any place else.