Cambria High School - Oracle Yearbook (Ebensburg, PA)

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THE 1936 O R ACLE Essay -- Nature For thousands of years, Nature has been a modest, incalculable lady. When mortals have attempted to ferret out her secrets, she has retired, like a Turkish wom- an, behind her veil of mystery. Learned men have sought some great philosophy from the ebb and flow of the sea, the ever changing seasons, only to be met with rebuffg poets have basked in a glorified inspiration which they do not understand. Even lov- ers, who are perhaps most sympathetic of all, find something in the moonlight and scent of flowers which moves them, but is unexplainable. The great naturalist, Thoreau, attempts to account for the failure of all these dreamers and students by stating, Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her. Though this theory might have been too true a short year ago, it is not appli- cable today. Now that our country has been through practically every type of dis- aster that Nature could invent, we are only too ready to acknowledge her as mistress. Unforgettable-this past winter, which has alternately thrilled and chilled us with heavy snowfalls, a flood that has drowned us like so many rats, and spring tornadoes with their unusually large number of casualties, making the grand and glorious total of a thousand lives for this grasping old dame to claim. One usually finds some beauty, mingled with the misery. Deep drifts of snow piled up a bewildering spectacle that charmed the eye at the same time they isolated towns, closed schools, and wearied corps of highway workers. Even at 30 degrees be- low zero, one could marvel with Whittier at: A universe of sky and snow The old familiar sights of ours Took marvelous shape. A smooth white mound the brush pile showed, A fenceless drift what once was road. After the blizzards, the floods. These had not even a pretence to beauty, just an ugly, muddy, dreariness which laid its mark on cities throughout the Eastern States. Bridges, houses, cars were tossed as easily as matchboxes upon the swirling waters, then thrown ludicrously to whatever would receive them. Hundreds of families lost their homes, the stock of stores was completely ruined, and towns were placed under martial law to prevent looting. Ebensburg suffered very little, but Johnstown felt the fury of a flood comparable to the famous one of 1889. These casualties show the more terrifying aspect of Nature. To be entirely just, her serene moments are as many. Fickle could not describe her. She is more than that- A creature of moods, of caprices, of cross purposes, gloomy and downcast to- day, and all light and joy tomorrow, caressing and tender one moment, and severe and frigid the next, full of genius, full of folly, full of extreme, to be read and understood, not by rule, but by subtle signs and indirections-by a look, a glance, a presence, as we read and understand a man or a Womanf,-John Burroughs. Susan Gardner '36. ..,,,,i 15 M... l , . tb 4 7, l x . l f ,' Xf,,v . F' e Al l .1 vi 4 rr. in f fyflill . v 'LN xx -lx., ,+L Q' Wifi-'La

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I2 A Tl-IE 1936 O Faculty FRANK M. THORNTON M. A. Penn State College B. S. Franklin nnfl Marshall GORDON WILLIAMS Mansfield State Teachers' College Shippensburg State Teachers' College Mugic Mathematics General Science Sf-nior Class Sponsor Woldff John Mason '33 is 4 , at ff ,1 i'i:g.3A'g . frfiii Q7 ALMA MATEIQ Music: Hlhe palisadesn New York University Atop the verdant Alleghenies Our High School stands supremeg Whose halls shall in our minds forever Abide with us, our fondest dream. To scenes we've learned so much to cherish 'Twill be so hard to say good-bye As those who pledge with us devotion To Ebensburg-Cambria High. Since High-School friendships soon will sever And fade as does the dying day, New comrades will our lives enlighten As in the world we wend our ways: And yet whatever be life's fortune, Tho' memory fails, for friends we sigh, We'll love thee still, our Alma Mater, Our Ebensburg-Cambria High. 14 iw.. CLE

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That is but the owl and owlet, Talking, scolding at each other. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Begging pardon of Longfellow, that is but the gullible Freshman, cententious Sopho- mores, efficient juniors, and world weary Sen- iors talking, laughing, infrequently scolding at each other. That is the chatter of cliques in the auditorium at noon time, the rush of many feet to teacher's desk in study hall, the sub- dued rustle of notes passed stealthily over shoulders and around seats. That is P. O. D. reports, grasshoppers and other crawling things, doing in Rome as the Romans do, and the breaking of test tubes in Chemistry lab. That is last, romancing, memorizing, trans- lating, reciting, studying.