Chico High School - Caduceus Yearbook (Chico, CA)

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Page Twenty-two CADUCEUS, CHICO But to come back to Payne. After the second act I sent my card around to him and arranged a meeting for after the show. I met him as We had agreed and with him found Dorothy Smith and Helen Kelly, who were playing in the same company. I had failed to recognize them on the stage, as they were pretty well hidden behind a generous smear of grease paint. They said they were playing leading parts and that I might by close observation have found Myrtle Wood and Elizabeth Yank in the chorus. The four of us went to the Two Moon Cafe, where we indulged in a lobster feed by way of renew- ing friendship and bridging the gap of years since our last meeting. As the conversation drifted around finally to our old school and classmates, someone mentioned Frank Cummings. Euland said he had seen Frank in Logan, Utah. Said he was bishop of the Temple of the Sacred Cow. After a pause he added that Frank had married Zephyr Tull, Winona Po-lk, Beryl Sisk, Elsie Meade, and Katherine Waters. It seemed they were all happy Mormon wives. I couldn't be sure about Frank'si happiness. Dorothy volunteered the information that another of the '22 class was in Salt Lake City. Lance Drane, she claimed, had followed her half way over the United States urging her to marry him. She refused to do so, as his first wife, Hallie Dollarhide, had committed suicide, and his second, Loveday White, he had deserted, going to Alaska, where in some way he had managed to rake together quite a neat pile of gold. Anyway, Dot said she wouldn't give up her career for the best man on earth. Here Helen broke in with I would, all the time looking at Payne, but the boy was wise enough not to notice that part of the conversation. The party broke up about one o'clock, as I was leaving next morning for Chicago. We bade each other farewell, and parted, each again to wend hisseparate way. Next morning I arose just before train time and rushed out to get a bite to eat before bo-arding the train. In the restaurant I dropped down at a vacant table and gave my order to a waiter at whom I did not glance. I had ordered my eggs over and the ones the waiter brought me were resting calmly sunny-side-up, for which I promptly proceeded to bawl out the waiter, being in something of a hurry and slightly fussed. But I stopped in the middle of one of my choicest phrases, thereby utterly ruin- ing it, for I realized I knew that plate juggler. It was Ray Allinger. I accepted the eggs as they were, but spoke no word of recognition, for I was, you might say, just a little mite bashful then. I devoured those eggs in record time and made my train in the twelfth, crawled on and set sail for Chicago. The trip was entirely uneventful and I arrived in the city of hams pretty tired of riding. As it was night I taxied to a hotel and tried sleeping in a bed again. Morning dawned windy and cold, but I didn't see the dawning for the maids were making the beds when I crawled out. I started down the hall and in turning a corner bumped squarely into Loraine Blanton. She was working in the hotel, making beds to support her husband, our friend J. William Hamilton, who had gone cuckoo trying to sell some of his poems to Margaret Balaban, the editor of the Chicago Blotter. The Sick State had Bill in a cage now, so Loraine had to make beds. I went to the dining-room, ordered a combination breakfast and lunch- eon, and picked up a morning paper from which I proceeded to wrest the

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CADUCEUS, CHICO Page Twenty-one SENIOR CLASS PROPHECY ' THE breath of spring-time filled the air with the sweet scent of growing grass and flowers, the aroma of moist earth, and ,251 t,l.f-M , I the breath of forest pines, the bright spring sun hung it IQ is lazily midway across the great unbroken blue of the sky, as far as the eye could reach stretched pine-covered hills sloping gently down to be mirrored in the clear calm waters 51 'lfgysfswl of the crystal mountain lake at their foot. I lay upon a soft carpet of fallen needles from a pine, whose moss-covered roots formed my pillow. Surely this was an enchanted spot, and how long I lay looking out over the scene before me I do not know, but I slept, and the, future opened before me. I lived and saw what is to be. And in this way my vision of your lives twenty years hence began. I awoke in a berth on a trans-continental train and after dressing wan- dered through the train to the smoker, where I sat down to watch leisurely the fragrant smoke of a good cigar drift upward, and to await the call to the diner, which eventually came. Upon entering the dining car, I hesitated, as the tables were fast filling, and not wishing to intrude I awaited the steward, who placed me at a table with three women whose appearance was less modish than severe. While awaiting my fruit I took occasion to observe my table companions, and imagine my surprise when I recognized in them my old schoolmates, Doris Watts, Catherine Hurtle, and Vera Ann Nash. They were on their way to St. Louis as Western delegates to the Anti-Man convention, where they said a resolution was to be drawn prohibiting men from everything but work in order that woman might come into her own rights and take the place in life intended for her. Man! I lost my appetite from just listening to those ladies rave, and I beat a hasty retreat while still entitled to wear my trousers. I dropt off that train at Salt Lake for a brief period of relaxation, took a taxi and recognized in the driver the lady speed-demon, Helen Krikac, whom I asked to name the best hotel. Helen replied that The Fleece was by far the best, and added that it was owned by Frank Streeter, who used to go to Chico High with us, but was now the social lion of that Mor- mon city. Well, I went to Frank's hotel and when I paid the bill later I realized that The Fleece was appropriately named. That evening I thought I would take in a show and walked down the Broadway of Salt Lake City until my eye was arrested by a blazing line, Euland Payne Now Playing, The Greatest Hobo-Comedian of the Age. I walked no farther than the box office, and darned if I didn't buy my ticket from Helena Adams. She said she had been passing out the paste- boards there for three years. She had married Gordon Sigler, but he had been killed in an electrical attack at the battle of Santa Cruz during the war between Japan and the United States. Inside the theatre Euland had the audience roaring and a blind man could plainly see that he was making a bigger hit than any big league ball-slugger that ever walked across a diamond. Yes, and speaking of big-leaguers, I saw in yesterday morning's paper that the Pink Sox had sold Randall Gay to the New York Pigmies for' :B85,000, the highest price ever paid for a pitcher in the history of the game.

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CADUCEUS, Cinco Page Twenty-three current news. On the front page was the story of the latest great financial deal put through by our old friend Chester Hoar, who I might mention had acquired enough wealth and power to make monkeys of the bulls and bears of Wall Street. Chester was now floating a new scheme to build a tube from New York to London through which passengers might be carried in two hours, eighteen minutes, by the new Drobney car. Henry had in- vented this torpedo-shaped car, whch was propelled through the tube by a series of nitro explosions somewhat on the order of the long-range shell used in the World War of 1914. Chester had wooed and won Esther Patch as his lawfully wedded wife, and Hank had invented a new way to put a kink in a girl's hair, thereby winning Anna Hagerty, who worshiped him as a little mud god, it was said. Now comes a lapse of two months, during which nothing exciting hap- pened other than my finding Alice Camper, Sidney Cheyney, and Nellie Ferguson. This is the Way it happened. While in a small town in upper New Jersey I had sent some shirts to a laundry. Upon their return I found a large hole burned in my pet dress shirt, and went forthwith to the laundry, intending to raise cain and the price of a new shirt. I found the manager, Robert Meade, who led me from the office to the ironing-room in search of the party who had ruined my front. Bending over a pair of hotpoints I found Sid Cheyney and Nellie Ferguson. Sidney promptly left her iron to burn another shirt, and started the conversation somewhat after her methods in the days of '22. From the gabble which ensued I gathered first that another of my acquaintances was in that same laundry as a queen of suds, and would I care to come back to the washer room and meet Lillian Armstrong? I would and did. Before I left that laundry I had forgotten all about my burned and ruined shirt, but I had learned of two more of my old friends. Harry Ossenbriiggen had taken Nellie as his good fairy and mar- ried her. Harry was working in Louis Armahan's shop, which was adver- tised as the Peoples' Perfect Plumbers, Inc. I guess Harry was a good plumber, all right, but it kept both him and Nellie busy buying shoes for the two little Ossies and meeting his landlady, Dorothy Bornholdt, once a month. As Nellie had captured Harry, so had Sidney lured Dean Hintz from the home of his father. They were married in the old town of Chico, but had later moved about, trying to keep pace with Dean's restless fancy. After two years Sidney had given up the chase, but Dean was still ram- bling, a Weary Willie, the dean of the knights of the road. Eventually I escaped and leaving the Waterloo of soiled shirts prepared to resume my onward way. That same night I took an electric to New York, where I had business with Glen and Trammel Moore, movie pro- ducers. After giving the information I desired, they insisted that I should go out to their studio and watch the latest thriller of the Cosmetic Com- pany as it was being produced. The film they were turning out was played by an all-star cast, so Glen said, and I couldn't afford to miss it in the making. I didn't. At the studio I met Helen Bond playing the lead, ably supported by Lillian Tull and Vernon Jackson. Helen said she had been starring for the last four years and that the boy.s about the town still thought she was an eighteen-year-old girl. She looked good enough to kiss, all right, but I remembered the many years since '22 and asked her how she did it. She