Chico High School - Caduceus Yearbook (Chico, CA)

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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

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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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Page Twenty-four CADUCEUS, CHICO told me the secret of eternal youth and beauty as given her by Helen I-lassel, who ran a beauty parlor in New York and specialized in making honest faces lie. That evening while scanning the pages of a current daily I noticed an article referring to a recent surgical wonder performed by Dr. Berta Boyd, so I determined to look up the great doctor in the morning. I found her in the office of her private hospital and introduced myself. We talked of old times for a while and Berta said Edward Schoen, an old classmate, was a nurse in the hospital, I didn't see Ed, as the lady doctors kept him busy, I guess. Dr. Boyd said among other things that she had saved the life of Helen Stevens after other medicos had given her up as dead from exposure at the time of the dirigible disaster. The big passenger boat Whistler ran wild and roamed the heavens for four days before it was finally located and taken up, or rather, down. The same afternoon I went to hear a lecture in the studio of Elizabeth Conrad in the heart of Greenwich Village. The lecturer was an ex-school- mate, Hallie Parrish. She spoke very forcefully upon the immodesty of men in wearing half-hose and short hair. She claimed that as it did not help their beauty any it was mere immortal vanity upon the part of the dependent sex and should be discouraged by the women, who held power to do it. As an example of the force of feminine argument she referred us to the act of Margaret Bouton with her husband, Ray Schaller. Margaret was an eminent figure in Washington, supreme-justice in fact. She had learned through the medium of a pet dove embodying the spirit of Adalyn Honadel, who had been killed in a bargain rush some three years before, that Ray had been fickle and untrue to his marriage vows by leaving the house without permission, talking on the street with Claudia Notley, and smoking a cigarette she gave him. Margaret immediately banished Ray from her home and as he had nothing of his own, he had fallen from the plane of life she had accustomed him to. Ray, so Hallie said, was now employed by the city of Washington as a white-wing, sweeping the streets he had once ridden over in luxury with his great judicial spouse. I'll tell you I felt out of place at that meeting, so I sneaked out in search of fresh air and met Ruth Shier at the door. Ruth asked me to havev a bit of nectar with her as she needed a stimulant. When we were seated she explained that she was an artist's model and was exhausted by trying to hold a very difficult pose. You know, she said, that when Ava Baldock was president, the Statue of Liberty was removed from the mouth of New York harbor and that Anna Pierce was appointed to succeed the old hand- made statue. Anna has adopted a pose I can't copy, and Charles Sellick, the great artist I am a model for, insists on painting the statue. As Anna isn't on duty long enough for him to copy anything but her face, I have to pose for the rest of the painting. Next day Ruth and I started out to see the world's championship iight between an Irish heavy and our old friend, Arthur Johnson. Arthur already held the championship belt, but the Irish pug, Mike O,Hammer, had an idea he might put Art to sleep. Well, we did not get to- the fight as we were pinched for speedng by a cop who turned out to be Vaneta Longmire. We were taken before a judge and fined, and it was then too