Chico High School - Caduceus Yearbook (Chico, CA)

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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

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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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CADUCEUS, CHICO Page Twenty-five late to see the fight, but I will state here that the Irish boulogne stood not a chance with Art, who put him to sleep in the third frame. After being released by the judge we went out to dine early, and I learned from Ruth of the only two of the old class I had not already seen or heard of, Grace Goins and Wesley Rumbolz, both great scientists. They had made a trip from this planet to Mars via electrical transforma- tion. They had been sent off in 1940, Ruth said, in order that the people of this world might know of the life on the other planet. They had not yet returned, but several otiicial messages had been received from them by wireless. I was still eating when the vision ended, breaking off my meal, and I awoke to find myself lying upon the hillside beneath a pine. Seniors, though you may object to following the life outlined in my vision, you can- not escape. Your fates are sealed and in no way may your future lives vary from the course they have been seen to follow. For I did see and recognize those I have named in this prophecy as friends and classmates. Therefore, be resigned, for as the Spirit of the Mountains has given them to me to see and to record, so shall your lives be twenty years hence. WESLEY W. MOORE. MY POME My teacher said to have prepared A poem for class today. I thought and thought but thought in vain - No inspiration came my way. At first I thought that I would write About my little cat, But when I found nothing to sayg I had to give up that. At last I thought that I would find A subject in yon forest tree, And then I soon discovered that The tree was much too high for me. 'Tis plain to me, and you all know it, That I could never make a poet. -E. G., '24.