Classical High School - Caduceus Yearbook (Providence, RI)

Page 8 text:

The bus driver holds out his calloused hands, col- lecting green strips of paper called 'ctransfersf' The students file out, dropping books, and slipping on icy patches by the practice field, which not too long ago was a dusty, rubble-lilled lot. They struggle with the heavy doors and disappear. Inside the building no one is quite awake. Home- room 4 is open, and so is 6, but at others they wait. Small queues form. Books, along with lunches in crumpled brown paper bags, are laid on the floor. Some greetings, and a group of three or four talk in the corridor opposite the girls' locker room. Teachers, students . . . an ever-increasing parade. From the front they come, and the cold comes in with them. They come from the side, through the steel doors which never quite close, past a janitor who even now is bringing a towering barrel to the boys' cafeteria. At Classical, a bell always means something. A bell, and you salute the flag and listen to the home- room teacher read the daily bulletin. A bell, and you are quiet, a bell, and you go to your first period class, a bell, and you leave school. A bell and you eat. In the cafeteria laughter, talk, inconclusive arguments.

Page 7 text:

s 4 Comes the morning and small gusts of wind sweep down from what used to be Union Street to what used to be Westminster Street to what is now the new Shopper's Mall. People walk, their hands buried in their pockets. It is a cold morningg it might warm up, but you can never tell. The sky is overcast. Classical students, shifting under the weight of their somewhat tattered books, peer down the street. They scramble from one bus only to wait for another. It doesn't really matter whether it be Elmwood or Broad or Auburn-they all go by the same place. ' The bus is crowded, but the ride is short. Some frantically attempt to finish reading a novel that was due yesterdayg others talk- The math period test? Don't mention it, it's too early in the morn- ingli'- and then he had the nerve to ask her to the dance instead of me . . . Giggles, and mur- mured Latin conjugations .... Classical is an ugly building, ridiculous beside the gleaming newness of the Boy Scout headquar- ters. Before all the wrecking you couldn't see it so easily. Back then there were stores and houses and a church. Now they are gone, devoured by hungry machines, and replaced by a new road.

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