Cleveland High School - Legend Yearbook (Portland, OR)

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s E.ERBER. Nemmin ' why. He stahted somethin ' he didn ' t finish, said Danny with utter truthfulness and with a peek at the future. I sho ain ' t no evil tiding ' s gal. Yo never gave that gen ' men a chance. No, ain ' t yo? He disregarded the last re- mark as insignificant. In fack, onless yo proves yo good ' tentions, I will — and she made a gesture in air that he knew meant his abrupt finish unless he strengthened her wavering affections. Purloining chickens was his only art. With a portion of his savings withdrawn from the bank, he bought a ranch on the outskirts of town, considerably out so to speak. A week he passed at a mysterious work. People complained of the losses they were suffering. As Ellie ' s heart attack decreased, his grew more violent with determination. Although his inky fea- tures seemed as composed as the river Styx, he felt like a shrinking violet in her presence. Don ' t reckon yo is cravin ' to inspec ' mah ranch today, Ellie? he said pleadingly. She had intended to snub him when she saw that he was going to speak to her, but at his words she looked interested. Yo learnt me a lesson, Danny. I mean to be yore best frien ' from herever after. Meanin ' what? I ' ll go! As they sped along in a hired machine, Danny glibly lied that his car awaited repairs at the garage, but Ellie seemed to be contented as she snuggled down beside him. The ' came to a stop at a sleepy little farmhouse which bore no sign of activity ex- cept that of the greatest variety of chickens in as- sorted shades. Ellie could not conceal her surprise. Wheah ' s the population? What yo mean? Hired help. Oh they. Picnicin ' . I alius lets them picnic on Sundays, prevaricated Danny without realizing that it was only Saturday. Gizzard was in a state of mental agony. He lacked the courage to tell the old, old lie and Ellie gave him no opportunity to do so, for she insisted upon leaving immediately for home. People were astonished to find that all of their fowls had returned to their nest apparently cleansed of the affliction of wanderlust. Into Danny ' s appreciative ear Ellie bewailed the fact that she had no funds. Why, cream puff, sho I can help yo. Didn ' t yo knowah I sold mah fahm las ' -week? Oh, I ' ll be so ' bliged if yo will. Such usual words were disappointing, but he reached into the recesses of his pocket and pain- fully extracted a roll of bills which he had wrapped around a handkerchief to increase the size of the roll. The slip that cost him his pocketbook was, How much yo want, Ellie? Five hun ' ded dollahs is what I rightly need. Yo reckon yo could ' ford it ontil I gets back mah posi- tion ? He sighed to himself. He had been saving his six hundred dollars for a rainy day, and this cloud- burst was more than he could comprehend. I he next day Ellie was accompanied to the sta- tion by a bouquet of American Beauty roses and by Washington, still fervid. A wisp of lavender hand- kerchief fluttered a moment to the disillusioned Danny standing on the platform. The puff-puff of the train as it started on its long journey to New ork ca used a lump of self-pity to rise in the throat of the dusky Romeo. He pulled out his wallet. It contained what was left of his savings. One hundred dollars was just enough to pay the bet. Of the two aches, Danny didn ' t know which hurt the most; his broken heart or his broken pocketbook. I ' age 24

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LERSER VANITIES UNFAIR jMarjorie Paxgborx Gizzard Washington, so titled because his pas- sionate affection for chicken had caused him to suffer the indignities of being a jail-bird, was angry with himself and with the world (represent- ed by Clay Center.) In a streak of poker luck he had made a bet that he could be married at any time he chose. He had wondered at the eagerness with which his friend had taken the bet, but after days of secret questing, only black despair filled his heart. The looking glass had revealed the lack of beauty he had supposed was his. A hundred dollars was lots of money to lose for the sake of a wager. It would go such a long way in paying chicken fines, but it looked as if — I craves to knowah some knowledge which I ' spects yo to give me like a gen ' men you ain ' t, broke in a drawling voice upon his thought . Washington ' s ebony jaw sagged in open-mouthed admiration as he surveyed the lemon-hued, vest- pocket edition of Venus before him. At yore dis- position, cream puff! he managed to shoot back at her, accompanied by a welcome to our city smile done in gold fillings. In return she displayed a set of non-false teeth that was the envy of all models for Pepsodent ads. Big boy, I wants to knowah whah Jedge Cum- min ' s lives and I craves the infoh now. Says which? I ' m nothin ' else but his long lost relative late- ly of the Chawklate Cream ' V anities of Noo Yawk. Sho ' l yo must have heard of them. Ellie! Danny! And there she was sobbing on his shoulder. Had his friend happened along just then, he would have endeavored to withdraw the bet. A few memories later, the two arrived at the seedy mansion of the Jedge. Danny ' s lower limbs were doing the Charles- ton from fear as he mentally measured the distance to the fence from where he stood and wondered if he could jump the enclosure in five minutes and sprint down the street to safety should her father make anv hostile moves. By the next morning everyone received the in- formation by invisible telegraphy that EUie ' s home- coming had been as cold as an Eskimo eating an ice cream cone in a refrigerator. But she was a block off the old chip and intended to stick to the last like a British bull dog on a piece of fly paper. When she met Gizzard that evening, she looked far from being the spark plug she was re- puted to be. Ah ' s feelin ' like indigo, confided Ellie. Mah fawther disinterested me; ah ' m almost homeless now. What say? I ain ' t got no capital ' cept mah looks — but then, Danny, I ain ' t so bankrupt, is I? Gawsh, cain ' t yo see enthus ' asm on my war town map? U-huh! Yo does appear kinda enthus ' astic, but Ah ain ' t so suah ev-thing ' s gwine to be all right. S ' pose I make it all right? Huh! V o couldn ' t. Meanin ' which, perzac ' ly? Yo millionaire idea is all air. Little old Noo ' awk for this gal ' less some hero does a rescue. Yore lookin ' at him. Come how? I ' m he. Washington was astounded at the cataract of laughter that greeted his ear drums at this juncture. He disliked the proposition of proving his state- ment to his doubting lady love, because it meant work. About the only way he could find to shine was to become a bootblack. His friend didn ' t know that he was courting death when he innocently nudged Danny and said Some chicken! His face came in contact with an enraged black avalanche which sent him sprawling jnto the gutter, dazedly wondering why all the sta rs in the universe had chosen to fall on him. Wha fo yo disconvenience dat gen ' men, Danny? Ellie questioned when his wrath had abated long enough to enable him to think. Page 23

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EjERSER PORTRAIT OF A DREAM George Pohl I. Herr Americaner, I laugh at you. Yesterday I watched you wander through these galleries, your graven face fraught with eager interest, today — the same. This Diana is a beautiful canvas, and I do not wonder at your enthusiasm of the pettiness of life but of more interest to me is not the Diana you see before you, but that it is painted in the curious plane, the same li id, impressionistic tone as the portrait. Will you read me the monogram in the lower corner? As you see my hunched back ridi- cules the desire. The Portrait, sir, the portrait of whom? Of myself, or as the artist names it, Destiny. Sureh ' you knezv the picture. ( I am a fool and blind, not merely a twisted cripple!) But surely you know the black precipices of Destiny, veined with this grey of Diana, monstrous, and sinister, with pinnacled peaks flung recklessly against a sullen sky. The rocks are weighted with the burden of utter hope- lessness; here they have slumped to an indistinguish- able mass of stolid dejection. The blackness of Hell lays his smug hand about while his sister, still blacker white, melts behind his shielding cloak. Tremulous with dizziness the cliffs sway slowly upward, in- accessible to dim sight and terrible in their portend. Gaunt, obscure shadows crawl from ledges; creep from caverns, and go slinking to the void below. A slender summit thrusts out its crow-like head, and clinging to its beak is a whiteness, a foreign speck ; infinitesimal, yet awfully apparent in its unreality. It is horrible! The rocks are strangely still, they smother my thought-outcry. I cannot hold. My fingers bleed on the glazed rocks, and the clotted blood baffles their gnawing hold. I feel the blood trickle down my arm and form a tin - pool in the hollow of my chest, shuddering with the rise of breath. I must fall ! I looked below, an immensity, an eternity hungered for me. A sob of hope forever lost flows down my throat, and chokes me, and blinded by the switch of heavy air I fall — down, and down, and down into the ghastly nothingness — I died. II. ' ou find me incoiierent ? Undoubtedly I abuse your intelligence and credulit - but first you should know, sir, that as a child I was a weakling, victim to a malignant disease, and e tremel - reticent in nature. Stumbling through youth with these hand- icaps, it is not to be wondered that I soon acquired a taste for the morbid, and eccentric in literature, in life ; to console me in my contempt for the man in life mob. This per erted leaning had grown like a fungus on my mind, craving the distorted — and with a fierce indulging laugh, I drank deeply. Sometimes at night I awoke with some repulsixx dream or fancy my confused brain had pitifully evolved from the maze of lives I had lived in the printed word. I watched the dusk deepen with dread, vet awaited it with a ; ' ort of rampant pleasure, knowing well its inevitable horror but enchanted by that horror as one secretly loves best the things that cause him pain and misery. I lived a dissolute dream. I de- spised my own existence and that of the scurrying and aimless rats that forever wore the streets. It is a lie that ' outh loves life! Then one day I came here. I saw Destiny. I saw the portrait of one of my most stubborn dreams painted on the canvas, as I had lived it. It caused my mind to reel, to sicken, to drop down, and down, until the winch-like strain drew me into a faint, but it was a conscious faint. I watched the portrait of my dream. It fascinated me; it repelled me; it embittered fe. It kindled within me a fire; an un- reasoning desire for its possession. I saved my paltry marks and grew into man- hood. My father had died — in debt. I would tell myself, Today, I shall eat only once, and so hasten the day. One night I awoke with a deathly start, feeling a presentiment that the portrait was gone. Perhaps it was stolen ; perhaps someone had pur- chased it. I threw my cloak about me and limped hurriedly to the great museum. All was still and silent as though to torture me with mock serenity. Great woven bars guarded the entrance, but per- haps 1 could creep through? The two stiffened guards threw me into the bare streets. I pleaded Page 25