DeWitt Clinton High School - Clintonian Yearbook (Bronx, NY)

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awakening, coId, rude, hiting, hurIing you hack into the shuftte of hoys. Sep- temher opening, schooI Iying waiting ripe, for you to cut it open and drink the juice of success .... One among tens, hundreds, thousands of hoys .... Ikve got to tight to it through, to study and ptug, to rise up, up, up, to hattIe through a maze of ohstactesz the past, cIogging memories, understanding the teachers as human heingsg serious, cIean, hacking a path onward .... The ADULT marks Howing in Iike good cIear water, the reaping of efforts. INSTITUTE Like a b0Ii 'KTHIRTY SHOPPING DAYS T0 CHRISTMAS' time, SQUAD so swift, not understanding, not sympathetic, hut ripping oft the days, crueIIy, Iike tearing pages from a catendar. I Christmas . . . New Yearys once I I that gives the hoIidays a new Iightff- more, eternat hut with an 85 average, SIC is its 34 Looking hack nowg I remember the drive and life and red-hlooded pound- ing in my veins, to get hack, to go on, and achieve some coveted goal that year at school .... Then the car smash- ing against my legs . . , the crumble of hlackness . . . the ambulance . . . tlie plaster cast which hoisted my broken limhs kiigli over the hospital tied .... Three months l lay there eating, sleep- ing, reading little, lying motionless and following the clouds with my eyes from the window . . . the pain in my fathers eyes . . . tie, who with his simple voice and stolid, sacrikcial guidance had hoisted one out of the rut .... I remem- I her, also, the second-kand knowledge l gleaned from old hooks , . . the few real I , friends, sitting on the hed and slowly, patiently, going over the work with me, g p g U , g . . . How quickly it spedg prepared for the exams, passed with more than the CHEMISTRY skin of my teetkg the term in a slow peaceful endingif-HH SQUAD I remember regaining my strength during the summer .... Slowly nourish- ing my forgotten limlns .... Wfalking the long miles in the country, over the hot, verdant green of the kills . , . sucking in the rick country air . . . washing away the remains of the accident, and the futile chaos of those first two years.

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BOARD OF GOVERNGRS Gut of the future, the midterm, the Final week of plunging across . . . Cram . . . cram . . . hiting on the sharp pencil point . . . Outline. Review. tve got to pass . , . Got to. . .. Itys come: FLUNK, 2 out of 5. How can I face them: mother, dad, excuse, what to sayp Somehow the days pass, and everything smooths itself out. it think, stowty, caretuuy, now. Xvhat have 1 accomphshed: foothau, SL. Squad, what can they mean with a 72 averagef Have I any reat teacher-friends7 Do the fellows like meg or are they only pretendingp Have I 'lived tuuyp is there an improvementp Xvhat have I done with two-and-a-halt yearsp Thirteen to fifteen: I have heen in the Service League, the toothau squad: and a 72 average. I used to think when I was in ifirst term. I didnt know what a cigarette tasted like then. I didnt know girts, I was shy, htushing like the devit when I spoke to anyone. I couidnjt dance, I was htunt .... Dad, teu me ahout myself . . . Shrewd, matured, father sinks hack in his chair . . . Five . . . Ten minutes pass quietly, softly . . . tong-thought-of words that seem to How from him . . . I sit and listen: true, tetting words, ctear advice, the ifirst reat wisdom in these two years. From eight tiu ten. The icirst hours Vve spent with my dad in a tong white. Thanks. Thatys au I can say or think. Thanks, dad. Qver two months, the long Summer cools and hardens my thoughts: time to think things out, to understand the fundamentals ot good and had. Time to appreciate my mother and dad: time to reahze their sacriticesg time to strengthen vivid new ideals. Time: time to took ahead: to make them proud: to crystatize some glowing amhition. Like diving from a high steepte into the rushing water, chithng you,

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But here I am, now. XV hy dig into the pastp This is it: the tast term, the eighth, my spear at that success which 1 want. Churning, hard, honest, work .... Back in stride .... The Senior Presidency: ditigentty campaigning. . . . Speaking hefore the funn-packed auditorium. . . Hushing, stirring them with the clean power of my voice .... Then the night hefore etection: tying awake in hed, tuming hetween the sheets, hoping, dreaming, praying for the icirst triumph .... T hat morning, the hattots marked, wondering, as they slapped CURRENT me on the hack and wished me tuck .... Luck: it is no tuck, no tate, it means HISTORY more to me than a Wise-crack, it is honest, clear, heart and sout .... CLUB But no: you tose, you take it on the chin, you feet hitter, even hating those Y around you, the very people who have worked and laughed with you for tour fun years. But as you hrood and medi- tate in a selfish silence, you took up, over the head of I, I, I: you know then how minute, how hhnd you have heen. From the hooming recesses of the radio. the tawdry type of the evening news- paper, and the mechanical htactvand- white Hash of the newsreet, you see and feet and hear your world heing sptit open, you Icnow the terror and fright that has struck mittions of hu- mans, the inerasahte gash that has heen tired into their hopeless souls. It thunders into the hidden grey cens in your head: the rape of Czechoslova- kia: the htue-harrened cannon that Haunt their stuhhed, death-tongued snouts, and hury mithons of Chinese under tons of Hood and steet, horror magnetizing them to opium, and shen- shoclced imhecitity: Spain ripped and gutted: you can hear this incessant. automatic heart-heat of countries and humanity as they spin around the sun. ELOCUTION Yet I can feet my own, individual progress, stowty creeping . . . Senior SQUAD Committees . . . Class Night . . . Prom . . . Etected a Senior Personality . . . wanting intensely to have them printed. to make them five and hum, to chisel this story Hack and clear into the walls of Clinton: ci living record that rnriy assimilate into the Past hut will nerfer die.