Harmony High School - The Ferguson Yearbook (Harmony, ME)

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erator with energy which we didn't even know we had. We worked all day and nearly all night, only stop- ping to eat, for about two months until the experiment was almost ready to come to an end- But as we started the gasoline en- gine that ran the generator each of us had a feeling of danger. Yet we went on. The first shock which we transmitted into the fluid found in the box failed. We knew that if Con- nelfield was right in his figuring, it was we who had made the error. We started by inspecting the huge sta- tic generator for liaws. We found it almost immediately. A small hair was lying across the wires and was causing just enough short circuit to throw our charge off by ten million volts. After the hair had been removed, we checked over all the rest of the apparatus just to be sure it was in correct working order. Again we started the stock trans- mission. This time, as the spark flew from the copper electrodes in the negatively charged liquid, an eerrie glow of a ghostly grey-green color was emitted from it. We now knew that our experiment would be a suc- cess. . As we slept that night the genera- tor continued the electric transmis- sion of positive eons into the liquid. These eons had to be transmitted in- to the liquid for a period of fourteen hours. And as the liquid was being charged, we caught up on a little of our sleep which we had lost in the past month. Q The next day at eleven-thirty seven we shut ofl' the generator and extracted the electrodes from the liquid. It still had that eerrie glow but at about two-twenty in the after- noon the glow vanished almost im- mediately and the liquid changed into what seemed to appear to be a semi-solid. It had shape, yet it seem- ed to have all the characteristics of a liquid. Over the next few days we studied the living form we had created. It appeared to thrive on pure air, as we noted that though it had no mouth, no eyes, or any form or liv- ing senses, it thrived and grew larg- er on the air alone. One day while I was in town for supplies, disastci' broke out in our lab. The doctor had tried feeding the THING solid foods to see how IT would consume and digest it. This proved to be a fatal error. Soon after the THING consumed the food, IT began to grow larger every sec- ond. You could almost see IT grow. Just as I was about to get out of my car and enter the lab, 'screams of anguish, pain, and fright came to my ears from the interior. Suddenly as if there were a great pressure on the inside of the walls of the lab, they seemed to bulge out until they' finally burst and I saw Jeanne and the doctor and the THING. The girl and her father were slowlyhbeing devoured by the mon- strousilTHING that by this time was nearly forty feet wide. It had no shape and seemed to flow over the ground like protoplasm. I came out of my paralyzed con- dition and reached for my high-pow- ered rifle which I always carried there in my car in case of emergen- cies, but until now had seen no use for it. As the THING came nearer I shot into the centerof it, trying to kill it- But then it struck me, it couldn't be killed, it had no heart, no brain. What was I to do? It was growing all the time, and moving along with a rapid pace, destroying everything in its path. As I ran to get out of its way, my foot slipped and became entangled in some vines on the ground. As I fell I felt a sharp pain in my ankle. Whcin I looked at it I saw that it was broken. There I lay with the THING coming toward me. I managed to keep hold of myself, and crawled to the car which was parked on the road to town. I struggled into the seat and start- ed the motor. As I turned to see

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all miss it, I am sure. As the years go by and our minds wander back to our school days when we had all our good times, I probably won't be the only one to say Gee, I wish I were back in good old H. H. S. again. Those were the carefree days. Kathleen Ames '52 HUNTING FANTASY I was walking along a river bank on a dull fall afternoon. Looking across the river I saw a large buck deer drinking at the riv- er's edge. Then I heard a noise. Looking up the river, I saw a flock of ducksg looking down river, I saw a fiock of geese. But I thought I had rather have the deer, so I fired at it. The lead of the shell went straight ahead killing the deer. The shell split and half went up river killing the ducks. The other half went down river killing the geese. The gun kicked, knock- ing me down on forty-nine jack-rab- bits. 0f course this killed them all. While getting up I slipped into the river where I filled my pockets with trout. Such was the ending of a most successful day. Dana Huff '53 THE THING This is a story of grief, sorrow, pain. anguish and solitude. The whole, thing started in Florida in the year 1950. I was working with Dr. Blontz and his daughter, Jeanne, whom I hoped one day to marry, in a dismal spot in the Florida Ever- glades. The object of our work was to produce an artificial life. After more than two hundred ex- periments that proved failures, we decided to change from the electronic pulsation method to experimenting with the effect of different rays on the solution which is a secret to me alone now. Still as we worked from dawn to dusk, we failed again and again. One day, it was in early August, I believe, we were sitting on the porch of our lab trying to think of some new method of experimenting. We had tried nearly everything we knew, electric shock, X-ray, Ultra- violet rays, electronic synthesis, we even built an atom-smasher and triei by building different molecules from atoms which were found in the human body. Still we failed to accomplish the feat. But to get back to that day, as we were sitting there each of us thought of ways which might bring to us the breath of life. Then in the form of a small black box came death, disaster, grief, and misfortune. This box, which we found floating in the stagnant waf- ers of the Everglades, had no mark of danger on it. It looked like a small trunk that someone would use in which to keep things that were precious to them. Yet as we opened it and read the notes in it. each of us began to see it was the answer to our vain ex- periments. The box, as we found out bv the notes in it, was all that was left of James Connelfield, a noted scientist who had supposedly dis- appeared in 1894. But he had gone to the Everglades and set up a lab- oratory and tried to accomplish the same thing we were working for. a formula for life. He had contracted a serious disease and knowing that he would die soon. he had worked dav and night in his attempt to se- cure the formula. Just before death smote him, he wrote the notes on his experiments and sealed them in the box with a solution which we knew by the notes was all we need- ed to complete our experiment. It even told us how to build an electric generator which would start the liv- ing thing which we were working for. As we started on our newly inspir- ed experiment, we little knew the horrible thing we would create. Yet we started building the static gen-

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where the monster was, the THING slipped into the dark waters of the Everglade Swamps and disappeared. When I got to town, I was ques- tioned as to how I had broken my ankle. I told them the story and the town cops went to look for the bodies. They didn't believe my story and seemed a bit suspicious of the disappearance of the doctor and hs daughter. When they reached the scene of the dreadful catastrophy, they found the skeletons of two people on the ground near the stagnant waters where I had last seen the THING. They seemed all the more sus- picious when they saw what was left of the lab. It was practically leveled as if it had been blown up by a bomb. They arrested me and took me to court the next week. Even the jury didn't believe my story- Thats why I am here now, in the state prison- a life term. That is also why I have written this story, in hopes that someone will believe me and hunt for and destroy the THING before it brings death and sorrow to others. Let this story also be a warning to any other scientist, or anyone who tries to create life. For as long as the uni- verse is governed by God, the only living membrane that men will create will be just another THING. Richard Braley '51 Selected as the prize winning essay in a contest sponsored by Harmony Memorial Auxiliary, V. F. W., No. 6781. PEACE WITH HONOR IN AMERICA Peace is something which the Di- vine Power gives us. How we keep it is up to us. But it is infinitely more precious than anything else we pos- sess. Would we deliberately undermine our children's future security and contentment? Not knowingly, but this is just what we are doing when we speak ill of our neighbors because they don't believe just as we do. Those who have been on battle- fields lighting for our country would not want to iniiict such a thing on their children. As Abraham Lincoln once said, A house divided again-st itself cannot stand. The Divine Power which has made and preserved us a free nation. as yet unconquered, will, I believe, discontinue to do so if the quibbling does not stop within our own coun- try. If more people would vote for what they want for government in- stead of quarreling over it, they would be much farther ahead in the long run- That is, if they know what they want. The main thing that threatens our peace is prejudice. Despite the val- iant attempts of many to stamp this out, prejudice rears its ugly head in every town and community in one form or another. The most prevalent form of pre- judice is hating someone for his race or religion. Such a thing is charact- ized by sordid whisperings, cruel snubbings, and, in some cases, even violence. Second only to prejudice is Com- munism. How can there be peace when in nearly every town there are people who are against us and wait- ing to sell us out to the enemy? It is they who are trying to sway our people to Communism, trying to rob them of their birthright, Democracy. Socialism, Fascism, Communism. and all the other isms are just disguised plots to undermine our se- curity. True security is an illusion. We must fight for security every inch of the way. You don't get anything for nothing, least of all security. You get out of life exactly what you put into itg no more and no less. At any cost prejudice must go. Somehow we must reach our people and teach them tolerance and the true value of Democracy. They must