North Quincy High School - Manet Yearbook (North Quincy, MA)

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L0 lil G BACKWADD LWITH APoLoG1Es TO BELLAMY5 1932-lYho fails to remember his advent into that mysterious and long-awaited Junior High School? The thrill of it! To be one of a huge factory which daily moved about at set hours to specific classes now called periods, and to be one of the group which ate in a real cafeteria every noo11 was a privilege indeed. The thrills grew. An audiophone was something remarkable to be spoken of at home. The1'e were school newspapers and stickers, and book covers, and all kinds of sports. There was even a school magazine, and one could make contributions like a real author. Remember your first attempt at fiction writing which you earnestly passed in and lost forever more? Recall also the first time anything of yours was accepted and how absolutely curdled you feel to read it today? How we used to revere the Seniors in those days. They were absolutely above our ken, yet do you feel that wonderful today especially after you have received your report card? The girls used to be horrified at the flagrant use of lipstickt!D and rouge but take a look around now. The boys used to stand in mute adoration before their football and others sports' heroes, and now some of them have attained the longed-for sweaters. How time fiies! 1933-Ah that year when the feminine joys Q ?D of sewing were put aside for those of faithfully turning out burned pastry and unedible vegetables! The male mem- bers of the class were thrilled to be actually working in a real high school shop. The pinched fingers and slightly sawed skin assumed a new and more honorable significance. A new significance was also given to that hitherto simple subject called arithmetic, now called mathematics and no longer simple. The intricacies of simple things such as this one caused much anguish in our tender hearts-If A has X apples and B has to walk m miles to L to obtain a new Easter outfit, how much will H apricots cost when onions are cheap and Aunt Lydia has a new green feather in her hat? Also we discovered about this time that to our intense disgust the wind didn't just blow and the ocean didn't just flow ta rhyme!D but that there was rhyme and reason to them somewhere Qwe're still a bit foggy about some of it but we did learn thatl. Geography, in other words, became a new and intensely deadly subject. History also became appalling. lYe were forced to take millions of notes on laws and rules and acts which we only had to study over again in U. S. History. Remember the mourning the boards were draped in preparatory to a test? 1934-At last life began to be worth living. We were sufficiently grown to have a real class organization and we were almost in High School! And our first class dance which in most cases was our first dance 'iNIember how we dashed around asking about dresses and gloves and were you wearing organdy' and who were you going with and didn't you think that--and so ad infinitum. The charming songs were finally sung to doting parents and the dance arrived. The female contingent was decked out en masse in the good old organdy, and it felt quite thrilled to hang onto the arm of anything in pants. Whoever said the romantic age was passed, didn't ever visit this school. 'IO

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Life that year wasn't all thrills I regret to say. tYe really had to work sometimes, altho' those were still the days when we had time to read library books in the study periof s. .Xnd our first introduction to Latin when we took the college course was most terrible. ltemember those stories about Lucius and somebody-or-other else wfio did the stupidest things in order that we might learn Latin. Uh the fun we hat with algebra! Wie began to know a little something about homework then ane a little more about high school work. And in linglish remelnber that first introduction to Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice and how we all declaimee parts from it and rewrote the ending. 1935- The thrills of the ninth grade over, remember how relieved you felt to be actually and otlicially a part of the senior high Cat least I got there even if you didn't D? The sad part of the ninth grade had been that we were too old to conde- scend to mere seventh and eighth graders, but unfortunately we were also far, far, too young to expect anything but mere tolerance from the senior high. The hitter struggle with languages continued. From the thrilling CU battles of faesar one turned to the study of French. The corridors resounded with the grunts and squawks of the sweating innocents trying to absorb various sounds. As vocabulary words were forced on us, we commenced reading insipid or infantile stories to add still more to our humble knowledge. This store of knowledge was called into desperate use during the test when anyone in the class could have heard a feather hit the floor like a ton of bricks. Some, however, scorned this type of joy and preferred to dissect harmless frogs, and startish who had never done them any wrong. lfore joy was added to the overflowing cups when we took up geometry. All other math became child's play when it came to proving propositions. We also found there were innumerable ways of proving the theorem of Pythagoras, none of which we ever learned including the one we were supposed to. Those courageous souls who forfeited the above joys to be a secretary and marry the boss thrilled to the tinkle of the typewriters as they wrote thousands of utterly meaningless and asinine phrases. The great trouble was the stupid things didn't always work and quite often fremember the hours after schooll they failed to land in the right places. .Xlso preconceived ideas of nice simple arithmetic problems were rudely smashed when they collided with some of the things you had to do in business arithmetic. l936W'Timc Marches Un! The eleventh grades almost a Senior and we had al- ready begun to swell a little from anticipation. llowever, all that year wasn't fun. Some of us unfortunates struggled under a burden of five majors. Uh, the joy of having a date with the one-and-only and also five subjects homework when each teacher expected uf lcusf an hour on his subject. Guess what you did! .Xnd remember too how in junior high you used to love the assemblies and look forward to them. Now you found yourself despising them from the depths of your heart and were pleasantly surprised when one was any good. l.et me hasten to add that any assembly which came during class period was fully ac- ceptable no matter how bad it might be. In the college course the thrills of chemistry and biology were ever with us. Yet how disappointed we were when nothing serious happened the whole year. Wie would recall and ever hear now harrowing tales of eyes nearly blinded or terrible scars from nitric and sulphuric acid. The most that ever happened to us was runs in our stockings from some spattered nitric. '11