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

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and canary yellow waistcoats but in conventional organdy, white flannels and blue coats. This is the year we chose our respective courses for better or for worse. Some of us had a taste of Latin and the usual dose of Grammar and l,iterature spoon- fed, but all too soon we were to find out how wearing a steady diet of such fare can be in the years to come. Tenth Grade-Now things began to be nasty. There were some who blithely signed awa.y their souls and all their spare time for three years when they decided to study French. Some of us studied for said we didl Plane Geometry although it wasn't at all plain. Those who had wandered into C'aesar's Callie ll'urs strug- gled with sentences which began, lVhen Vaesar had broken up his winter quarters where he had been all summer long, he took unto him all his slaves and their little baggages which they would not leave because they were possessed with a fondness for them in order to ride on his great steed which wore a ribbon in his hair and gold-plated shoes . . . and so on into the wee small hours of the night. Those who thought to become industrial tycoons or marry the office boy began their struggle with that obstinate creature, the typewriter. It was the strangest animal really, for it had ideas all its own on spelling. Remember those peculiar exercises like Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the partyu and other such masterpieces of mystery? Now we could help to carry on the grand old traditions of North as befitted members of the Senior High, among these, the helping to tear down the goal- post after the Quincy game even though that was the year we only tied with them. Eleventh Grade-Remember? That was the year you discovered what it was to take five majors. Although you worked like a horse on a treadmill, you never accomplished anything. lYeren't we relieved to see those one week holidays come around lYe went out every night in the week, and went skating all day long. Finally we had to go back to school to rest from such a round of debauchery. For the first time in North's history the Junior class was organized as a sep- arate unit. lYe elected our own officers and planned our own socials for our own diversion. But, taken on the whole, we were like the filling in the sandwich, just in between, but soon we would attain the dignity of seniors and could lord it over all that we could survey from our lofty pinnacle. Twelvth Grade-Remember the night of the Big lYind? Then we had the best excuse on this green earth for not doing our home work, for who could work without light to read by and a telephone to keep in contact with the wizard who knew all the answers? It really didn't matterthat the lights came on again fiveminutes later in some parts of the city because teachers eouldn't prove anything no matter what they surmised. At the Record Hop, Swing first entered the sacred portals of NQHS. 'l'he old rafters rang to the stomp of' the jitterbugs and hep-cats and the cheep, cheep of the Indian Love fall. Heated discussions were held behind the august portals of the Senior Student Vouncil, ranged in dignified state around their ping-pong table, concerning this menace to civilization. but swing withstood the Poge Fifteen

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IQEMEMIBEIQ WHEN Seventh Grade-That was the year the seventh grade was boarded out to any grammar school that would give them school room. lYe worked up an appetite every noon tramping over the hill to the cafeteria. The hours we spent in the shops and sewing rooms according to sex made us feel like the country mouse come to visit his city cousin. In the grammar school we were somebody, for we went to Junior High, but here in this huge community we were small fry. To the members of the traffic squad we were that paradox which must not only be ignored but also be kept in line and prevented from sliding down the banisters. However, we had our big moments. Remember the Junior Carnival? Ah! Now there was a whirl of abandoned gaiety and all for one quarter of a dollarw Ladies and gentlemen, moom' pitchers, basketball, amateur show, with an evening of dancing to the tripping strains of the Trust-Busters. The novelty of going to Junior High had only begun to pall when we found that it was really time to become a loose screw in an educational machine, for the eighth grade was near at hand. 4 Eighth GradeARemember the thrill of taking your rightful place in the complex scheme of things academic and unacademic? Here we Hrst encountered Vocational Guidance in its most pernicious form, Vocational Civics. Just as the conjuror says, Pick a card, any card, so the instructor said to us, Pick a voca- tion. Every girl was going to be a career woman, a stylist, an interior decorator, just as all the boys were to build the Boulder Dams and the Golden Gate bridge spans of the future, sit on the Supreme Court, or be G llen. We watched endless movies of other people at work, striking oil wells, making matches from California redwoods, balancing the national budget, or collecting the municipal garbage. lVe were initiated into the mysteries of simple and not so simple interest: we computed endless examples in which we were shown how to determine the amount to which a principal of 541.98 at a scandalous rate of interest would amount to by the time we were 99.4-L years old. After we had Hgured for three weeks, our benefactors showed us how to use a compound interest table which we promptly forgot how to use and had to be instructed in again in llath Review. Later they tried to soften the blow of ninth-grade algebra by perplexing us with problems concerning A, B, and c the was the little boyl and n eggs. However, like most good intentions they only paved the way to . . . the ninth grade. Ninth Grade-Now we were somebody tat least we thought soj for we organ- ized our class and ran our own gala affairs. Having learned how to balance the budget according to the laws of supply and demand, diminishing returns, and other erudite complexities in Economic Civics, we were privileged to see if we could make the outcome match the income. The duly elected officers found that in order to have a class dance they must first teach the class to dance. So the afternoon dancing classes came into being. The fox-trot and the waltz were still the dances for the ballroom, and lessons in these Terpsichorean feats alternated with discourses on the social etiquette of gum-chewing. There was a Spring Dance as a preliminary to the Prom in June. Contrary to the misconception of the present generation the now hoary-headed seniors did not dance in crinoline Page Fourteen

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virtuous attacks of these blue stockings, and exponents of tl1e jive flourished at the senior class dance. Recollect how any day you went to the studios of the class photographer you were sure to find seniors waiting to display those dazzling tooth-paste ad smiles for the benefit of a sensitized plate? Some day, when you are old and gray, you will meet an old lady who graduated with you who will cackle in senile glee, I have one of your class picturesg you never thought that those would return to haunt you, did you? But never mind, she'll only be revenging herself for the time you ditched her for that dizzy blonde that sat behind you in P. D. How could you forget the furor created by the discussions concerning what the well-dressed senior would wear to make his grand exit from his Alma Hater? The Rightists and Leftists, Blugwumps and Conservatives were all represented in the various contending elements in our previously placid puddle. Some held out for the old reliables, blue coats a.nd white flannels, while others were adamant in their vociferously expressed wish tor something new and different. This subject was of such vast importance that it really didn't matter that governments were being overthrown, that dictators were celebrating half-century birthdays, or that fuel picketers kept hot in the business of keeping Mr. Average Man cold, for what is as important as what one wears on the most important day of one's life? lYhat. revelries Class Day offered when you could revert to your own true nature and express your personality by sucking at lollipop in Physics, rolling your pants to expose a manly shank, wearing a hair ribbon two feet wide, and indulging in other intantile delights-when everyone piled into a procession of gaily streamered cars to spend the afternoon pleasure bent, swimming, dancing, and eating loads of goo! And then with the dawn of Commencement Day do you remember how the unholy glee with which you had looked forward to the time when you would finally quit this vale of tears began to be a bit forced as the actual hour of parting approached? Robert Martell Page Sixteen