Petersburg High School - Missile Yearbook (Petersburg, VA)

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1 -mi 'H PETERSBURG HIGH SCHOOL four steps, the only ones left. High in the tower there once had hung the bell that called the populace to the services. The old tower now stood mutely, its voice stilled forever. Silently it stood and seemed to brood on What used to be. There was no tiled floor here. There was nothing to tell of the riches that used to abound in the city. Morgan had seen to that. He had looted and sacked mercilessly, taking everything he could put his cruel, itching fingers on, but the Cathedral tower had stood, bringing down through the ages a quiet peace and a solitude that has become mellowed in its old age. Nature has kindly covered its bleeding wounds. Trees and shrubs cover its naked and marred walls. Draperies of clinging vines clothe it in ver- dent greenness, and a carpet of long grasses takes the place of a once paved iioor. ' It was here that women and children had come for refuge from so cruel a tyrant. But what cared he for the sacredness of what lay beyond those church doors? It was to the churches and government houses that he had gone first. Perhaps he had splintered and burst his way through, cutting and slashing as he went, taking everything that glittered, snatching the jewels from the women's necks and arms and leaping toward the altar to gather the church's riches while the women wept and prayed in terror and clung to their screaming children. There still stand the walls of Casa Reale that might have withstood attack. Its Walls are thickly built with small square holes placed every few feet for the convenience of a firing squad, but no musket barked a Warning from its walls that day, for men had been hacked or cowed into submission by gold- thirsty pirates. Here, too, Mother Nature is kindly and com- fortably folding to her bosom a building that had seen more active days. The arched bridge still spans the trickling stream that flows beneath it. Many a weary traveler had trod over its narrow roadway, for it marked the entrance to the great metropolis of Central America. It was a bridge over which had come march- ing feet. Buccaneer cutthroats, dressed in the many colored costume of their day and heavily loaded with a bewildering assortment of knives and pistols, advanced across the narrow bridge, advanced while the people fled before them. Shouting in their triumph, they killed right and left, seizing what treas- ure had not been hidden. Marching feet-the sound comes dimly now down through the time-worn centuries. Grass-crowned .-21... H'-

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-01 --THE M1sslLE merchantmen, and the barefoot boat crews in torn and dirty clothing lent a varied touch of color to sand and sky. Perhaps a few tiny tots looked on in wonder or ran up and down the sandy strip and joyously picked up the shells that were teasingly just out of reach of the waves. Old Sol had smiled on those people of yesteryear just as he does on us of today. I often wongier just how many millions of tales Sol could tell us if he wou . Another picture loomed before me, a painted picture of sea and sky. It was a dull sky, for Helios had hid his smiling face in sorrow. It was an oily, grayish sea over which the ship skimmed, urged on by the wind that filled its sails to bursting. Salt spray fiew from beneath its prow. The fleeing ship's hold was filled with the treasure of a rich city. Sir Henry Morgan and his buccaneers came panting to the beach and cursed the fleeing ship on the horizon. He must have raged in his wrath at the tide that had left the tiny boats in the bay high and dry. He would have to wait several hours before he could reach the remaining ship at anchor, which he could easily confiscate for use in pursuing the rich prize that had slipped through his aching fingers. -My dreaming was disturbed by the rather realistic clink of coins, rattled close to my ear. One of the party shook his filled hand and made it clink tantalizingly. A merry, wicked gleam came to his eyes as he grinned and said, Some nickels Morgan forgot. I, being quite young in years and thick headed tunfor- tunately, this curious malady has stuck with mel immediately started to search the beach. I searched in vain while my good friend picked up coin after coin. It was quite a while before I found that he threw the coins on the beach ahead while I was not looking and would then calmly gather them only to repeat the action. Needless to say, I was laughed at for my stupidity. I turned and entered the ruins of the Cathedral, centuries old, but still a place of majesty and interest. Built of stone and mortar, its walls and tower had withstood the elements. The blue sky, with its cottony clouds as its roof now, and the doors had long since fallen to dust. A tiny seed had found an earth- filled crevice high up on one of its lofty walls and had grown into a majestic tree. Its searching roots had reached down on either side of the masonry to find what nourishment they could, and so lent a grotesque appearance to one corner of the huge, massive structure. A little to one side a once magnificent stone circular stairway led upward to the bell tower. I mounted .20-

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-'iff THE 1vx1ss1LE in its mellowed age, the bridge serves as a sunning place for the sprightly little lizards that skip about over its moss-grown stones. The tower of San Augustine lifts its shrub-grown, careworn head proudly as we look back for a last lingering farewell. It had seen a happy people bowed down in sorrow over night. It had seen and heard the flames eat and crackle in diabolic glee the homes and municipal buildings of a beauty-loving people. It had seen the rose--colored smoke turn to grayish dullness in the early dawn of a day that saw ruin where once prosperity had reigned. San Augustine lifts its storm-beaten head proudly, for it knows that they were not a people without courage, for they founded a new Panama, miles away from the old. The new Panama is a city of a once more happy, prosperous people. They are not without their troubles, however, for they are like other people, a tear today and a smile tomorrow. Thoughts By Katherine Rucker Alone At this hour of night, When all have gone to bed, I read, they think, but instead, I plan my fight Alone. Mistakes Of the day don't fade As they come to my mind at this hour. I was innocent as a flower, When thoughtless I made Mistakes. Oh, God, Direct this one To live tomorrow right, Without errors in the iight Of life not yet won, Oh, God! -.22-.