Polytechnic High School - Caerulea Yearbook (Long Beach, CA)

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Leslie Cummins Speaking broadly, there is only about one thing to mar the joy of high school days; that thing is the faculty. It is the one wet blanket on an otherwise glorious life. It's like getting a pink slip when the hunch is out in front waiting to take you to Washington Park to see the ball game. In short, the teachers are to the students, what the First of July was to the members of the royal order of indulgers. I'm not saying there is nothing good about the teachers; in dividually they are almost human at times. That is all but Alexan- der Griggs. I don't suppose you remember him. He looked like the last petal on the last rose of summer, and he had a disposition that would have made a bottle of diluted Bevo look like a real drink. A canary with a broken wing was a bold and ferocious bird. beside him. He knew more history than the person who wrote it, and he could tell you, without a tremor, how Nero once bathed in Roman blood, but rather than to take off his coat where the students could have seen him, he would have iumpecl into the Los Angeles river. Griggs would have made Lord Chesterfield look like Peck's Bad Boy: he was so correct and modest. That was the kind of a knock-iem-dead and drag-'em-out specimen Alex. was. Well, to come back from behind the Store and get down to business, Griggs had one supreme hobby. He believed thoroughly that students should indulge in athletics. but that they should do so with their fingers crossed. It Was the right iciea to play games, but

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LITERARY 19 m How sweet cwould be ii only she, When masks were snatched from faces, Could look up in his face and sec The spell that Cupid placesl Her ioy was gone, her face was pale, Her feet lagged in their dancing, That one plan of her life. would fail That seemed to her entrancing. Masks off! Her partner pressed her close! She faltzred as she did it; She straightened for the final dose, Unmasked her face, and hid it. The sailor gently raised her head; She trembled through and through! But 10! Their eyes met fast instead For he was crosseyed tooHl When you haven't anything else to do, you might spend your time reading some of the literary selections in Camlea. That's What theft: there for, you know.

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Nineteen Twenty a crime to win them. According to Griggs, a genuine fourteen cart sports- man was the fellow who would start in a race and come in a block or two behind carrying the other fellowts hat and coat. Our particular: style of giving the ball to the fulI-back and then shoving him And the pigskin thru the entire opposition, nearly caused this motherly old soot to do the Shimmie from nervous prostration. It made him shudder when we defeated every school in the IeagUEe overwhelming Whittier 69 to O, and getting in great shape for the game with Pasadena. That of course was our big game of the year. and when November wore away, we began to watch our team practice everyr afternoon after school, and then we would dream about them all night. Then when we were sure that Pasadena would come to grief, presto, and the sun went out of our lives. Alexander Griggs had played his trump card, and he had played it well. It wasntt exactly a blow to the team; it was more like the ex- plosion oi a Big Bertha . It was during the football assembly, the day before Thanksgiving, that Griggs begged leave to make a few remarks, and then what did he do but paralyze eighteen hundred students and a whole team of gridiron gladiators. With the following words: ttAs chairman of the committee that passes upon the eligibility 0f your football players, I have decided that the entire team is in- eligible. The reasons may not suit you but they suit me. Young