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

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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

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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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22 CAERULEA '20 friends, accept defeat tomorrow, and try to appreciate its vast bene- fits. That is all.n The last was pure sarcasm. Imagine Jack Dempsey hitting you a sleep-producer on the chin, and then when you were listening to the sweet little birdies sing, he would softly murmur, liThat is alli' From that moment on, we loved Griggs and influenza in the same way. The old kill-j'oy hadnit leit us a chance to get the team rein- stated. We would have to play Pasaderia with a bunch of rah-rah boys, who oouldnit wrestle a playful puppy. we were going to he stepped on, murdered, and humiliated by our blood-thirsty rivals in order to afford pleasure to a dilapidatexi old sand-crab, who had funny ideas, and used us to practice them on. The entire student body would have gladly led him to the lions: in fact we raved about him all clay and night, and early next morning, or eleven o'clock to be exact. our board 01 strategy met. This strae tegic group consisted of the team, the. coach. and a few oi the leaders in school, and the conversation scorched the wind. It ran like this. iiHere we are with a team that could have knocked the paint off the Pasadena goal posts every quarter, a hunch that could beat iem as easy as falling off Pike's Peak, only easier, because you've gotta climb Pike's Peak heiore you can fall oil. And then to have this bird crab the act! Can you feature it? The team was about to give up the ghost and pass resolutions proclaiming Griggs a second Kaiser, when Walt Daly, the brainy one of the crowd. began to come down with an idea. He began: ilisten fellows! were going to get murdered tomorrow. Ain't you the little fortune teller, moaned Tim Donnoly. You ought to play the races, Walt. Some of you want to quit school, continued Daly, and a few of you want to burn down the gym, but neither will do us any good. Pasadena will beat us just the same. Therefore, I propose that if we must get beat, letis make it so had that nobody will ever forget it.