Reading Memorial High School - Pioneer Yearbook (Reading, MA)

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THE PIONEER PAGE THIRTEEN streets to follow in order to discover this desperate band (the original maps showed cow-paths but then, Buston’s Streets are only cow-paths in dis¬ guise). I gathered about me this band of adventurers: Pat Pending, Wal Street, C. M. T. Camp, and General Nuisance. We outfitted ourselves with pogo-sticks and at the sug¬ gestion of General Nuisance we also added some oranges to our equipment. We started out in high spirits, but since none of the party had ever had much experience with pogo-sticks we had a great deal of difficulty with those little beasts. General Nuisance rode his like a little boy’s broom-horse and all but Pat Pending followed suit. Pat soon regretted not doing so because he miscalculated the size of a mud puddle and, on hopping the poor pogo-stick in the water, he lost his balance. He emerged looking like one of the Knights of the Mud-bath. Before con¬ tinuing our journey Wal Street gave a dividend to Pat to cheer the latter’s dampened spirits. Thus attired in mud and greenbacks, Pat was indeed a comical sight. Eventually after the many hardships of city travel, we came to a house which seemed to have been untouched since colonial days; I ap¬ proximated that this was our destina¬ tion. I figured better than I knew, for a little peep hole was opened in the massive door of three-ply pine and recalling my bootlegger’s signal at the “Poem of the Month Club” I said : “Three live mice on a dead cat’s chest Yo Ho And a quart of milk”. Eater I learned that the Cockneys detested milk and that rum should have been used even for mice. Even so, the door was opened and we were admitted into the presence of the last of the Red-Coats. It was really Pat Pend¬ ing’s appearance that gave ad mittance; his costume of mud and greenbacks combined with the party’s using pogo- sticks was very similar to the heaven¬ sent sign which was a golden man on stilts. The pogo-sticks somewhat re¬ sembled stilts and Pat’s greenbacks were almost as good as gold. The Cockneys treated us very gra¬ ciously for two or three days, although both sides were wary. Then one night a very clever pickpocket removed Pat’s greenbacks. As soon as we discovered the theft, we prepared to battle for our lives, because we knew there would be trouble as soon as anyone tried to buy anything with the green¬ backs. They were counterfeit. Late in the afternoon a great commotion was heard among the Cockneys, and we assumed a war¬ like formation under the command of General Nuisance. We loaded our hip- pockets with oranges and held one in each hand. As a Cockney tried to enter our room, an orange was thrust into his gaping mouth. The receiver was then in a sorry fix for how can a Cockney fight unless he has full use of his voice? We thus subdued the whole band in five minutes and we might have done it in two minutes, if we had waited for the whites of their eyes. Our complete victory made the place sound, or rather look, like a deaf and dumb asylum. I think that this is the most im¬ portant of my explorations for now South Buston is safe from Cockney contamination and may in time be fully Amerikuhnized. T. Fife ' 30. ADVENTURES IN (Overheard by the Pioneer’s Roaming Rover) “But you know, girls, there’s plenty going on behind the counter at the steam table. Yeah! I should say so. Keep your eyes peeled and you will DELICATESSEN see a lot. Uh, huh ! I caught a grand one the other day. Mr.— ambled down large as life, and started to conduct a rapid-fire cross examination on the subject of sandwich filling. My dear, you should have been there. It was gorgeous. Guess he thought he was

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PAGE TWELVE THE PIONEER gend of the rug. Let me tell you the story as it was told to me. “—• and learning that the Emir’s death had profited the donor, I reason¬ ed that perhaps the rug had some¬ thing to do with it so I called in a chemist. At first he laughed at me but finally he agreed to examine the rug. Well, you know the rest. The rug was sprinkled with a poisonious powder, the creation of long ago, which had evidently remained unsuspected for hundreds of years. When the dust had been stirred up the poison mingled with it and caused the death of those who had inhaled the preparation. Quite clever and ingenuous I call it.” -and so did I. P. G. P. ’30. THE GREATEST SCARE I EVER HAD One night I went over to my chum’s house, presumably to study. After a perfunctory glance at our lessons we started to read a mystery story, taking turns in reading aloud. Soon it grew so spooky we didn’t dare to go on be¬ cause there was no one else in the house. Even after we had closed the book, we grew so jumpy at every creak and rustle in the old house that we decided to go to bed. Not daring to sleep in separate; rooms, we slept together. Soon we were in deep slumber. But my dreams weren’t so very peaceful. I dreamed that I was skating over an iceberg, clad only in the thinnest of evening dresses with kid slippers on my feet. I skated over the edge and felt myself falling— falling. Just as I reached the water, I woke- up to discover that my bed-fel¬ low had slowly but surely wound the bedclothes around her recumbent form and I had nothing over me. Just then I saw something that drove all thought of the cold from my mind. A dark shadow lay on the moonlit floor. As I watched, it began to move toward the bed. Fascinated and terror strick¬ en. I watched the thing come closer and closer. My voice and limbs were frozen, and I could neither move nor make a sound. Then, oh horror of horrors ! The shadow slowly rose and my hysterical laughter filled the room. I had forgotten “Jove,” my friend’s new puppy. Though we had thought the door securely closed, the latch had not caught, and the puppy had nosed the door open and come in for com¬ pany. Barbara Jewett ’32. MY DISCOVERY OF HYD-AND-SIEK (Since reading “The Aztec Treasure House” by Janvier I have often won¬ dered if the public would not be in¬ terested in the explorations of Dr. Iamfrom Missouri, the Swedish Ar¬ cheologist. The following is the story of his South Buston explorations). For many years I have been an archeologist in South Buston. I studied ancient Hog Latin manuscripts in an effort to find a village which had not had contact with Amerikuh since the Red-coats gave up Buston on Evacuashun Day. How I alone knew it was there I can not tell Unless it is that I had observed certain things about the natives of South Buston which seemed to indicate that Cockney accent was being kept alive with even more fog-horn characteristics than in the case of Milt Gross. Thus I infer¬ red that the Red Coats had secretly left an isolated group of ultra Cockneys when they evacuated; the plan was : when South Buston became in danger of being Amerikuhnized these ultra Cockneys would receive a heaven-sent sign and they would im¬ mediately loose themselves on the un¬ suspecting Bustonians and contamin¬ ate them with Cockney. I was able to make out a plan of the

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PAGE FOURTEEN THE PIONEER still in class : ‘What’s in the sandwiches?’ — just like that, imagine it! Well, she didn’t notice what he said, so she said: ‘It’s a fish chowder over there in the cooler’. So he tried again: ‘What’s in the sandwiches?’ She didn’t again, so she said: ‘There they are right under your elbow on the platter’. So he said: ‘What’s in the sandwiches?’ That time somebody caught the idea: ‘Meat’. And then, you know, he took a bite, and couldn’t help but laugh, because, you see, the sandwiches were lettuce and mayonnaise”. R. H. S. SONGLAND Wake Up, Children, Wake Up ... General remarks of teachers I’m Afraid to Go Home in the Dark . .... Stanley Low Dancing Footsteps ..... Hazel Hach I’ll Close My Eyes to the Rest of the World . Lyman Belknap in class Here Comes the Showboat .•. The Operetta Missouri Squabble .. The Orchestra Only Making Believe .. Franklin Burnham Little Pal . Latin Companion Happy Days are Here Again.Vacation Lonely .... Students in the Math IV Class Melancholy . Helen Colley (?) Dixie Jamboree .. Senior Class Meeting Georgia Pines .Theme Song of the Commercial Geography Class Chant of the Jungle . Music Once in a Lifetime . No Assignments In the Hush of the Night . Latin 3 and 4 Homework being done Bigger and Better .. The Traffic Squad Turn on the Heat ... General Remarks to Tiny She’s So Unusual . Gertrude MacAuley I Can’t Remember the Words . Philip Parker reciting in French My Fate is in Your Hands .... Mrs. Mingo arrives at an inopportune moment I May Be Wrong .. Carney To Be Forgotten ... Detention Room A. T. and V. W. ’30.