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

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CHRISTMAS 19 3 9 easily forgotten. Just last night Stanley had told his young wife, “Darling, I feel as if we were still on our honeymoon. She had said blissfully, “We’ll always be on a honeymoon, always, always.” Then he had kissed her, a sure sign that they were still a little giddy from the great blow that had come when they had both first felt that queer sick feeling that is known as love. Now the dust lay an inch thick behind the furniture in the little white house with scarlet blinds, and the toast was always the color of Socrates, the undernourished black cat, but Stanley and Lura wore rose-colored glass¬ es and were surrounded by a rosy haze so that to them the house was spotless and the toast tasted like the most delicious food ever cooked. They also supposed that Socrates was as happy as they were, but Socrates, not being in love and lacking the philosophizing and un¬ derstanding temperament of his great namesake, often stormed around the house sharpening his claws on the upholstery and doing other ill bred things, anything but happy. Another big tear followed the first down into Lura’s dainty handkerchief. Miserably she picked up the magazine that lay beside her and flipped over a few pages. The stories of young love and moonlight seemed uninteresting to her; the latest Paris fashion notes and the gay new patterns were dull and colorless. She turned a page and saw this: “A CHRISTMAS Gif 1 FOR JOHN? MAKE IT YOURSELF!” The young wife could hardly believe her eyes; she brightened noticeably and looked at the article again. It said, “Achieve that individual, smart, hand made look to your gifts, and listen to the compliments. It’s easy. Make them yourself this year. Send 25c to Marjorie Allen, c o this magazine, and you will receive instruc¬ tions about how to make each of the articles pictured on this page. Hurry, so that you will get yours in plenty of time for Christmas. Around the edges of the page were bright illustrations depicting such things as em¬ broidered bedroom slippers, patchwork quilts, hand- painted desk calendars, hand-knitted neckties, pounded copper ash trays, and numerous similar attractive ktiick- nacks. Lura gazed ecstatically at the unexpected de¬ lights. Stanley would love any one of them, and es¬ pecially the slippers done in red w ith purple wild gees: flying drowsily across a luscious golden yellow moon. Or the shellacked green hook jacket with a border o blase hounds alternating with surprised looking rabbit of a peculiar bronze shade. Or the carved wooden wal rus bookends. 0, what luck to find this, she exulted She dashed off in search of pen, envelope, and a twenty - five cent piece. Socrates lashed his tail angrily and laid back hi ears as Lura swept him into her arms. O. Socrates- honey, Christmas is coming in only two more week . Won’t Stanlev he surprised! Socrates pulled away ii ritably as she laid her cheek happily against his smootl black head. He thought that it would he a much better idea if, instead of wasting time on foolish things like hand-knitted neckties, Lura spent a little more on the planning of his, Socrates’, meals. Indeed, he wouldn ' t mind if she didn’t plan them, if only she would remem¬ ber that the dearest pleasure in a cat’s life is eating and give him anything besides oatmeal in the morning and vegetables (!) at night, things that any self-respecting cat would disdain. Lura put him down on the sofa while she ran out to mail the letter to Marjorie Allen. Socrates clawed the blue upholstery savagely. Every day for the next week Lura watched for the postman; on the seventh day her eagerness was re¬ warded, because he brought the letter from Marjorie Allen. She tore it open and looked upon the promised instructions, but never were more complicated instruc¬ tions seen. For a moment Lura was taken aback, but not for long. Nothing was capable of daunting her when her mind was made up and her Stanley’s happiness was concerned. So at the first opportunity which pre¬ sented itself she procured the materials necessary for the making of the slippers. She also bought a book and a pipe; the slippers were not to be Stanley’s only present from his wife. Triumphant, Lura bore her pur¬ chases home, and dropped them on the table. “First,” instructed Marjorie Allen, “spread your materials before you. Be sure you have everything you need so that you can work without being interrupted. Now, using the pattern pieces labeled A. B. As Lura worked happily on for several days, the slippers steadily, if awkwardly, took form so that eventually they could be recognized at least as some kind of footwear. They were of a beautiful scarlet color, heavenly in the eyes of their maker. Gradually, round, mellow, golden moons appeared on the toes, much superior to the pale, small, cold one that appeared outside her window at night, Lura thought. At last the day before the long awaited holiday arrived, and the purple geese were coming along health¬ ily, Lura worked all afternoon on the birds, but they were stubborn. For some reason or other, they looked like crows. Three times she ripped out her work and three times she re-embroidered the lazily flapping purple wings. She was careful to take time out for supper although her work was far from completion, because if Stanley should return to a supperless home, he would be apt to suspect something. She secreted the wonder¬ ful slippers behind the antique red cherry desk in the hall. That evening while Stanley was waiting for supper, he saw one of Lura ' s magazines lying on the floor. Idly he picked it up and just for the sake of satisfying his curiosity turned a few pages. A bright-colored article lay before him. It was headed: A CHRISTMAS GIF I FOR JOHN ? MAKE IT YOl RSELF! His eye roamed down the page. What ludicrous stuff! Look at those slippers, for instance! What man in his right mind could watch purple geese flying over his toes without a qualm? And red slippers at that! Stanley snorted indignantly at the thought, then dropped the magazine guiltily as he heard Lura say that supper was ready. At twel e o’clock the next morning Lura had just Seventeen

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THE PIONEER illusioned man. I was suffering from a phobia. I was seasick and how terra firma did roll and buckle. Why, I could even smell the salt, and every time I thought of Italian spaghetti—oh! Of course, I was confined to bed for a complete rest, and naturally the bed was in a room, a room with taunting wallpaper. It was green; if I dare presume so, a ghastly pale green that rolled and swirled in hideous scrolls, entwining itself in other green swirls sickening to look at. They twisted too en¬ ergetically and fairly snarled; I was literally knocked to my feet even by looking at them. If I gazed long enough on this piece of creative genius, it seemed to rotate and radiate like a spinning top. By the third day, the white polka dots around the border had grown before my blood-shot eyes into a fluctuating white cap effect. After a week of swirling in that green maze the bed seemed to sprout masts and I felt like yelling out periodically, “Ship ahoy!” After I quite violently threw that plate of hash at my nurse, however, I was moved to a more soothing room. Yes, I recovered. But to get on, I remember once in ’29 after the crash I lay a palsied and moaning wreck in a room just blasted with (of all colors) red! All kinds of red! It hung in suspended animation before my eyes, forming ticker tape. Now, it wasn’t that nice bright red that blinds one. No, it had been on those morbid walls for years, and it had dimmed into a dark red, vengeful, bloody, and all too suggestive of the recent predomi¬ nant hue of ink in the ledgers and books of my firm. I got out of that place by smoking in bed. Wait a minute; don’t go away. You know, I suffer horribly from hay fever and I hate, just hate, all kinds of flowers. Can’t stand the sight of them, even a picture of ' em makes me go off in a paroxysm on the spot. Well, the year I contracted pneumonia I had a room bedecked with lovely clumps and clods of daisies and golden rods worked out in a split complimentary color scheme of pink and yellow-green. I could just see the pollen waiting. Have you ever seen pink and yellow- green together? My old seasickness would return every- time I would glance at it. Of course, my hayfever took a bow and a return engagement. Those limpid, fetid blossoms which hung helter skelter about the room—I hated them so! I attacked those lurid posies with a nail file until there wasn’t a single pink and yellow-green bloom ablooming. Again in ’35, after attempting to come home from a honey of a party at Louie’s, I had rather a bad fall on the ice. (People do say it affected me mentally.) I was confined for six months to a small cell of a room em¬ bellished with a design that its creator no doubt thought a very precocious masterpiece. Personally, I detest those inane scenic wallpapers, and that’s what this was. I might have put up with a south sea theme, or a land¬ scape, or something reminiscent of spring and fair weather, but this was a winter group, depicting winter sports. Ice was the predominating background. A skier skidded across the baseboard, skaters whirled profusely between onrushing toboggans, and leering groups of people toasted one another over roaring fires. Well sir, I amused myself by throwing homemade darts at those inert creatures. I soon became very animated in my work. One day I observed my cousin Spider’s eight guage shot gun leaning invitingly in the corner. I blew three sides of that room to confetti. Well, these little narrations are just to explain and help trace for you that burning, grinding hate I hold for wallpaper. Then came ’39 and I had recovered sufficiently from my numerous maladies to move about. But I lived to regret it about three months ago! It happened at one of those fashionable garden parties given by Mrs. Cor¬ nelius Grieg Van Smuts, to which I rated a coveted in¬ vitation. The party had been a brilliant success and the guests even more so, the gentlemen accoutered in swallow tail coats, ascots, et cetera; the ladies, in long frocks and ridiculous hats. Everywhere guests were laughing and talking in congenial huddles. The younger set were dancing, and the rocking chair brigade were smiling and drooling into their beards. As I say, all went well until it began to rain, driving the guests to shelter. I always have said that “Corny” has a beauti¬ ful home; she keeps it decorated in the very essence of ultraness. Well, anyway, I dashed in to avoid an un¬ called for bath. Before the deluge I had been amusing a few onlookers by cutting, out of a folded newspaper, geegaws which they all called “clevah”. I was still armed with a formidable foot or so of shears. As l remember it, Lucille Batiste de Jaux was on my right and Baron Felix Armand Slush on my left as we turned the corner of the foyer hall. The lovely gilded doors of the drawing room stood open revealing the assembled guests. And then I saw it! I let out a bellow that shook the mirrors. That wallpaper! It was striped in orchid and pale fudge. It was too much for a man who had suffered as I had to bear. I know I didn’t stop scream¬ ing and yelling until I had cut off the tails on every dress coat in that room with those hungry scissors. Bar¬ on Slush’s longies became shorts in double quick time. Yes, I just love it here. It’s so quiet. I am ill, you know! But the walls are such a restful white. Those men in white are annoying at times, and those bars do get on my nerves, but there just isn’t a single solitary inch of wallpaper—that I know. Yeowee! Tom Connelly SAGA OF A CHRISTMAS PRESENT “Only two more weeks till Christmas!” The short printed line in the newspaper struck Lura in the face like a well aimed slap. Why hadn’t she remembered? And this Christmas she had planned to make with her own little lily-white hands a gift for Stanley. Only two weeks left. Whatever could she do; what could she make? 0, why hadn’t she remembered? A big tear rolled down Lura’s pretty, irresponsible cheek and fell into her lap. Stanley and Lura had been happily married for just three months; their quarrels were still silly things Sixteen

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THE PIONEER taken the roast from the oven and set it on the table. She had cut one slice when Stanley came into the kit¬ chen and said, “Come on, can’t we open our presents now? Do you have to do that? Twelve o’clock and no presents yet!” She waved the carving knife dangerously at him. “All right, but, darling, I’ve been so busy ... no chance at all till now ...” They hurried into the living-room, carving knife and all. “Take this one first,” Lura urged. Stanley divested the package of its red paper and silver reindeer and opened the box. There before his eyes lay, of course, the scarlet slippers, looking like a crude enlargement of the mazagine illustration. He stared at them blankly for a moment, swallowed hard, and then he cried, “These geese look almost real. And to think that my little girl made them all by her¬ self.” Stanley had remembered the mazagine article and the description of the red slippers and the geese; he had thus been able to classify the indeterminate pur¬ ple spotches in the very nick of time. Joyously, they looked at the other gifts. Meanwhile, Socrates had stood all he could; that tantalizing odor was too much for him. He leapt lightly onto the table, seized the first slice of the roast Lura had cut, and pulled it to the floor. When the two young people returned to the kitchen, Socrates was licking his chops with no feeling of guilt whatever. “You know, darling,” Stanley was saying, “I’ve never seen such clever-looking slippers. I’ll be the envy of every man in town.” Lura picked the black cat up and whispered into his silky ear, “Socrates, honey, isn’t this the loveliest Christmas?” Socrates purred happily and for once rub¬ bed his head adoringly against her cheek. Ruth Shumaker THE DE CISION As if blown by the breeze that was sweeping land¬ ward from the Atlantic Ocean, the sun suddenly ap¬ peared out of the blue waters and like an artist tinted the simple homes of the fishermen of Gloucester. On this bit of rock-bound coast the fishermen had chosen to build their homes and leave their wives and children, to whom they returned after the hard months spent at the Grand Banks. Early as it was, however, on this particular spring morning, people were already hard at work, for every day fishing vessels sailed from the harbor, and every day others returned. Even those men who were remain¬ ing at home, for the present were busy mending nets and repairing their vessels. Along the waterfront of this thriving town as it was in 1891 ran the docks, and beyond them in the water the numerous fishing schoon¬ ers were anchored. Sitting on one of these docks and gazing thoughtfully at the ruggedly built fishing schoon¬ ers was a small girl, probably about eleven years old. Her sturdy brown body was clad in a faded shirt and trousers several sizes too large for her, which had doubt¬ less been previously worn by an older brother. Indeed, had it not been for the pigtails which hung down her back, at first glance she might easily have been mis¬ taken for a boy. She was Harriet Staples, the only daughter of a poor fisherman. Harriet was not in a good mood. She angrily kicked the water, and as each drop fell into the ocean again and the ripples went outward in ever widening circles the same question went over and over again in her mind. Why couldn’t she go to the Grand Banks on her father’s fishing vessel when he left in the morning? Hadn’t she always done everything else with her seven brothers? Hadn’t she played ball with them, helped them cut wood, and even mended nets and sails? Indeed, she was as big and strong as the youngest, but now for the first time in her life she was to be separated from them, for on this trip her father was taking all of his sons—all seven—while previously he had taken only those who were old and strong enough to help with the work of sailing the large schooner and pplling in the heavy nets. Oh, how the fact that she, who so wanted to live a boy’s life, was a girl rankled. Suddenly Harriet knew what she would do as if it had been written before her in the water, for she was determined that she would not be left at home if she could possibly help it. That night before she went to bed she bade good- by to her father and her brothers. They would set sail very early in the morning, and she was not expected to be awake to see them go. As she started to climb the stairs that led to her bed up under the eaves, she took one last look at the familiar living room where she had spent so much of her eleven years. She looked at the old clock which set on the mantle above the fireplace; she looked at the small bookcase in one corner of- the room which held the few books that she loved and which she had read so many times over and over again; she looked at the little out-of-tune piano that had been given them by a friend and around which the family had gathered so many times while her mother played the songs they all loved to sing and her father accompanied them on his violin; she looked at her father as he sat slumped in his favorite chair beside the fireplace, sleep¬ ing as was his evening custom; at her mother as she swiftly put stitch after stitch into the stocking she was mending; and then she looked at her brothers who were gathered around a small table excitedly talking of the next day’s adventure. Then turning, she walked deter¬ minedly up the well-worn steps. Hers could hardly be called a room, for the roof which slanted down to the floor made it practically im¬ possible to stand erect except in the center, where the two sloping walls met in a peak. To separate Harriet’s room from the rest of the attic, which was used as a storage room, a large piece of canvas, which she liked to play was a sail, was stretched across just at the head of the stairs. The space behind this partition was barely large enough to hold the tiny cot on which she slept and the small chest of drawers in which she kept what little clothing and treasures she possessed. She set Eighteen