Roundup High School - Rodeo Yearbook (Roundup, MT)

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32 RODEO — 1929 thing about it. They say that children are more likely to believe things that seem impossible than adults, but some- how or other I never could believe in anything I could not see. That is un- fortunate for me for the most important things in life—Faith, Love, Happiness, and Friendship, are all of the unseen. Many times I have wished that chair could talk. It was new when we got it, but it must have had some history before it was made into a chair. Where did the tree grow from which it was made? Probably in some great forest. Maybe not, though. Maybe it was an old, old oak that grew on a beautiful farm. It was beloved by the whole fam- ily. Then things began to go wrong. Money was need and they had to cut down the tree and sell it. Some day, I suppose the rocking chair will fall to pieces and have to be thrown out. The rockers have been broken and mended. In fact, one of the rockers is from another chair. It doesn’t match the other very well, the chair rather resembles a man with a wooden leg, but still it does its duty. Never the less, it can’t last forever. Some day its end will come. It is showing its age. The varnish is all off and it’s getting silvery. Its disposition is getting rather touchy. If I sit with my legs curled up under me, I’ll surely find three or four runners in my stockings. Probably some day one of us will be sitting in the chair rocking, rocking, rocking, when smash, the thing will break down and its career will be ended. I shall surely miss that old rocking chair. The Lonely Road A little road Ran up a hill. It bent and turned And then stopped still. And so it left Them all behind, And up this little Hill had climbed. There was no house Or dwelling near, Nor sound of people Did I hear. Alone there it Could rest in bliss But, Little Road, Great joys you miss. I wonder why It had stopped there, Did not go on And lead somewhere. The joy of leading To a place Where loving hands And cheerful face I guess it tired Of other roads, Of wagons carrying Heavy loads. Give beauty to A spot called “Home.” You lead not back Tired feet that roam. You only know, Here near the sky, The steps of wanderers Such as I. —Letty Alt

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RODEO — 1929 31 Rocking, Ckair Philosophy1 By LETTIE ALT The essay given below was ranked fifth in the preliminary state ex- temporaneous essay contest held March 7. This essay gave the writer the privilege of going to Bozeman to compete in the final contest in which she was ranked sixth. The contests are held every year under the aus- pices of Montana State College at Bozeman. “CQUEAK, Its song squeak, squeak, squeak,” has echoed in my memory for many years. The squeak must have developed before I was born, for as far back as I can remember, it has always been the same squeaky, creaky, rocking chair that it is today. It is an old chair, now. My mother loves to tell about the time that she and my father received it. They were leav- ing their old home to come to Montana and she says the neighbors were so glad to see them go that they gave them a farewell surprise party and threw in the chair for good measure. The surprise party, like most surprise parties, turned out not to be a surprise. My folks knew about it almost as soon as the rest. The self-invited guests were to meet at a school house not far from my parents’ home and they heard them arriving there. My father went outside and yelled to them to come over. Well, even if the party wasn’t a surprise, at least the chair was. The old rocking chair seems like one of the family to me. It has been a play- thing for my sister and me ever since we started to play. Sometimes we put pillows and blankets in it and then it was a handsome baby cradle. At other times it has been the front seat of a beautiful automobile. Sometimes it has played a more humble role, and turned over so that it rested its arms on the floor, it made an ideal dog house. to jeer, “See, see, see, see, your moth- er is rocking someone else. Tee hee, maybe she likes that baby better than she does you, tee hee.” At least, I thought it was the chair that said it. Maybe it was just the little demon, “Jeal- ousy,” putting its ugly words to the sweet music of the chair. He likes to tease one. Jealousy is easily encouraged, and hard to snubb. He causes people a great deal of misery. When I grew older, I liked to rock myself in the chair. It was most pleas- ant, when night was coming on, to sit in the chair in the enclosing shadows, shut my eyes, and rock back and forth, back and forth, while my thoughts wan- dered where they would. Most of the time my mind was occupied with dreams, but occasionally I got down to really serious thinking. I used to wonder a good deal above the world. This was before I studied geography. I was cer- tain it was flat. Why shouldn’t it be? It looked that way. I hadn’t yet learned that most things look like what they aren’t, and aren’t what they appear to be. I was afraid, too, that if I took too long a walk, some day I would come to the edge of the world and fall off. The thought of leaving the world, even by falling, wasn’t so bad, but where would I go? If all around the earth were merely air, would I keep on falling for- ever? It was a very terrifying thought. I can’t seem to remember the time that my mother rocked me to sleep in that chair, but I can remember when she rocked my sister to sleep. I was so easy to drop off to sleep, listening to that soothing “creak, creak, creak.” Later, when we were too big to be rocked, my mother would rock the neighbor’s child- ren. Somehow or other, the squeak didn’t sound as pleasant then. It took on more of a mocking tone and seemed What would happen to me if a lion should eat me up, was another terrible worry. I was afraid of that. I wanted to go to heaven so bad and I didn’t see how I could go to heaven if I were all eaten up. To me, the soul was some- thing inside the body. Therefore, it would disappear along with the rest of me if I were eaten up. My soul worried me a great deal. It was something that just was, but no one could tell me any-

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