Santa Ana High School - Ariel Yearbook (Santa Ana, CA)

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T H E A R I E L Then he sent a telegram to his father: I'm playing. He struck the Students' Employment Bureau for a job. The captain of the base- ball team heard about the resolution and handed him a job peeling potatoes in the basement of the Inn. That meant three hours of precious time a day, and all time is precious to a football man. It is not necessary to go into all the details of the next two months of Andy's life. He had hard things to do. Hard letters came to him and he had answers to write that came as near bringing tears to his eyes as anything could. Then there were hard things to be met on the campus. He lost his job at the Inn, he thought because he had no drag with the man who was then president of the club. Anyhow the man who took his place was a friend of the president and affiliated with him in one or two undergraduate organizations. Andy's room mate smiled and said, That is the way some people help an athlete out of a hole. But he was taken on at the Roble table. Miss Regan, the only girl he knew in the university, who was being rushed by two of the four sororities, seemed to be afraid that her old high school friend might rec- ognize her and when he leaned over her and ran off the bill of fare she did not seem to see him. Like many another freshman Miss Regan had failed to grasp Stanford ideals on her arrival beneath the Stanford arcades and like many another girl there came a time when she knew that many of the men of whom Stanford is proud slung hash for a liv- ing, and then she remembered her treatment of Andy with a quiver of conscience. Andy went into the freshman game at guard and played a strong game. Generally a man in the line has to play twice as hard as a back to receive bleacher and incidentally newspaper praise. But Andy played his game. The morning papers told how Stanford pulled a victory out of what was California's. There was a lot of how Smith went round the end for twenty yards, how a Sandow booted the pigskin over the tem- pestuous sea of struggling humanity to Higgins who fumbled, but the name of Andy Morton, right guard, was scarcely mentioned except when Harris of California went low into Morton for four yards, which Andy remembered with chagrin. i The Associated Press dispatches in the home paper, and later the San Francisco papers, were read by a Dr. Morton. There was a sigh of relief when he found no word concerning the death of his son Andy. In fact there was nothing to indicate that he had been carried off the field on a stretcher.

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THE ARIEL ' Gther fellows have done it. I can, said Andy quietly. But he waited, slightly undecided. That night there was an editorial in the Daily Palo Alto. It deplored the fact that there were sinewy, raw-boned freshmen who were not out helping the team. It appealed to class spirit and pointed a linger of scorn. In his mind Andy knew he was going to play, but he didn't confess it to himself. Then he sat another night on the bleachers. Not a whole prac- tice through. He could not. Many a time in Encina strenuous strain has nigh broke a heart string and the man who slept in the other bed knew nothing of it. Andy had threshed it out in the granary of his imagination while the moonbeams cast bright spots on the couch and floor. The father was no man of dreams and his passion was strong and hard. Rupture was certain to fol- low in the path of the son's heedlessness of parental convictions, and there would be trouble terrific. It would be terrific because Andy had all the devotion that a son may have for a father who has been at the same time friend and mighty good ideal. The father had harbored for half a decade the hope that his son might be a college man. The son was determined that there should be no college unless he took the most active and heaviest part of those things there going on that his physique and talents made possible. He relied on the future to square the parental dissatisfaction. But he had other things to contend against. There was money, and more than money was the imminent flunk. Here was the tangle and the Hail threshed trip-hammer fashion, but it threshed out. True that the danger was great, but freshman-like, he realized not its full significance. Youth is hopeful. Andy crawled quietly out of his bed and upon the cold stone of the window. He looked out over the oval in the moonlight as many another Encina man has done. He heard not the songs coming from way downe the Mayfield road. His eyes did not seek the glimmering light in a top floor on the Row. The bleachers loomed like a terraced multitude and in his imagination Andy huddled in shame-faced humiliation while the ball was being kicked around the field. This picture he seemed to see and his lips grew thin, his brain clearer. Then he went back to bed and to sleep. Andy had threshed the matter out. He had decided. The next day the football manager had a call from the big fresh- man. Likely material, the manager thought and gave him the best fit he had, a couple of last year's shoes, a pair of stockings with holes, a jer- sey that had served for a giant. But Andy did not mind misfits.

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THE ARIEL The father bought every morning three San Francisco papers and each morning the sporting items were read. The doctor had made up his mind that as soon as his son was injured he would take train for Palo Alto. He knew that it was coming, a mere matter of time. He only hoped that the injury would not be very serious-the lesson would be fully as effective. But he did not read of Andy's maiming. Instead, after two weeks, came frequent mention of a fight that was on for a vacancy in the varsity line between an old second team man named Miller and Freshman Mor- ton. There was one dispatch in the Examiner that the doctor clipped out and put away in his desk, and, it must be said, it was done in spite of himself with a slight feeling of fatherly pride. It read: Morton is making a heroic fight for the tackle position and receives unstinted praise from the coaches. He goes into every play with the aggressiveness of a tiger. His broad shoulders plough through the opposing team like a bull tearing through a greenhouse. VVhile lacking thegtechnical knowledge of the game that his rival possesses, he has a dash and abandon that has seldom been seen on the gridiron. In strength the freshman is unsur- passed on the field. The father did not know that the campus corres- pondents were writing at the rate of twenty-five cents to the column inch and was a little deceived when he read some of the things that were printed. But there was a contest on, though from the first even those on the side lines could predict the outcome. Andy had the fight in him. The coaches were pleased when they saw him up against it, for then he played his best game. That is what we need this year, said Coach Dare. Two days before the game the papers announced that the fresh- man had won out. The game was on. Thousands of people waved the Cardinal and other thousands waved the Blue and Gold. On one side of the field the rooting sections of the rival colleges yelled and sang. The band played, but what is the use of trying to describe the action and the excitement of a Big Game. For those who have seen no description is adequateg for those who have not seen--they would not understand. Then the two teams rushed on the Held, the California fellows first, in their new jerseys, followed a few minutes later by the Cardinal players. Across from the Stanford section was a dejected doctor as lonesome as though called to a funeral. As many another layman, Andy's father thought that the Big Game was the game in which the greatest havoc