Scituate High School - Chimes Yearbook (Scituate, MA)

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10 THE CHIMES ' ' Lord), don ' t nienlion about helping you with your boat. I ' m alto- gether too glad to help. Heaven knows it ' s lonesome enough here, and I like someone to talk with. I always wanted to know, asked my father, what happens to these barges when you get caught in a storm. Oh, they cast us loose, and all we can do is hope to heavens we will get picked up. I should think you would be awfully afraid of a storm, said my mother. Oh, no, lady. When you follow the sea, you find there ain ' t no time to be afraid. Why, many ' s the time — We saw there was going to be a story; so we sat down — w hen I ' ve been in plenty of tight spots, and it just doesn ' t pay to be afraid. How long have you followed the sea? I asked. I ran away from my home up in Vermont when I was fourteen and came down to Boston, where I shipped as a cabin boy in a clipper ship. Boy! that was a tough ship with a tough crew, the worst I ' ve ever run up against. He spit a thin stream of tobacco out into the w ater and drew his big rough hand across his mouth. Yep, he went on hurriedly, fearing that we might go, nearly every morning w hen I went on deck to scrub ' em down, I found blood. There was a feud between the first mate and old Dan, the Finn. One day in a storm the mate sent him aloft up the royal mainmast to fix the main sky sail for no reason at all. When Dan reached the top, the first mate spun the wheel around and the ship came into the wind with a whang which threw old Dan off. Off! Off where? asked Mother. Off in the sea, Ma ' m, and that ' s right where he is today. That was a dirty, cowardly trick of the mate ' s, and we swore to revenge old Dan, we did. One day when I and a couple of other fellows were aloft, we dropped a two-hundred pound block on the mate ' s head. We thought sure it had killed him, but it hadn ' t. After a week he came to consciousness, but he had a fractured skull and a broken back; he warn ' t fit for the sea no more. Did you ever see him again? Yep, that was what I was coming to. Twenty years later when I was express man at the old Providence Depot, which was where the Statler Hotel is today, I saw him. He was in the station sweeping the floor. He saw me and said, ' Hello, John, I ' m awful glad to see you. ' ' I ' m glad to see you, too, ' I said. ' Right where you are now, doing a nigger ' s job, wearing a nigger ' s cap. It serves you right. You killed a good man, drowned him. You should of died w hen you were hit with the block, but you didn ' t. God saved you so you could do a job like this, a nigger ' s job, and I ' m glad of it. ' He was white with rage and would have like to hit me, but I was in my prime and could have licked him ten times over. He just stared and walked off. There was a long silence. Then, he said with a little sigh,

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THE CHIMES 9 ing to the types of people who pursue them. Children, for the most part, have hobbies such as keeping scrap books, reading and playing games; whereas older people have more varied interests — sports, books, stamp- collecting, animals, flowers, birds, or numberless other things. Upon inquiring about a certain girl ' s hobby the other day, I was much amazed. It was — increasing her vocabulary! Being quite astounded at this revelation, I pressed this extraordinary individual ( at least I regarded her as such) for further enlightenment. She replied that she spent hours at a time over the dictionary, finding all the synonyms and then the an- tonyms of a certain word. A profitable hobby, don ' t you think? Another person that I discovered with an unusual hobby was a soap collector. This enthusiast was a much-traveled person, and found pleasure in collecting one bar of soap from each hotel she visited. Each bar served as a reminder of her stay at that particular place; thus it had a story attached to it. A third hobby that I regard as unique is that of an amateur artist whom I have interviewed. Her hobby was a diary, but one without any writing! Instead, it was a small notebook filled with sketches. This girl made some little sketch each day of the thing that she regarded as the most important event of the day. For instance, when looking through the diary, I came to a picture of a clown with a few animals and a tent in the back- ground. Have you guessed how she spent that day? I think this is a very clever and original idea; don ' t you? A hobby, as well as being an interesting pastime, may be educational, and may develop one ' s character. Have you one? MR. CAVANAUGH Donald Pitkin, ' 39 There had been a heavy squall that afternoon. So after dinner we all went down to my boat to make sure that it was all right. I kept it down at the pier of the Boston Sand and Gravel Company, a concern which tears up the surrounding hills in bulk and sends them through a stone-crushing machine, later to come out in the form of sand. We found my boat to be all right, and while we were standing on the dock, entranced by the silent dusk, the stillness was broken by a deep voice saying, Hello! I turned around suddenly and beheld the heavy blocklike form of Mr. Cavanaugh, captain of Barge 30. Mother and Dad, I should like you to meet Mr. Cavanaugh, who has helped me a lot this summer with my boat. He offered my father and mother a big sun-burned hand, one w hich had seen a lot of work. He seemed very glad to see us, and as if he didn ' t want us to go, started right in talking.

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THE CHIMES 11 I got this job, about as low as you can get, being your own boss, on one of these scows. He spit again. What a story! You ' ve certainly seen a lot in your day, Mr. Cava- naugh. Yep, I can say I ' ve seen quite a bit, have been everywhere from New York to Hong Kong. And tomorrow I sail to Boston in this tub. The mosquitoes were getting pretty bad and affected all of us but Mr. Cavanaugh, whose tough skin they couldn ' t possibly pierce. There was another long silence. This was interrupted by Mother ' s Well, Don, we really have to go. It ' s been terribly nice talking with you, Mr. Cavanaugh. I ' ll bring down a pie or cake for you tomorrow, and some apples for the rest of the bargemen. Good-by. Good-by, sir. Good-by. As we walked away, his eyes followed us with a longing, desperate look as if he had parted with the best friends on earth. He gave his limp pants a pull. A slight ray of hope swept across his face. Perhaps I can talk with ' em some more tomorrow when they bring down the pie. SHOPPING Mary Schafer, ' 37 Most women experience difficulty when they go shopping. Their trouble seems, as far as I can discover, to result from two main causes: namely, the vagaries of the feminine mind, and the displays put on by department stores. The common fault of most stores seems to be that they have too many articles on display; they dazzle the eye of the shopper, and distract her attention from her shopping list. I will give you a n instance of wihat I mean. You enter a large clothing shop, fully determined to buy a green sweater, and search for the woolens department. Finally your eye lights on the display of sweaters on a counter in the corner. There are sweaters- — dozens of them — red, blue, yellow, brown, white, purple — every hue of the rainbow; but green, strangely enough, seems to be missing from the color scheme. You vaguely paw through the mass, in a vain effort to locate a few gjreen ones, and spend a second or two wondering what in the world has happened to the girl in charge of the table. Suddenly a voice at your elbow says, insolently, Help ya, miss? and there is the delinquent salesgirl. In a timid voice, you ask for some green sweaters. Disdainfully the girl shifts her gum and hauls two or three boxes from beneath the counter, What style— slip-on? Yes, if you don ' t mind, awed by her scornful competence. What size? 36?