Scituate High School - Chimes Yearbook (Scituate, MA)

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17 HOW TO SELL A MAGAZINE IN THREE EASY LESSONS Jean MacNeil, ' 43 ELLING a magazine is not as easy as it sounds. Most hopeful young subscription salesmen start out planning to follow the three main rules for successful subscription selling, which are as follows: Display a sparkling personality. Know all about the housewife, also all about the product to be sold. I In other words, know all about everything). Don ' t give up until you have sold at least one subscription at a house, and even then don ' t give up. Of course, it is very hard to display a sparkling personality, especialh if you haven ' t one; and even if you have, it doesn ' t survive usually after the first en- counter. As to the third rule, that is merely figurative. You ' re lucky if you get up to the door, without trying to sell a subscription after that. However, according to the reports you hear, it is very simple — you just walk up to a door, knock on it, and when someone comes, you sell a magazine to her — and that ' s all there is to it. In reality, that is not the way it happens at all. To be sure, you walk up to the door and knock on it — that is, if you can get through the snow and ice, and past the dog. When you finally get there, you knock timidly. By this time you ' re all out of breath from running away from the dog, and your knees are shaking over the prospect of meeting the lady of the house. After quite a while, the door suddenly opens, and you weakly collapse against the house- wife, who icily inquires, Well? Finally you manage to stammer, L-l-lady, would y-you l-like to b-b-b-buy a m-magazine? The house wife apparently is not in a very good mood today. She definitely does not want to buy a magazine. And she roughly slams the door, incidentally catching your coat in it. You never have a chance to tell her about the beautiful new scoreboard and the advantages to the school and to you. You stumble off down the walk, and suddenlv slip on the ice. While you are trying to pull yourself together, the do from out of nowhere. rushes down on you Ho, hum! The life of a subscription sales- Mandy: Rastus, does )o ' love me? Rastus: Mandy, yo ' is one woman I don ' t like none other no better than. Writer: How much board will you charge me for a few weeks while 1 gather material for my new country novel? Hiram: Five dollars a week unless we have to talk dialect, — that ' s three dollars extra. Mr. Saniuelson : What are you crying for? Gannett: I don ' t like school an ' I gotta stay here till I ' m sixteen. Baw! Mr. Samue ' son : Don ' t let that worry you. I ' ve got to stay here till I ' m sixty-five. I want some grapes for my sick husband. Do you know if any poison has been sprayed on these you have? No, ma ' am, you ' ll have to get that at the druggist ' s.

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TWENTY-ONE DAYS OF NAZI BOMBING John Wilder, ' 43 N London the air war started on Sun- day, August 18. 1940. From that day until August 27 there were numerous raids which were called nuisance raids, because very few bombs were dropped and damage was slight. All they did was to cause the shops to close while the raids were on. On August 27 London had its first long night raid. These long night raids were continuous until September 16. and later, but that is the date on which I left London, and it is from August 27 until September 16 about which I want to write. The exact facts in regard to the time of air raids were kept in a diary which I had at the time. It was on the night of Tuesday. August 27, at 9:30 p.m., when the air raid sirens started up their warning to London, and people took shelter in both public and Anderson shel- ters. The Anderson shelter is about seven feet long, six feet high and five feet wide. It is constructed, inside, of two layers of corrugated iron, and outside, of thirt inches of soil on both sides and fifteen on the top. About three quarters of this shelter is below the ground. This is naturally not bomb-proof, but it is one of the safest shelters, because it is so small. I went into one of these small shelters, settled down in a corner, and tried to sleep, but the noise of anti-aircraft fire and planes was too great. After a very rowdy night the raiders passed signal sounded at 3:10 a.m.. on Wed- nesday During Wednesday night there were two short alarms. The first one was from 9:30 to 11:50 p.m., and the second was from 12:30 a.m., to 1:10 a.m.; the remainder of the night was quiet. It was two days before the sirens had anv more work to do. but on Friday. August 30. there was a series of raids, three during the day and one at night. The times were 1 1 :.50 p.m. to 12:33 p.m.. 3:18 to 3:35 p.m.. and 4:38 to 5:50 p.m. Then there was a lull until 9:10 l).m. when, for the fourth time that day. I had to take shelter. All through the night there was little activitv until about 3:,30 a.m. I was about to go up to get to bed. when I heard the engines of a German plane, so I quickly got under cover. The next thing I heard was the roar of gunfire and suddenly a sound rather like a very strong wind, which grew into a shrill scream. This is a sound which can be imagined only by actual experience. It finished with four successive explosions. These four bombs fell at a distance of two hundred yards, roughly, from our shel- ter. Thev demolished four houses and killed thirteen people. Besides these four houses, thirty-five more had to be pulled down because they had been rendered uninhabitable by cracked walls, and thev were nearly in a state of col- lapse. The raiders passed signal sounded at 3:55 a.m.. when we went indoors and had a cup of coffee and slept for a short while. It seems hard to believe, but this is true: there were seven tons of glass cleared off the str°ets, all of it from windows which had been blown out. On Saturday at 5:55 p.m. the sirens sounded, and I have never heard such a row. For a solid twenty minutes there was a continuous roar of anti-aircraft fire from miles around. The nearest guns to us were a quarter of a mile away, where there was a battery of new 4.7 inch guns. These new guns would fire four shells in succession; there would be a lull, and then they would repeat. With these bigger guns were the normal single-firing guns. Mingled with all this noise was the shrill scream of falling bombs, the crashing of planes nearby, and the noise made by a fighter, zooming into attack, or in a dog fight. When some of this noise had quieted down and the raiders had been driven back, we emerged from our burrow like so manv rabbits after the hunter has gone. e saw that a very large building had been blown to bits by a German b(jmber. which had crashed on it with a full load of bombs. It looked as though the bridge, the onl) main crossing we had to get over the electric railroad, had been blown up. but it hadn ' t. This was only one hundred ards from our house. The smoke and dust that was in the air that afternoon and night was terrific. E er body was walking around with eyes half shut. That night bombing was continued on the same scale. The next morning we discovered that we had no gas. water was rumiing in a ery feeble manner, and the elec- tricit would fail for an hour here and there. We couldn t bathe because we had no gas to work the geyser, and above all. we had nothing to cook our meals with. We remained in this condition for the rest of the time I was in Lon- d n. Now our house has been blown up. This bombing continued until I left London, and with the same intensit . I had only one whole night ' s sleep in a bed in the twenty-one da s during which I experienced the apalling nature and indiscriminate bombing of the Ger- man Air Force.

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18 THREE-THIRTY A.M. Matthew Miles, ' 43 See, this guy Horton knows too much, see? Yeh. If he ever lets on he saw us bump that guy. we ' re done, see? Yeh. Don t sit there like a lug and say Yeh ' . ' Yeh. Lemme think. The speakers were, respectively. Johnny Cole, and Big Carino. You have probably guessed bv now at their profession. The place — the famous back room at Beninio s tavern I Corner of Fourth and Elm. open 12 M. to 12 M. No credit. Pav when served). Johnny ' s brow was ruffled, in fact, practically scalloped. A pair of bushy eyebrows wiggled in despair. Silence reigned. Suddenly Johnny came to life. Hey! Yeh? Don ' t thev hafta find a corps delectable or somethin ' to prove a murder? So what? Well, if they don ' t find no corps-what-ever- it-is, thev can ' t hang it on us. right? And if we remove him with a bomb or somethin they won ' t find nothing — only a hole — and they can ' t prove nothin ' on that. Yeh! Johnnv ' s eyebrows leaped again. Look. I gotta nother idea. Musta been those Carter ' s Little Liver Pills. Say we plant a bomb so it goes off with his alarm clock. That ' ll be nice. Doc can do it; he ' s smart. It ' s perfect, no corps delectable, no bother, no nothmg. Now, you go and . . . Samuel F. Horton was single, thirtyish. and boarded on the other side of town. He had the dispatcher s trick from 4 a.m. till noon down at the Middletown yards. He had the methodical nature necessary for his job — consquently he was the best man on the tower. With the aid of his alarm clock he was up at 3:30. dressed and away to the yards. . . Tuesdav. The hands oi the bedside clo k pointed to twenty-six minutes past three. A gentle snoring emitted from the ' lirection of the bed. The sleeper turned over, grunted, and resumed snoring. Three twenty-seven. The snoring ceased, and the sleeper slowly sat up and looked at the clock. Oh-oh. It s almost tmie for the alarm to ring. If that thing ever went off. it ' d wake up everybod) . He reached over and pressed a button . .... Friday. Quarter past three. It had been a hard day at the ards. The sleeper showed no signs of life as the minutes ticked away, inevitable and irretrievable as dripping honey. Grunt. Yawn-n-n. H ' m. almost three- thirty. Well- .... .... Monday. Three twenty-eight. Snore. Three twenty-nine — Suddenly the sleeper was bolt upright. What was that? A mouse or something, probably. Oh. well, it awakened me in time. The little button was pushed and somewhere the sleeper ' s guardian angel smiled. You might almost sa) grinned .... Johnnv Coles brow was even more cor- rugated, if that is conceivable. He was definitelv off his feed. Look. lug. the bomb ' s been planted three weeks and what happens? Yeah. Shuddup. The guy must be lucky or else he gets up early. Gee whiz. He lapsed into apathy, and stared morosely at his beer. Sud- denly — Hey ! Whaddya say we go ta his house early some morning and see what the matter is. We ' ll fix it so ' s it ' ll go off when he ' s asleep. He probably gets up about seven. Look, ril meet you at about quarter past three at ... . Samuel F. Horton sat on the edge of his bed and carefuUv held his throbbing head in his hands. An empty asjiirin bottle stood beside the alarm clock. He spoke. Boy. what a cold. If I don ' t get rid of it fast. I ' ll be off this shift fast. Hope I don ' t oversleep. He stretched out and turned out the light . . . . . . Earlv morning. A whisjier stole through the darkness. Are ya there. Johnny? No. this is me. dope. You planted the bomb and ()u know the plan of this joint. Get in that window and grab that ticker. 0. K. Here, ya can jinnny this. In? Now get it! ' A muffled curse came from the interior. Johnny muttered impatiently. ell. lug. what ' s the matter? Aw, I bumped into a door. Gee. lemme in. You ' re helpless. A dark form slipped in noiselessly and tiptoed across the floor. The two forms, one big and lumber- ing, the other smaller, ascended the stairs silently. (Continued on page 26)