South Side High School - Optimist Yearbook (Newark, NJ)

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LITERATURE

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We dedicate this yearbook to our faculty adviser, Frank lin Strong, thanking him sincerely for his fine coop eration and assistance during our life at South Side. We also dedicate this issue to Guido Cavallaro, head of the athletic department, who is respected and admired by the entire school. Four

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THE BARBER DAVID SANDUSKY As the barber heard the turning of the lock, he threw aside the “Plato” he was reading for educational purposes, and glanced at the clock. It was 9:50 and the customer coming in now would be the last before closing time. The barber straightened his rather rumpled white jacket and said, “Good evening.” The man slipped off his coat, loosened his tie, and slid hurriedly into the barber’s chair. “Quick haircut and shave, please,” he said. While tying the sheet, the barber thought, “Rather seedy fellow. Good clothes though—must be in a hurry to get somewhere”—and thinking no more of it he gave his customer the haircut. The barber tried to start a conversation with the man, and his customer had answered politely enough, but with little interest. And now as he ran his razor across the lathered face, he studied it abstractly as he was wont to do with all who sat in his barber's chair. The obser- vations he made to himself showed a keen accurateness developed only by constant practice. Sensitive, rather weak face, had an easy life and now when the going's rough he can't quite make the grade—rather worried about something or other. We all have our troubles, I guess”. . . and his mind shifted to his own cares, the gravity of which he was able to conceal from everybody but his wife and himself. Barbering in a small town wasn't a paying proposition. The farmers would sooner allow their whiskers to grow than spend the fifty cents for a haircut and shave. He couldn't get rid of the shop; hospital bills to be paid; and a doctor for his wife and month-old baby. Too bad Janet had to be tied down to a failure such as he. Then realizing the futility of self-pity, he turned his attention again to the man in his chair. “Odd,” he thought, “Tve seen that fellow before. Couldn't be pos- itive though—might have seen his picture. Then he remembered—it was yesterday. At the post office he had watched the sheriff nailing up a poster advertising the search for Godfrey Wood. Wood was wanted for forgery, and what had interested the barber most was the five hun- dred dollars offered for his capture. Five hundred dollars was just the sum he needed to put himself on his feet again. What luck! Funny, though, he should be back only ten miles from Midlan where he's wanted, when he could be on his way to Mexico by now” The riddle absorbed the barber; he pondered over it, but still a logical explanation eluded him. It didn’t matter, though—what mat- tered was that here was the chance to garner the reward. It should be an easy job to subdue him. The bulletin had mentioned that the forger was not a killer, and he was bigger and stronger than the man. But still that little detail fretted the barber until at last he asked casually: