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

Page 11 text:

I can’t yell, I said. I can’t do it. What do you mean? he yelled. I can't, I can't, and tears came into my eyes as I said it. I can’t make people sad. What are you talking about? They don’t want to hear what Herbert Hoover has to say; they don’t want to see how lousy the stock market is; they don't want to read how men are getting canned faster than you can count; they don't want to read about this depression and all the starvation. Well, what do you want them to do, listen to people sing, “O happy days are here again?” No, no, I screamed, the tears catching in my throat. And I saw Andy was crying too. I don’t know what I want, I don't know. Yell, then, he said with all his tears running into his mouth. We hafta earn some money, haven't we? But the papers will make people sad If they don't read it in the paper, Andy shouted, they'll hear it over their radios or someplace else. Yell, will you, before 1 kick you. Okay, I screamed, I'll yell. Come on, buy a paper for two cents! | don't care! Listen to Herbert Hoover and the moans of the masses its overproduction steel iron and blast furnaces machinery idle starvation hungry kids crying and all the blood of men swirling in great whirl- pools in the gutter so take a high dive so shoot your brains out the little woman and the kiddies you'll take a twenty per cent cut and like it so march march march men A CINQUAIN To-day The sky is bleak. The icy-fingered rain, Encouraged by a gusty wind Pours down. Harriet Waugh rise up put down shoot where is the near est breadline soldiers who served in France if you don't like it we'll get some body else look at the dark factories Не! bert Hoover says it's nothing they're lay ing off off off and wages are going down down down so how can they jail a man it's overproduction hand-outs on this block ain’t so good buddy what can we do we've got a million answers Papah, mistah ? Andy and I sold all our papers and all the time the people would look at us and we could see down deep within them the pain. We walked home together and when 1 walked into my house, my mother was standing over the coal stove cooking a panful of pork chops. I told her I had sold all the papers and she said that was fine When my father came home, my broth- er and sisters came into the kitchen. We all sat down to eat. We were having a big meal to celebrate payday and we all thought how good and warm the food was and ate mostly in silence that eve- ning. But all the time there kept running through my mind the music and words of the song everyone was singing in the movies,—the men in tails and the women wearing long orange dresses. Their heads were thrown back, their mouths opened in song and the blue of the sky was reflected in their laughing eyes. John Owen A DREAM A birch tree Casting its fingered shadow upon a sil- very lake, Is a beautiful w ay To view heaven. —Phyllis Friedman Page Seven