Saint Marks School - Lion Yearbook (Southborough, MA)

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'wr' , -5 V1 v-J-KAI. -- -1 '-uv W fi Vw-r -1----1 -1:1 - -T- r 'P' ' 'f .1930 - 1936 There is an old hay wagon at St. Mark's, painted blue and white. Thus begins the description of St. Mark's which appeared in Fnrtunc's article on the nation's twelve best schools. VVhen the football team beats Groton, it becomes a chariot of victory in which the players are pulled by the rest of the school through the tiny Massachusetts town of Southborough. One stormy afternoon in 1934-, the victory wagon was draped in black and rolled up before the bare, Norman chapel. On it was placed a casket, covered by the school flag. Wind whipped the solemn lines of graduates, sleet drove across the grounds, and the boys of St. Mark's gave a long, slow cheer for William Greenough Thayer. Then the sixth formers pulled the hay wagon down the hill to the cemetery. Thus ended the first great age of St. Mark's. 'f Hopefully pushed forward by loving parents, we stepped in to start the next age which began six years ago when Dr. Parkman assumed the headmastership after Dr. Thayer's resignation. Those of us who came into the first form were greeted by a headmaster as new at the game as we were. However, without paying him any great compliment, it might be said that his blunders were less numerous and less troublesome than ours. As usual, most of the misdemeanors consisted of almost every kind of battle from mudfights on Flichtner and Lower Fields against the class of '35, to Hudson-Heiskell slug-fests. Kister, the tame but untaught monkey. seemed to get into more than his share. Even Ritz-Schlitz Moore temporarily lost his usual tranquillity to pursue a harmless second former, successfully getting his man. Just to be different Scoopie complacently slept through the raucous uproar of a fire-drill. The Fay football game showed us the possibilities in the little man from Arkansas, who was one of the few players to survive the victory without a substi- tute. In the winter Pinky, later to captain the varsity team, played in the Fay hockey defeat. Spring found Izzy and Jenny coxing their club crews in record-break- ing style. Brotherhood and Izzy won the series, while Jenny, now the crew captain and the first letterman in the form, took third place of the three crews with Thayer. Except for these athletic aspirations, the form showed little constructiveness, even sometimes allowing Kister to lead scholastically. Adrian burst into lachrymose wail- ings before Dr. Parkman just in time to be prevented from shaving his head for mercenary reasons in emulation of a hairless fifth former. This provided one of the few distractions which interrupted the peacefulness of our last term as new kids, except for Izzy who had been through it all the year before. Even after we were well settled in our second form year it seemed hard to believe that the errand-running was over for some of us. That fall the form was more than doubled in size by a boisterous mob of undisciplined new kids who went around say- ing such odd things as, My name is Henry, but you may call me Skipper. How- ever, their disordered appearance was soon improved by the annual ceremony of Sanitary Saturday in which Les sang Baron Munchausen while standing on a box which contained Ben, the wild Wood. All suffered such minor indignities as paddling and soap-eating, but no one minded-much. This Form distinction was soon forgot- ten in the club football struggle, which Brotherhood won. Gym day brought fresh paddling of the new kids by the old kids in the Form, although the less numerous old kids were slightly confused by the number and ferocity of their classmates. The adventurous minds of the form, with an eye to business, organized the racketeering firm of Gypem, Gypem and How with the partners collecting fortunes for protec- tion, i' The less said about the dining-room situation the better, but it is fitting to 15

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The Monitors lfnrlr lfmr: Glover, xvhl 9l6'l'. Yvuml, xvillSl0W. l 1-mf! lfnlr:f'l:l1'k, Dr. Purkmam. lirvin. Sixth Form linrk lfmr: Hzwpvr, NIIIIWIOII. Wnml. .Xe-risen. xYll6'E'lf'l'. L.. 'l'llz1vIu-r. Moore, X., Wllittnll. King, I lwlin. llurlsun. Ufrllllw lfm1':'l'l1nm1:ls. Pl'il'l'l', R.. Ric-lmrnls, Roc-kwvll. X., IIlg'l'Elll2lIl!, ljauns, l r4-clnaul. YYilscm, Funk C fQ!'ill'l'. Gillcspic. nu! Hou l,ill0ll,l'l1llul'. Hullingswurllm, PL'I'l'j',f1lill'k. Dr. Pill'klll2lIl, Winslow, Glmx-r. l':I'Yill, llvis

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mention that Ben and Ira vied mightily to see who should be kicked out. of meals the most often during the year. Most of us, by means of paper napkins, were placing inverted glasses full of water on the table, much to the displeasure of the maids whose methods of picking up these little reservoirs occasioned miniature floods. Meanwhile Ben was wrestling with whole milk pitchers, without the aid of napkins. ln the Spring, the whole School was surrounded by birds, including a family of persistent bob-whites in Dormitory B which made the study hall, in Mr. Brinley's charge, re-echo, and finally led to a Sunday morning visit from the Sixth Form. To study better the actions and reactions of birds and beasts, the Hatchet Club was formed with Sheep, Twitch, Pink, Baydie, and Chris paying particular attention to the development of the monkey. Our classes passed off with relative peace, except for the crashing of T-squares attendant on the mechanical drawing course. Mr. Reed's Latin class sounded like a prayer meeting because of our constant chant of Gerund, gerundive, or Mirabile dictu. When Wood, after carefully closing a window, leapt violently into space, knocking the arm off a chair, Mr. Brinley showed tinges of apoplexy. Mr. Thompsonls History class gained the added attraction of trying to produce a Latin play, a plan finally deserted in desperation by the irate instructor. The atavistic fury of the Nabob of Topsfield rose one day when he found his alcove literally filled with a whole dormitory's worth of trunks, a condition which he soon altered by hurling the offending impedimenta over the alcove wall. Cy, messenger of peace, was rewarded sixteen marks for fighting with Maggie. The only real riot of the year occurred during the Sixth Form Dance when. prefectless, we staged a battle-royal with side attractions of such proportion as to leave a lasting impression on the dormitory. Having successfully traversed the pit-falls of the exams at the end of our Second .Form year, we returned after summer vacation to find our number augmented by the appearance of Perry, Glover and Gillespie. One of our new classmates started his school life by marching across the quadrangle and demanding of bewildered Sixth Formers the whereabouts of the Register, Cy came back from the West bursting with tales of climbing the highest knife-edged peaks wearing sneakers: peaks and sneakers forming the nucleus of all his English compositions. Ten of us were relegated to the confines of dormitory D, where many dark plots hatched beneath the hot slate roof of the uppermost story. Once Mr. Braden, seeking to quell open rebellion, was greeted at his appearance by a galosh flying wide from its mark. Mr. Fernald came off more luckily another time when, picking his way through piles of snow on the floor, an icy pellet whistled past his head. The still of midnight was broken at one time by a blood-curdling scream which Ira emitted in an attempt to cow the clanging radiators. In Dorm C life was slightly less animated, and except for an interrupted expedition on hands and knees, Pinky behaved him- self remarkably well. The rest of the Form spent its waking night hours borrowing flashlights for indeterminate, but certainly illegal, uses. Enough for our indoor sports-The football season passed uneventfully for us, but we had the pleasure of seeing Groton beaten by the eleven for the first time since we had been in school. The celebration which followed the victory was a success in our eyes, because we worked for many moons collecting the wood for the bonfire. Even Scoopie helped for a while with his misguided hatchet. After the football season came the league soccer games in which Mr. Sawyer manfully risked life and shins, each game ending in a large heap of writhing bodies, moving homeward at a leisurely pace, motivated by the hidden master. In classes Becky continued to show her precocity, but Jenny managed to lead the formg it is rumored, by removing an all-important piece from Becky's slide rule. Mr. Hall, having sat on one, expounded in a few well-chosen words his ideas on putting thumbtacks on people's chairs. Our Bob, whose tortured Let go my nose! had become a war cry through the corridors, was accused of, but not caught, turning out the schoolroom lights at the fuse box by the old school- 16