Toulon Township High School - Tolo Yearbook (Toulon, IL)

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March, Nineteen Thirty 9 glanced up and then rubbed his hand wearily over his eyes. “ ‘I wonder what was in that lemonade Thelma gave me,’ he muttered. Now what do you suppose was the matter? Why, there stood Woody Dillon and Philip Pyle in the balcony waving the Lux Solis! “Well sir, the Seniors puzzled over that thing for weeks. They couldn’t persuade the Juniors to tell them how they got that thing out of there. To this day, they are still wondering. To them that is only another of the mysteries of the year of ’30, the year of the forty-seven sheriffs of Stark county. That was the queerest year. Why, even-------- “But Grandpa, how did they get that Lux Solis?” “Why didn’t I tell you? They had been planning that stunt for weeks. Some one had fastened a tiny piece of iron to the top of that Lux Solis and they drew the thing up the chimney with a powerful magnet. I never could understand why the Seniors didn’t guess it. But then, the Juniors always were smarter than the Seniors.” “Tell us another story, Grandpa.” “No, not tonight. Now clear out of here, and leave me alone!” The children run away, the door closes softly, and the old man is left alone. He smiles gently as he looks into the fire as if he were thinking of happy times. The shadows fall, and the old man falls asleep to dream of the time when he was the young John Hagy. Elizabeth Tomlinson. THE ADVENTURES OF A RADICAL. He was very small, so small, in fact, that I couldn’t see him even with the most powerful microscope there is. Consequently, we have to take all that he does almost for granted, but these theories, as they are called, seem to bear out in experimental work. We find that everything is made up of small particles called molecules, which, in turn, are composed of atoms. The atoms are the smallest part of a substance that have anything to do with chemical reaction, and when they enter into chemical combination, they are not changed permanently, for by various methods, any substance which is made up of two or more different elements may be broken down into its component parts. But these tiny atoms are sometimes combined in such a way that they act as one; such a combination is called a radical. One illustration of a radical is the nitrate radical, the formula of which is N03. It is composed of one atom of nitrogen, and one of oxygen. This radical may enter into chemical combination with many different elements, and with a few other radicals. Well, Bill was a sulphate radical. He was one of a great many million other sulphate radicals, and he was in a jar in the Chemistry laboratory of T. T. H. S. Bill’s mate in the molecule of the sulphuric acid of which he was a part, was Henry, commonly known as hydrogen, and the formula of the molecule was H2S04, there being two Henrys to balance the one Bill. One day Bill was quietly dozing in his jar, for sulphuric acid is a very

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8 March, Nineteen Thirty when Joner wanted to take his girl to the movies. I can’t remember who was his girl at the time, he always changed girls every week. “Well, anyway, Joner wanted to go to the show, so he put that Lux Solis on the mantel, locked all the doors in the room, pulled down all the curtains, turned off all the lights, and went merrily on to the show. “When he came back, he went to see if the Lux Solis was still there. He had a lot of trouble getting the door open, but he finally succeeded. He went in and turned on the lights, glancing immediately at the mantel. He jumped. The Lux Solis was gone! But how could it be gone? He had locked all the doors and there was no one at home except him. Well he called up all the boys of the Senior class and organized a search. They literally turned that room upside down. John Dewey even climbed up the chimney, but there weren’t any footprints on the roof, so he was sure that no one could possibly have entered that room. “ ‘Well, boys,’ said Joner, ‘let’s go about this scientifically. All of you stand on your heads, and if the Lux Solis doesn’t fall out of one of your pockets. I’ll know you haven’t got it.’ “Accordingly, all the boys did so, and when they were right side up again, Joner shook hands all ’round. “ ‘Well, boys,’ he said, ‘now I know I can trust you. Did anybody see those pesky Juniors tonight?’ “ ‘You bet we did,’ said Marion Martin. He’s the undertaker down at Wyoming now. ‘They were all at the show except Philip Pyle and Woody Dillon. They both have a five-hundred word theme for tomorrow, so I know that they haven’t had time to do anything.’ “And well I remember that theme, too! Jewel Tyler was our teacher and what she didn’t make us do wasn’t worth doing. Why, one time she— but that’s another story. “Well as I started to say, Marion said that Philip and Woody couldn’t have done it. So those Seniors decided that there must be some mystery connected with it. The next day Joner went to Teddy McCullough—him that had the red hair—and asked him for his most powerful magnifying glass. He took it home and those Seniors started searching. “They went over every square inch of Joner’s lawn, his front porch, the room where it had been, and even the mantel. They even had a sample of the soot from the chimney analyzed to see if anything had passed it. Well sir, they never found a thing. Joner almost went crazy trying to imagine who had spirited that thing away. “The next night there was a party at the High School. All the Seniors went and of course everybody asked Joner what was the matter with him. Now Joner hadn’t stopped long enough to look at himself since he lost the Lux Solis, so he hurried to find a mirror. When he did find one, he stopped, amazed. Worrying had turned his hair gray over night. “As the party progressed, Joner could see that there was excitement in the air. He was too puzzled about the Lux Solis to wonder what was the matter. Suddenly, the yelling penetrated even his thick head. He

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10 March, Nineteen Thirty stable compound and will not break down into its parts very easily, when he heard the unmistakable sounds of an argument raging outside. He went to the glass and beheld two members of the Chemistry class engaged in discussion, apparently very much absorbed in their conversation. The noise had aroused the instructor, so the students were told to keep quiet on pain of punishment in the form of a request to please stay after school. So the arguing boys calmed down and began to work, which is an unprecedented occurrence in this class. One of them picked up the bottle of sulphuric acid, and poured part of the acid into a flask which was upon the desk. Bill was among the liquid now in the flask and he wondered what was going to happen to him next. He was not kept in suspense for long, however, for the other boy returned to the desk with some sodium nitrate, which is NaNo3, and put this into the flask. With an arrangement of glass tubes, corks, beakers, and test tubes fitted to the flask, the boys commenced to heat the flask with their burner. Bill began to feel uncomfortably warm, and he cried out when, under the influence of the heat, the two Henrys tore themselves away from him and departed. But Bill was not alone for long. Pretty soon a couple of nice looking sodium atoms came along, and Bill decided to enter into a combination with them. This did not take long and was much more enduring than our own marriages. Bill’s old friends, the hydrogen atoms, had also been active during this time, and each was now comfortably settled down in the test tube on the other side of the apparatus with a little nitrate radical for a bride. It would seem that Bill’s adventures would end when he became once more a married man, but, like most other men, he was not entirely satisfied with his present wife. So when our friends, the chemists, emptied Bill and his bride down the waste pipe, he thought that a marriage with one of the wealthy iron maidens would be advantageous, so he became part of a molecule of ferrous sulphate, which means iron sulphate. You see, that is just as it is with us mortals, the groom gives his name to the blushing bride. Of course, this is not the end of Bill’s adventures and journeys, but it is all that I can tell you about, for I don’t know any more about it. —Robert Griffith. GREASE, NOT FUEL. Leslie Matson, who had run out of gas north of Toulon, saw his schoolmate, Bill Jackson, coming down the road with a big tin can. Leslie: “Say, Bill, I hope you have gasoline in that can.” Bill: “Well, I hope it ain’t. It would taste awful on ma’s pancakes.” Cop: “Say there, young man, pull up to the curb. What’s the idea of going 55 miles an hour in that flivver?” Don Aby: “Honest, injun, officer, was I making 55? Lead me to the judge, I want it put on record.”