Turlock High School - Alert Yearbook (Turlock, CA)

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under your pillow while it was running down, so that no one else would be disturbed even if you did get up at three? Or I suppose that you forgot that there are other people in this vicinity besides yourself? Get out of here, you wretch, I have had enough of your impu- dence. I got out fast enough after I had informed my aunt that 1 had had enough of her alarm which, for lack of something else to do, had run down. ' The object in telling this incident is to show in what a bad humor we all were when we set off on our wonderful trip, and as a sort of forecast of what happened later on. The start was accomplished in almost absolute silence, and with perfect smoothness. The silence may account for the serenity, and it was agreeably surprising, considering the number of the female sex present. I have pondered long and deeply on this phenomenon, and I have at last come to the conclusion that the women folk were too sleepy to talk. I find this the only logical answer to the problem. It is particularly noticeable that wherever there are women pres- ent, a person is likely to find himself in a perfect maelstrom of con- glomerate triviality in the form of petty conversation. I have not been able to decide whether women talk to keep themselves from crying or to keep themselves from thinking seriously, but I have a very decided suspicion that they annoy any sane minded person with small talk just to keep from annoying said persons immeasurably worse with tearsg and this I think very considerate of them. It is so considerate that I am half inclined to believe myself wrong. VVhen we passed the city limits, the heat of the engine had so warmed every one that conversation began to revive except on my part. Now, when I get mad, I Wait until I have a good reason to be mad: and then I get mad and stay mad. With women it's different Cas it always isj. They get mad at any little thing, but forget it the next minute. Not that it does me any good to get mad and stay mad, but all the same I think that it is saner and more human to do as I do. However, as the conversationalistic temperature rose, my nerves. usually quite steady, 'failed me, I placed my foot on the accelerator, thus causing a simultaneous rise in- the temperature of the radiator. The conversation lanquished not a bitg but I did not listen for I was too busy trying to keep the car from skidding, hence I obtained relief. just before disaster overtook us, I happened to hear my aunt say, My! isn't this Fine? and then she saw the speedometer: whereupon she relieved herself of an electrifying screamg then she placed herself athwart the steering wheel a position from which I experienced some considerable difficulty in dislodging her. Meanwhile. the old car was acting as though the signals had gotten mixed. To all the extremes 14

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i' ' I 'f 'f T 1 ?! ?'?'f1'c'4 1 my feelings temporarilyg but as soon as my brain could be commun- icated with Qwhich was rather soonj my temperature rose to about seven thousand, live hundred, sixty-seven degrees centigrade. I marshalled my army of slang and poured out my vials of wrath upon the stolid door, upon the alarm clock and upon the alarm clock's owner. My eloquence on that occasion surprises me when I come to think of it in my calmer moods. Meanwhile the alarm ramped joy- ously on to the tune of my aunt's snores. My father, in the other room next to mine, was asleep. I knew that he was asleep, because I heard him saying things that I positively knew he would not repeat were he awake and in his right senses. Yet, as I listened to his mental peregrinations in the world of dreams, I wondered what he could have encountered so to disturb his mental equilibrium, and as I listened, my wonder gave way to admiration. I learned a great many words that morning which are not to be found in the dictionary. In a short time my father choked as if overcome and his golden eloquence trailed off into a few incoherent mutterings, Thus I was brought back to stern reality. The clock was not overcome. Nay! Nay! Far from it! The vitality of the thing absolutely amazed me. I began to suspect that there had been a mistake in assembling the clock, and that the eight-day time spring had been put in the place of the five minute alarm spring and vice versa. Desperate to a point where I threw all caution and my better instincts to the four winds, I entered my aunt's room without knocking. . - For a soul-tearing moment, I blinked in the white light of a mazda, and then I made out the shadowy figure of my aunt in the far corner of the room. She became clearer and clearer as my 'eyes became used to the light. It was she who first broke the silence. VVhat do you mean, you young renegade? Can't a person secure a small amount of privacy in one's own room P In the meantime the alarm was hitting it off on all sixteen cylin- ders, the muffler wide open, the spark advanced, and the accelerator as open as the last notch could make it. That was just what I was going to inquire about, -I remarked as sarcastically as possible, You see, the vibrations from your dang alarm clock have penetrated into the privacy of my bedroom and dis- turbed the sanctity of my dreams. I am going to turn it off before it wakens Dad. He might kill some one were he to waken in his present state of mind. I made a determined advance upon the alarm. - Don't, shrieked my aunt. Don't turn it off! I am going to let it run down. It hurts the spring to leave it wound up. Really ? I remarked. And what was the matter with putting it 13

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-,'j -V-3... '- ff - I ' mm did she go. Now she was on one earg now on her hind wheels trying to manufacture a figure five on the wet pavement. I will say of that incident, that, if I could re-perform it and live through it, I would make several barrels of money. I think, however, that I should choose some one else besides my aunt to hang on to my arm. The women folks kept still for so long after this incident that I began to wonder. They were not crying, to my knowledge, and so, inconceivable as it may seem, they must have been thinking seriously fprobably about my close proximity to profane language so short a time beforej. Under these auspicious circumstances I was able to maintain a speed of almost twenty miles an hour. My peace and joy did not last long. My father, swayed by the flamboyantly boastful English of a pink poster, had purchased, much against my will, a very, very good bargain in the form of a very, very cheap tire, which now inhabited the left rear wheel of our auto. Of a sudden it saw Ht to blow out Qhalf the inner tubej. My anger at this juncture was almost as un- reasonable as that of the female species in that it embraced everything and everybody. By a terrific effort, I placed the hand brake in the last notch to the rear, at the same time I allowed the assembled muscle of my good right leg to force the foot brake within a pa,per's width of the floor. The natural result was that the car should have come to a sudden and abrupt stop, but nothing of the sort happened, Instead, we continued on the slimy surface of the wet pavement as though nothing had happened. I realized that we were skidding, and so I turned the front wheels toward the gravel at the side of the road. VVe skidded alarmingly for a moment, but the car righted and cogntinuerl toward the gravel. ' When the hind wheels left the gravel, the delayed action functioned with great rapidity. The car stopped. However, that did not stop us. VVe continued with varying fortunes. I tried my luck against the rigid steering wheel, and let me say that a soft, pliable abdomen is not to be placed with impunity against an unyielding steering wheel. My aunt endeavored to pass through the wind shield, but unsuccess- fully. Had we been going much faster, Dad would have had a new piece of plate glass to buy. As might be expected, I was unmercifully keel-hauled and raked over the coals by all present. But I was deaf to their polite impreca- tions although the hidden venom in their words must have made Captain Kidd turn over in his grave a half dozen times. I was not particularly keen about changing a nice damp tire in a nice damp fogg but it had to be done, as the man said when he tied the fat lady's shoe string in a hard knot. I was making it nicely when the awful cousin had to interfere . In a boastful effort to instruct the H 15