Turlock High School - Alert Yearbook (Turlock, CA)

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girl friend in the art of driving an auto, she released the hand brake, whereupon the left hind fender handed me quite a fetching crack in the eye, so disturbing my equilibrium in the operation that I sat down with considerable force in the goo of the wet pavement. What I said would have burned up a desert cactus but my cousin remained unmoved, and to make matters worse, my aunt gave me a lecture upon i'manners which interested me about as much as, X is to y, as z is to q: find the value of r, When we arrived at our destination, it was well on toward sig: o'clock and most of the choicest fishing had been missed. Needless to say, I was not in the best of tempers, but the women were jabbering away like magpies. VVonderful! Grand! and Ohl were the most commonly used words. Indeed, I do not believe that I heard much else. It.quite annoyed me. I was for fishing and nothing but fishing, We had come to fish, so let us fish. As the women couldn't see my reasoning, and as they insisted on sightseeing instead of fishing, I left them and started out to find a good comfortable bench from which to operate. In about an hour the stragglers straggled up, still exclaiming with large Ah's! and Oh's! They had not missed me yet. I had two lines out, a halibut line, which is one having the ordinary sinker, hooks and bait: the other, the snag line, consisting of a number of shiny hooks and a shiny sinker, The fish are attracted to this line by one's jerking the line up and down in the water. No bait is used and they are quite convenient, provided one does not hook a pile or a crab, if one does, then fifty cents to the bad. My cousin spotted me first, Why, there is Bruce! she cried. I had had fairly good luck and best of all, I had been removed from the distracting conversation of my aunt's coterie, hence I was in almost a good humor. , Why, hello! I said, holding up a two-pound halibut that I had landed, What do you think of this? That is all well and good, spat my aunt, but if we had missed you, what should we have done? I declare, you have absolutely no consideration for others at all, But you did not miss me, I replied. Are you going to fish here P she veered. Why, I expect so, unless you are, I answered. VVell, we are not. VVe are going out to the end of the pier, where all the decent people are. ' At this juncture a rather large fish, judging from the pull of him, began to nibble at my line. My attention was immediately diverted from my aunt as I began to play him off. I was so absorbed that I 16

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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

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did not hear my aunt ordering my cousin to take my line while I went up the pier to put out my aunt's lines. A My cousin did not realize what my actions indicated, for she reached over my shoulder and forcibly extracted the pole from my hands. Such a proceeding would make even a' saint swear backwardsig and I am far from being a saint. Even so, what I felt like saying would have dried up the Indian Oceang what I did say would have burnt the paint off a battleship. My dear aunt threatened to tell my father on meg but as I remembered what I had heard early in the morning, I dismissed that contingency with a smile. Otherwise I think that I should be inclined to view su.h a proceeding with sus- picion as my father is quite old fashioned in some of his notions. VVhen I finally got them all settled, each with a snag line and a halibut pole, I made my way back to my cousin. A great ruin stared at me, My line was entangled in the firm embrace of an absent neighbor'sg and my cousin was crying over a, pin prick which she had received. lVhen I saw that mess, I said not a word, but I felt like an old.Christian martyr as I set feverishly to work to untangle the muddle before our neighbor should return. I knew very well what he would sayg and I knew also, that he would not say it in a very complimentary or a very soft tone of voice. I have untangled some very badly muddled up fishing lines in my day, but I never have seen the equal of the one my cousin made that day. VVomen are singularly adept and skilled in the art of tangling things. I begin strongly to suspect that that is the only thing 'which they can do with any degree of certainty and skill. I couldn't finish my work in time, and when my returned neighbor saw his line, I could tell that he was a fisherman who knew how to fish by what he said. VVhat he did not say was not worth saying. If there had been an officer around then, that man would most certainly have been taken up on the charge of disturbing the peace. After his initial out- burst, even though I used singular eloquence in clearing myself, con- versation lagged for some reason or other. H I breathed a great sigh of relief when we had at last separated our linesg and I sent up a fervent prayer that my cousin would turn her nose in some other direction than mine. My snag line I found to have attached itself firmly in a pile, andy that all the coaxing I could muster would not induce it to release its holdg so I applied the force of my arm and broke off all the hooks save one. I went over to the fishing supply store to get a new line. I was in hopes that I should be allowed a short space of time to myself in which to fishg but my hope was vain, In a very short while, my cousin came running down the pier, crying that auntie had caught a fish and that I was wanted immediately. I hurried anxiously and puzzledly to my aunt's assist- 17