University of Southern California - El Rodeo Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

Page 29 text:

But in the midst of death, defeat and change, in the midst of the in- security of trying to plant your feet somewhere solid and yet not quite wanting to commit yourself, there are always the people who believe. What it is they believe doesn ' t seem to mat- ter; they believe deeply, and that ' s the point. Jesus, Jehova, Mohammed, Krishna — there is something infinite expressed in them, something beyond just being. In the afternoon, with the October sun still warm on the grass, the sound stops the swirl of time with the old, changeless song of faith.

Page 31 text:

Tuesday noon. The cars are streaking through the interchange, weaving easily in and out in the half- empty lanes. On the Hollywood free- way, near the Rampart exit, a roadwork crew has set up its row of little plastic pyramids to close the right lane, and is filling cracks in the pavement. Traffic is thin, but the cloud of heavy air caused by the morning ' s rush hour still hangs low over the road, obscuring thehills. On the Benton Street overpass two twelve-year-old boys, dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts, lean against the rail, eating sandwiches. They have escaped for the moment the drudgery of seventh grade to run up the hill to the bridge, as they do every day, to watch the magic rush of the cars streaming beneath them. The strange, set, dis- embodied faces of the people sitting still while going sixty-five, seldom look up to the two silhouettes on the rail, but when they do the two boys wave, and when the driver waves back it makes their day. Then the face be- comes a personality, and they specu- late as to its character — I ' ll bet he ' s a prospector — going all the way to Alaska — to prospect for oil. On the Freeway the red Corvair, with its top down, flies toward Holly- wood, where the driver has an ap- pointment for lunch. The driver ' s mind is preoccupied, as usual, when he drives, with events — a speech by a candidate, a rock concert disaster in France. His eye, roving the road, catches the movement of waving arms on the bridge, and, looking up, he waves back, then passes underneath. Say, says one of the kids, with a modern kind of hero worship, I ' ll bet he ' s a radical. 27