Viscount Bennett Junior High School - Terminal Yearbook (Calgary, Alberta Canada)

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LITERARY My First Plane Ride (Continued ) Five minutes afte-r v. r e are air-borne, I disentangle my fingernails from the up¬ holstery and release the safety belt, which I had drawn so tight that it stopped my breathing. The door of the pilot ' s cabin opens and the pilot himself comes out. What sort of recklessness is this? He has left .some half-fledged boy at the wheel. I watch with horror as he strolls down the aisle, chatting with the passengers. I .know what he ' s doing. Both wings have fallen off, but he ' s saying that everything is all right. When my turn comes, the pilot says r Good morning! Are you having a pleasant trip? I merely nod, speechless. All I want him to do is to get back to his work and remove that mad office boy from the controls. I relax again when he slams the door of the cabin behind him. An hour goes by. I had a bad moment when the hostess leaned over and said some¬ thing which I was unable to hear. -It sounded like We are falling into the sea. I was halfway out of my seat, when I realized she was asking me if I would like some tea. Suddenly we are losing altitude.’ I look down and the earth is carpeted with railway lines, red brick houses, factory chimneys and telegraph poles. This is it. The percussion valve in the port cylinder has blown out. This is the emergency landing. I sink the old nails back into the upholstery and close ray eyes. There is a bump, a faint screech - we have gone through a cow? Then all is silent. We are alive, but where? I open my eyes. We are on the apron outside the terminal building. They are pushing a ladder up to the plane, I leave the plane with, a slight swagger. I am safe, in Northolt airport and less than an hour ago I was in Dublin. What L say, is that airplanes provide - the fastest, safest and most convenient means of travel in the world, but if you saw me you would never know it! Bobby We strop, 8-11 BATTLE OF THE TYRANTS So many years ago that it would make one weary counting them, the dinosaur lived. These were the landlords of the Earth, their Herculean bodies, bounced from behind a large clump of horsetails, and a fierce, monstrous creature would’pounce on an un¬ suspecting plant eater. Then you would hear the Tyrannosaurus; lord of the world, king of tyrants, deadliest of all the carnivorous dinosaurs bellowing aloud at his triumph. At this, the ponderous slow moving Brontosaurus would laboriously make his way into the sloughs and swamps that were his home and his very existence. His cousins, Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus, not so heavy as Brontosaurus but both depending on the swamps, would also make their ’way to them. All of the creatures from,the simple minded, small Mimus to the ponderous Brontosaurus, hid or took refuge in the swamps or hid behind the horse¬ tail clumps. For who would face the hideous death that awaited him ' when he faced the Tyrannosaurus. Only one spirited dinosaur from a dying race of 70 million years dared to face the fearful monster. The fight was on, but where was Tyrannosaurus? Had he finally met his match? Mo, he was hiding behind some of the.horsetails that had been used for this same kind of treachery so many times. Allosaurus screamed his challenge into the air, but still no Tyrannosaurus. Then, with a scream, a hideous blood curdling scream, the Tyrannosaurus leaped from behind his camouflage and landed on the Allosaurus with a thud. The All¬ osaurus, greatly surprised, found himself being swung from side to side; then he felt teeth biting deeper and deeper into his neck. He became short of breath and his bellow -

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A Brush With Fate (Continued) LITERARY Again and again Fleet cried loudly and Kim knew that if the vet didn ' t come soon, he was in danger of death. She swung herself around resolutely and threw off the covers. Gathering all her strength, she pulled herself up. I can ' t do it, she cried helplessly. Oh, please, God! Please let me be able to walk! She gritted her teeth and broke out into a cold sweat. Perspiration poured down her face as she struggled to take the first step. The chair supported her, then she, bureau, the doorknob -•and finally she reached the top of the stairs. She counted them. There were fifteen. Fifteen stairs to go down by herself. She could do it she knew she could. She started : ddwn slowly, leaning heavily on the bannister. Eight, nine..ten..eleven - and she tripped! The carpet broke he ' r fall and she lay there with clenched fists, her eyes full of tears. Fleet ' s persistant neighing urged her on. If only he would stop! With tremendous effort she rose to her feet, reached for the phone and picked up the receiver. Hello, operator? Get me the vet. Emergency. • The vet said he would come right over. Ten minutes later he rushed into the barn to find Kim holding her horse ' s head in her lap. •In a voice barely audible to him she said, You ' re too late, Doc. Her face was streaked with tears and she-buried it in Fleet ' s mane to hide it. I ' m sorry, Kim, the vet said. I knew he wouldn ' t pull through when he .got pneumonia that night in the storm. Everyone was so worried about you that they forgot to rub him down. I ' m... truly sorry. It doesn ' t do much good to be sorry... but - thanks. The vet left quietly, leaving Kim with the most sorrowful burden ever to be present in her young life. . She had regained the use of her legs, but had lost the life of her horse, who had meant more to her.than all the legs in the world. Jonene Pettit, 9-6. MY FIRST PLAIJE RIDE Every tine I have to travel on a plane, I get cold feet. You may class this as hysteria, or as an ungenerous criticism of a system of transportation that has established itself as the fastest, safest and most convenient ever invented, but that ' 3 the way..it is with ' -me, ' The first thing I do-when I get on the bus for the air terraihal is to look at the other passengers to see if they are the type of people ’with whom I would bfe content to die. By the time we reach the airport, I have sweated off at least a pound of weight,- , At.the airport I try to fall into conversation with the pilot of the plane on which I am to fly, and also with some of the members of its cfew. I have a number of questions to ask Which are apparently quite casual but which in reality go to the heart of the matter. I wish to ask the pilot: Are the very best of mechanics checking every inch of the plane? Have you, or any members of your family, ever been subject to giddiness, loss of memory or nervous attacks? Will you fly the plane very fast? Will it be necessary to travel at more than fifty feet above the ground? To the radio operator I say, Can you understand the Worse Code even if it is sent very fast? and Wonderful sets they have nowadays. Do they ever break down? Finally I talk to the air hostess and make a little request that if anything goes wrong, that.’I be informed of it some time in advance of the other passengers. Re-assured about these matters, I pluck up enough courage to stagger into the plane. I cannot usually decide whether it is better to sit in the front and bear the full brunt of the impact, or to sit in the back and run the risk of being carried away if the tail unit should fall off. I usually choose a central position, where I can look out of the windows and see if the propellors are turning properly.

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LITERARY Battle of the Tyrants (Continued) like lungs, that once breathed so freely of the air, could now not find any of this substance that was so precious. Then with a great tremble the Allosaurus bent to death. The sky above was lit afire as the last rays of the sun splashed over the sky and fell on the clouds. Tyrannosaurus, lord of the world, king of tyrants, deadliest of all the carnivor¬ ous dinosaurs, bellowed aloud at his triumph. Eddie Schey, 7-16.