West Side High School - Legenda Yearbook (Saginaw, MI)

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DESTINY ' S DUMBELLS HOWARD McINTYRE I Rollo was the only son of Old Rollo Armitage, who controlled the market so completely that everything but Ford stock dropped at least five points if he happened to sneeze. In that case, Ford preferred advanced ten. We may, of course, assume that Armitage Sr. had sev- eral rubles to his credit in the National Trust Association, his own brain child. To speak frankly, Rollo Jr. was not on particularly good terms with the Old Man. A bone of contention had been dug up by his father months before, and they were still chewing at the wretched thing. Neither one of them would swallow it, so it bid fair to live a long life. Matters were thus: Old Rollo had received a Special Delivery one morning, which he read before the news- paper at the breakfast table. An unusual occurence for the king of the market. He spent many moments in thought over his grapefruit before noticing his hopeful sitting opposite, then he glanced at the young man and appeared to make a decision. Rollo, he said firmly after clearing his throat in preparation for the utterance of some important message, I wish to see you married! The target of this unprecedented remark jerked convulsively, choked on his hot coffee, and coughed violently into his napkin. He looked at his parent with alarm. When he spoke his voice was strained with emotion — or hot coffee. What an original idea, pater, he said with all seriousness. Do you know any more good ones? Old Rollo was surprised. He had expected horrified objection, knowing well the nature of his son. This apparent acquiescence disarmed him. Why — er. It really isn ' t my idea at all — that is, he sputtered aimlessly. But I ' ve been — er considering your marriage for quite some time. This missive here, indicating the let ter, was the — er agent of — ah determination on the subject — um. Um, repeated Rollo. What ' s that! demanded his father observing him fruitlessly through his reading glasses. Did you say something? Oh, no, I merely intimated that you might continue. I ' ll continue when I get ready, snapped the Old Man. His aggressive business man- ner was returning. The only way to deal with this upstart son was to consider him a com- mercial inferior. Now listen! In my hand, he held up the envelope, I have a letter from an old friend in California. We made our starts together in the nineties, and later he took up the lumber trade. I took up steel. He is at present head of the Western State Lumber Com- pany, and is very successful. To be explicit, he must be worth thirty-five or forty millions. That would make a mighty nice addition to your patrimony when both he and I are gone. He stopped and gazed expectantly at Rollo. That young man was puzzled. How do you expect me to get it, he asked dubiously. Does he carry it around in a hand bag? Then light dawned through his active brain. You must want me to marry his daughter! Is that it? Your deductions are excellent, admitted Old Rollo with an attempt at irony. I ' d hardly expect you to marry his mother. But what if I don ' t — I mean what if the girl doesn ' t want me? His voice was hooeful. You needn ' t worry, Joe Branch is not the man to be moved by the wishes of a wilful girl. Besides, why shouldn ' t she marry you? I ' ve seen many worse looking boys than you. It was a doubtful compliment. Rollo figeted. I — darnit dad, maybe I ' d rather pick my own wife. Besides, he grasped wildly for a raft, she might stop a clock even if I don ' t. You wouldn ' t wish a woman off on me if she looked like an Igorot. Old Rollo brought his fist down on the table with emphasis. The jar upset the cream, summoned a frightened maid to the door, and startled a canary, quietly sleeping in his cage m the conservatory, into a wild burst of song. You ' ll do just as I say! roared the Old Man. I ' ve had more experience than you m such matters — ah, that is. Ah — my judgment is more mature than yours, he finished lamely. As far as her looks are concerned, he continued, I don ' t think she ' s bad. He handed Rollo a small photograph which had accompanied the letter. It was a snapshot of what at first appeared to be a beautiful sport sedan. On closer m- spection a girl was discernable. Her hair, blowing freely in the wmd seemed to be bobbed. Although her head was thrust out of a window, the picture was far too tmy to do either credit or discredit to the damsel he was scheduled to marry.

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HELEN OF TROY, OHIO Take any one of our several dictionaries in common use, and if you select the same one I did, and turn to the word, money, you will find something like this — gold, silver, or other metal, stamped by public authority, and used as a medium of exchange. But, gentle reader, that ain ' t the half of it. Money is something which has made and unmade slews of gentlemen, and others. It has kept Henry Ford out of the poorhouse, and, according to several, is gonna ' keep him out of the White House. The lure for lucre almost lost me my only means of sup- port, and also my best friend. Kid Conroy. And every time I think of that dirty Ed Allardyce — but, I ' ll give you all the dope, and you can see what you think of him. It ' s like this : Kid Conroy, which I spoke of before, has, under my management, developed into no less than light weight champion of the world! It has been a long grind to the champ ' s belt, and we ain ' t aiming to lose it right away, but as George Washington, or was it Mark Antony, was once heard to remark, You never can tell. The trouble all starts when the Kid, boyish like, gets a girl, Helen Dell by name, and Helen, girlish like, is especially averse to box-fightin. ' Not that I dislike Helen. She ' s a nice girl, and is about enough of a knockout to make the average movie-actress feel as cheap as a dude in overalls at a Charity Ball, but too much attention can be shown any girl, and anyway they ' re all alike, and you know how that is. Well, anyhow, the Kid promises her that he ' ll quit the ring after one more fight — but that fight never — whoop, I ' m getting to the end of my story too quick. They is two other guys which is lookin ' at a shot at the lightweight title. Named in the order of their prominence, they are Battling Cook, who might better be known as Battling Crook; and Sailor Wilde. Well, Cook and Wilde have their melee, and Cook comes out on top. Hardly had Wilde come to, when I received a word from Cook ' s manager, Ed Allardyce, challenging my boy to a leather-pushin ' duel, and guaranteein ' us fifty thousand bucks, besides a five thousand dollar appearance forfeit. Now the average man has never seen fifty thousand dollars, and I ' m average, so I accept the proposition before you could ' say Jack Robinson I Everyone seems to be happy over the deal except Helen. She can ' t see it a ' tall. Maybe a short description of Helen would fit in here. As I said before, she is some looker, and she could get through a fair-sized crowd without no push a ' tall. She comes from Troy, Ohio, and is, at the present time, engaged in jerkin ' sodas at a down-town drug store. Helen ' s a nice kid, too, but, somehow, it seems as though it is part of a woman ' s nature to abhor prize-fightin. ' The ' s another guy which thinks that Helen is pretty nice, also. His name ' s Jimmy Sutton, and he works down to the Sportin ' Club. He naturally has a dislike for the Kid, but before we get through, you ' ll see that he was a darn big help to him. If you go to ten fights at your local fight club, I ' d be willing to bet that nine of them would be draws, eight of which would be planned before hand. But title bouts ain ' t managed that way, and as the two boys for this match are pretty evenly balanced, it promises to be a battle royal. It probably would have been, too, if it had of came off. The fight is scheduled for 8:00 o ' clock p. m., on Decoration Day — that was yesterday. Well, yesterday afternoon, the Kid goes down to the drug store to see Helen. He gets home about four o ' clock and by six, he is so sick we have a doctor there. Needless to say, there wasn ' t no fight. Well, this morning, the Kid, who is all right now, and I are in my office trying to figure out what it ' s all about. I have just said for the fiftieth time, Who could have doped you up that way? when fair Helen walks in. Well, she says, as cool as could be, I did. I would have killed somebody, if I hadn ' t been too weak to move. The Kid just sits there and stares at her kind of dumb-like. Helen goes on to explain it all, and, while I can ' t give it like she did, the jist of it was this: It seems that this Jimmy Sutton come in to Helen ' s store one night, he seems to feel that he ' s got to tell all his troubles to Helen, so during his conversation, he lets it out that Ed Allar- dyce has made an agreement with him to pull all the lights in the club at a certain signal. Wilde will be expectin ' it, so when the champ confusedly drops his hands, he will be smacked cold. Helen feels that we won ' t believe her if she does tell us, so she undertakes to stop the fight her- self. It also seems that sometime during his visit at the drug store, the Kid gets thirsty, so Helen gives him a glass of milk, which, she says, will do him good. It did! It had some kind of a drug in it which gave a pronounced feeling of nausea to the partaker for a short time. That ' s what it says on the box! Leave it to a woman. Well, I can hardly believe my ears, but it turns out that it ' s all true, and Sutton confesses. The Boxing Commission rules Wilde out of the ring forever, and gives us his forfeit. Summing up everything, we are still in possession of the title plus five thousand fish and our eff ' ort has been practically nothing, except a little headwork on the part of Helen, so, as they used to say until it became stale, We should worry,

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Rollo was disgusted with the world and its ways. He tossed the photograph across the table to his irate father. When I marry, he delivered his shot dramatically, it will be the woman I love! He stalked tragically from the room, leaving Old Rollo staring at him in amazement, tinged with admiration. Times immemorable the subject was broached, even after this outburst. The Old Man was determined to have his way. He threatened on several occasions to disinherit his son, but some latent instinct in his being told him that Rollo needed tactful handling. Following this situation, he allowed the discussion to drop for awhile, but the government was kept busy carry- ing mail between New York and California. At last he re-introduced it when he and Rollo were dining at the club to which they both belonged. ' Joe Branch and his daughter will be here in a few days, he announced easily. Clara — that ' s the girl ' s name — thinks that Joe ' s coming on a business trip, which he is, in a way. He held up a telegram. They ' re already started, he complted. Mr. Armitage was veiy well pleased with himself. His son finished his dinner, carefully laid down his napkin, and arose to leave. He was very calm. I won ' t have a thing to do with them he stated quietly, and left the room. Mr. Armitage shrugged his shoulders, fully believing that the young man would change his mind when he had to. Rollo called a taxi and went to New York ' s Chinatown, then popular with the Four Hundred, with the determined intent of burying his sorrows in dance and song. He didn ' t care for intoxicating beverages, so it was impossible for him to drown his woes; he at last decided to smoke them out with opium. Unknown to the police of the metroDolis, to whom it must be admitted much is known, was a drug den in the musty cellar of Chinee Charlie ' s Jazz Palace. To this haven of vice Rollo was conducted by a wary, squint-eyed, unemotional old Chink, a student of human nature to his yellow core. To many of the applicants for an onium stall this guarded Oriental turned a bland, saffron countenance with the time-worn words : No got! Others more for- tunate — or unfortunate, as you please — whom he believed desirous enough of the drug to keep secret its origin, he admitted, led them through a secret panel in a private room, down a dirty rat infested passagewav, and into the isolated den. There is little need to dwell upon Rollo ' s only sowing of wild oats. Sufficient to say that he reaped a splitting headache and a deadened mental system, and was entirely devoid of logical reason when he left an hour later. In the first place, his stomach felt strange. Not more than a week previous he had seen in the New York Globe, an advertisement embellished with the picture of a very stout man, who appeared to be calling his dog. That Derverse little animal was sitting happily under the shelter of the fat man ' s abdomen, but of this fact his master was supposed to be entirely igno- rant until he reduced by taking Fish ' s Fatoff Capsiiles. To return to Rollo ' s stomach, figura- tively speaking, that organ of digestion seemed as huge as the one in the patent medicine ad. He glanced cautiouslv down at his fee t. Yes-s-s, he could have seen his dog had he been there, because he could distinguish his toes as it was. I me n Rollo ' s toes. He could have seen old Ruff anyway, since he was an unusually big Newfoundland. His head was also out of joint. It was as heavv as lead and wouldn ' t balance on his shoulders. As a cap to his difficulties, when he looked at one lamp post he saw two. And he usually tried to hang onto the wrong one. He lurched down this street and that, finallv reaching the swarming heart of the city. To the eyes of the curious passers-by he was stupidly drunk. He realized one fact in a dim, unreal way. No self-respectinsr girl would care to marry a man locked up for drunkenness. And he was glad. But as usual when wanted, not a policeman was near, even when a victim was all set for a ride in the wagon. So Rollo meandered on. Suddenly he was seized with a tremendous desire to sleep. The potent opium was numb- ing his faculties. Near him at the curb was parked a large enclosed motor car, empty. Even the chauffeur was absent, so Rollo straightened his hat and sauntered almost elegantly to the machine, opened the door to the back seat, pulled down every curtain, and stretched out luxuri- ously on the soft cushions. II When he awoke, his return from dreamland was punctuated by a series of violent jerks. Apparently the motor car was in motion. Rollo, still dopey, was undecided as to what course he should take, so he remained quiet. From where he lay, by twisting his neck, he obtained a fine view of the occupants of the front seat. The dome lights were not switched on, so the two persons there hqd probably overlooked his presence. He could see them plainly, a man whose face he did not like, and a girl whose face he did like, by the rays of the dash lamp. In spite of a terrific headache Rollo was able to appreciate the beauty of the girl. He lay still, know- ing that silence only would save him from discovery.