Woonsocket High School - Quiver Yearbook (Woonsocket, RI)

Page 12 text:

6 THE QUIVER o’clock before the last pack was adjusted, the last stray orange collected, the last snapshots taken, and we were off. What fun! We walked, perhaps, four miles before a halt was called for supper. In a field near a blackberry patch we built our fire and cooked half our bacon and eggs. Cutting bread with a jackknife requires time and patience, but it can be done. We had blackberries for dessert, and each filled her drinking cup with berries for refreshment later on. Then 1 blessed the frying pan, for think how many m »re berries a frying pan will hold than a mere drinking cup. We started on again, singing camp songs, telling jokes and stories. The road runs past a large tract of State property that is fenced by a long stone wall simply made to be walked on, so we walked on it. By half past eight, it was so dark that we decided to turn in. We stopped at a farmhouse for water and then turned off the road into a little clearing in the woods, near enough to a brook so that we could hear its tinkle, tinkle, as it wound its way down the hillside. There was no moon, but the stars were out in full force, winking at us as if they wondered what we were doing there. Bv nine, we were settled for the night, our heads pillowed on our shoes and on anything else that was handy, and were soon sung to sleep by an orchestra of crickets and katydids. About one o’clock I was awakened by a bang at my head and discovered that my neighbor, in trying to move off a stone, had collided with the frying pan and was endeavoring to get it out of the way by putting it on me. Between us, we got it where it would do no more harm and were soon asleep, not to awaken again until nearly six. When it was light, we discovered that we were in another blackberry patch, so we made a respectable meal. It was very foggy, but by seven o’clock the sun had won his way through and was shining down on us with a promise of being uncomfortably hot later on. We walked on through the early morning hush, keeping our eyes open for apple trees and cornfields conveniently situated. It is marvelous how many apples and ears of corn can be tucked away in poncho rolls and bloomer legs. Breakfast was the next thing on the program : first course, bacon, eggs, and bread; second course, roast corn with bacon grease; third course, green apples fried in bacon fat. If you have never eaten green apples sliced with a jackknife and fried in bubbling hot bacon fat over an open fire and stirred with a stick sharpened by that same jackknife, then you have missed more than you can possibly realize. When the last crumb had disappeared and the frying pan had been wiped clean on a burdock leaf, we realized that a storm was

Page 11 text:

THE QUIVER June, 1922 Price, 30 Cents WITH PONCHO AND FRYING PAN Last summer I spent my vacation in a little village situated in that lovely part of the country between the Hudson River and the Connecticut line. I was there nearly six weeks, that were packed as full of fun as they possibly could be; but perhaps the “bat” that I enjoyed the most was the over-night hike we took, coming back from a camping trip at a lake nearby. On the last day of camp, most of the girls and their luggage were sent off on the truck, leaving to the seven hikers the work of cleaning up the camp grounds. By four o’clock this was satisfactorily accomplished. and we sat down to rest our weary selves. It was put to vote and unanimously carried that we should take at least twenty minutes for a swim before starting out. That twenty minutes grew to fifty; but oh. the joy of lolling around in cool water with no tempestuous voung campers to keep an eye on, after one has been scrubbing floors, blacking stoves, and trying to restore newly varnished tables to their previous state of shininess! After our swim, we collected the blankets and provisions and proceeded to do up the blankets into business-like rolls and to divide the bacon, eggs, bread, oranges, frying pan, and matches among us. My lot was fourteen oranges done up in a gay red and white towel tied with a ribbon, which I slipped over my shoulders, and a greasy, black frying pan, attached to my belt with a safety-pin. It was six

Page 13 text:

THE QUIVER 7 coming up and rapidly, too. A little district schoolhouse stood on the hill above us, and gathering up our packs, we scampered toward it, reaching the porch just as the storm broke. It was a severe one, but, luckily for us, we were on the edge of it. The schoolhouse door was unlocked, so we went inside, and our senior counselor conducted classes in history, spelling, and geography. I am afraid that all the textbooks would have to be revised if they were to agree with some of the statements made that morning. The rain very conveniently put out our fire for us, so we started on the last lap of the journey, about sixteen miles. We wound along, back and forth across the road, in single file, splashing in every puddle left by the storm and sucking hailstones almost as big as eggs, that we found lying in heaps along the way. The road was littere l with leaves, twigs, big branches, and, twice, a whole tree that had been brought down by the storm. Once we stopped to paddle in a little brook; again, to strip a patch of blueberries; and several times to ask for water at a farmhouse. At one house the loveliest little old lady made us come in and sing our camp songs, while she passed around delicious molasses cookies and ginger-bread. Just before we reached Akins’ Corners, where we were to take the back road for home, about three miles farther, a car came past, driven by one of our neighbors. All seven of us piled in. When Mr. Stevens found that we had walked from Peach Lake, he took us the rest of the way home, so that we arrived there in time for dinner, much to the surprise of our families. DOROTHY BARKER. A “GOLD DAY” Joyce and the Boy were very fortunate, though only the Boy was old enough to realize it, because Joyce was only two. The Boy was four. His real name was George William, after his Uncle George, a privileged guest in their little world. He had won the Boy s heart in the very first minute that the Boy was old enough to see the point, by a nursery rhyme, an original production, probably suggested by the fact that Boy rhymes with Joy, if one is allowed to shorten Joyce to Joy. It really was a delightful little rhyme, however, telling about their blue eyes and golden hair, with bits of humor for the Boy’s benefit.