Page 51 - 1936

Cate’s back yard played an important part. (We don’t think he knew it.) We
learned by spring that Mr. White, the history teacher and principal of the Lower
School, could be steered away from the topic of the day to the more interesting and
gory subject of the World War. Bob Aldrich was the most successful one at it. In­
cidentally, it might be said that Bob is doing O.K. with Mr. Raines this year.
That spring we did all sorts of things with transits. We measured the height of
the small flagpole, we had a treasure hunt with transits used as keys, and we meas­
ured off a baseball diamond. This served to get us out of several afternoons’ work.
Then there was a trip to Boston. We had a big red bus that snorted, whistled,
and hissed. The spots touched on that trip were the Charlestown Navy Yard (we
went on board O ld Ironsides) , the Agassiz Museum at Harvard, Lexington and
Concord, also Bruce Winters. The reason has slipped away, but the facts stand that
before we got to Wightman’s Diner, Bruce was quite torn and disheveled.
The day at last—prizes, white flannels, songs, mothers, flowers, "The Shadow
of the Elms.” We were now Upper Schoolers.

I.
Of course our vacation ended all too quickly! Why, we had just started having
a good time, when, presto! it was time to go back to school again. Yes, we thought,
now it would be just right if we had school only about three months or so and then
had the rest of the year in which to have a good time. Most of us didn’t see how we
really stood the grueling school year anyhow.
This year it was different; we were going to be big upper schoolers and have all
men teachers. We were going out for bigger game. Just the same when it came
time to enter the big study hall—well, we were anxious about it. When one got
accustomed to living quietly without jumping at all of the bells that seemed to ring
out at one from the most unexpected places, he gazed rearward over those long
rows of desks and wondered if he’d ever get to sit in one of those dignified back
seats, just then occupied by those stuck-up fellows called Seniors. We jumped, too,
when "Jit”—we had already heard numerous references to Mr. Henderson by this
name—banged on the big silver bell that he had on his raised desk. We wondered
what it was all about, too, when we went into a class where there was a funny fel­
low who’d pat you on the back and give you some Gibson’s candy one moment
while the next it was all you could do to dodge those sizzling bits of chalk that
were supposed to keep you wide awake and attentive if you had been daydreaming.
We had learned that the speedball artist’s name was "Pat,” Robert A. Patterson in
select company, or "Two Gun” as he was more appropriately called.
We all enjoyed "Bosco’s” southern drawl and occasional flashes of humor. We
had an interesting time in his laboratory listening to Georgie Barrows get into long,
complicated discussions on television and radio. "Clint” Tanner and Eddy Cotter
making faces behind Ira’s back were another source of amusement. Some of Mr.
Newlin’s equipment was certainly mysterious looking to us then, but not quite so
mysterious were those fragrant aromas that rolled up in great smothering, suffocat-

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