Page 60 - 1936

lost bomb. That "wowed ’em.” With this last gesture we left for home to rest up
before the most difficult stretch of the year’s work.
Returning from an eventful and pleasant vacation, we were met by the welcome
news that there would be no mid-year exams. But we paid in the form of stiffer and
longer term tests that month. Most of us finished the half-year undamaged.

In athletics we established a really enviable record during the winter, notably in
the field of track. Captain Clapp led his teammates to smashing triumphs in all of
the dual meets, keeping our string of consecutive victories in duals intact, and in
addition we won the Eastern Seaboard Relay Championship and the Harvard Inter­
scholastic Meet. We were barely nosed out for the Rhode Island Y. M. C. A. cham­
pionship by Hope High. This meet was featured by Clapp’s double win in the
40-yard dash and the hurdles, Don Blount’s record-making victory in the high jump,
George Spelt's thrilling dead heat in the 300 with Dunbar Young, Hope ace, and
the relay team’s convincing triumph.

The wrestling team, under a new coach, was able to win most of its dual
matches. Several of the boys showed definite promise as material, there being few
Seniors on the team. The boys went on to make a creditable showing in the Brown
Interscholastics. Bruce Richardson was the only man from our School to come out
unbeaten, although "Ace” Bshara reached the finals. The swimming team likewise
enjoyed a satisfactory season, though much handicapped by sickness and by the inex­
perience of the material, placing fourth in the Harvard championships and third at
Brown. Fine spirit was shown throughout the season.

The winter had the usual periods of unrest and deviltry, notably alarm-clock
night in study hall, when some ingenious perpetrator(s) planted a dozen clocks
behind the dignified masks of Newton, Agassiz, and other innocents. Then there
was the black-tie episode, a fiendish plot which was nipped in the bud, but which
had repercussions some days later in the class pictures. Some weeks later came the
"Talcott-for-Superintendent-of-Schools” campaign, in which affair the amiable and
unsuspecting teacher-baiter was the subject of a campaign ditty composed by that
master salesman and lyricist, the "Sander.” When the rowdy campaigners tried to
stage a rally in the study hall, Mr. Howe decided that that was a little too much.
The Senior corridor was peculiarly silent and unprotesting this year, except, of course,
for the night the hurdy-gurdy appeared in the front yard just in time for study hall.
The proprietor of that raucous delight, we think, was not acting solely on his own
initiative.
Assembly speakers were many and varied. Perhaps the most delightful was
Clayton Hamilton, who made of Mr. William Gillette an American institution.
And, of course, the ever-popular Mike Dorizas, who gave us a chance to say what
we thought of Mussolini and Hitler. Branson De Cou’s illustrated lecture on
Switzerland was up to that gentleman’s usual superior offerings. Several fellows
also attended the Foreign Policy meetings, and were alternately stimulated and
bored, according to whether the debaters got into a fight or no.

»>[ 56 ](«•