By Betsy King
Gee! I have just had some trip. You know I got my monthly allowance the day before yesterday and it just occurred to me that I could spend it to good advantage looking up the old gang of ’24 (Hum). So I took the fifty thousand dollars”—well, I started off and got into a jam with an air cop first thing but the cop happened to be Clarence Mabry and he had on the cutest uniform with the sweetest blue socks I ever saw. Clarence and I got along alright and it didn’t cost me anything.
I had to drop for gas outside Charlottesville and at the gas service station on University field I ran across Robert Patterson. He was still wearing the tortoise shell rimmed glasses that made the girls follow him around in the old days at school and he could spill the gas as well as ever. After remarking to Bob, “When do we eat?” he said, “Right now!” and we stepped over to a bully little tea room on the University campus. I thought Bob picked this place out because it was so attractive but after getting in I realized that he had a surprise in store for me because there was my old pal Ruth Burleson in the cahier’s cage, and Bob Cranford, who is the proprietor, was walking around giving all the cash customers the once over. We had a dandy talk and a dandy meal but I had to be on my way, so, leaving them, I hit the air for New York.
Parked the old bus at the new station on top of the Equitable Building and went down to look at the bright lights. As I hadn’t seen anything but Alameda and Columbia shows since my last check evaporated, I decided to raise the grade a little bit and take in the Follies. On the way down Broadway I happened to look in a window in front of which a considerable crowd had gathered and there was Marguarite Whitley with about eighty pounds of auburn hair and nary a freckle. She was advertising Danderine and Freckle Cream making lots of money at it.
Who do you suppose the curtain rose on at the theatre? Well it was Dorothy and Juanita. They were looking like a million dollars, prettier than ever, and My Land! how those “weenies” could dance. I looked them up after the show and we framed a trip to Coney Island. Dorothy and Juanita hadn’t seen any of the old crowd for years and didn’t know that any of the gang was around New York but we walked into Margaret Kluttz at the first hot dog stand at the beach. She had her head down under the counter but I could tell her from her badly bitten finger nails. As usual, Marian Pickens was hanging around and, as a matter of fact, was the artist who fried the “dogs” we were consuming. After a few words with Margaret and Marian we continued on down the walk and spent a bully evening—what there was left of it. We only met up with one more of our old playmates. That was Drewery Moore, who was operating one of those roller coasters. Drewery seemed to be happily married but had one ambition which would never be fulfilled and that was to get Miss Leach on his roller coaster.
The next morning I hopped off for Niagara Falls. I hadn’t been there for a long time and did not expect to see anybody I knew. However, I ran across old Sam Horton. Sam is fat and gray and dignified, as is befitting a chief justice of the supreme court, but he had been recently married to Flossie Russell and he was shedding his dignity fast. It seemed to me that in two or three months’ time Sam would be utterly without dignity and probably somewhat hen-pecked.
Musing thus sadly, I took off from the Clifton Hotel and after a long hot trip landed on the outskirts of Hollywood in search of some more of the crowd whom I had heard had drifted to the wicked city. I first hunted up Hoyle Efird, who of all our class has won the greatest renown—not as a movie actor, however, but as a scientist. His remarkable invention of the non-squirtable grapefruit has proven a wonderful boon to humanity and Hoyle’s bank roll. Having achieved wealth and numerous Rolls-Royce cars, he was in position to marry and he had married Mamie Watson, who had waited years for her chance in the movies and finally achieved stardom when the talking movies were perfected thus giving Mamie a chance to show her real class. I did not get to see Mamie as she was busy in the studio but I could hear her talking and having heard her talk I was satisfied that she was the same old Mamie Watson.
Hoyle told me that Dan Boger and Arthur Harris were running a big bank in Los Angeles and while I could probably find Arthur at the bank, no one had ever been able to find Dan there. it seems that Dan was the bank’s entertainer, success in banking in Los Angeles depending to a great extent on entertaining and the personal beauty of the bankers. It is always well to have one member of the firm who can entertain and it seems as though that was where Harris and Boger made their money. Dan got the accounts and Arthur kept them. I had a momentary glimpse of Dan on the beach with a crowd of Hollywood weenies who had recently signed big contracts. He was all dressed up and seemed to be his old sweet self in every respect. Dan was unmarried, giving as his reason that he never could hold down but one job at a time. Arthur had married Laura Smith and they were very happy in their Beverly Hills home.
I had expected to find some trace of my old pal Ellen Huckabee out on the coast as she had gone there years before in search of her health but she had dropped out of sight and no one seemed to know what had become of her.
I had trouble getting away from Dan as he seemed to know that I had part of my check left but finally I made my getaway and hopped off for home. On the way back I looked through my pocket-book and it appeared that with a little careful financing I could get in a side trip to London and possibly to the continent before having to put up the old bus until the next check came. I landed at the Tampa field for gas and oil and a bite before hopping off for England. While waiting at the hangar I noticed a chap coming along clad quite in the “altogether” except for a barrel suspended about the middle portion of his person, who was followed by quite a crowd of small boys. This proved to be my old friend Frank Marbry who was walking from Albemarle to Key West with the barrel as his sole article of dress. This was as the result of a wager with Virginia Morrow, who had bet him that there would be a new court house built in Albemarle by June, 1944. Strange to say Marbry lost and hence the barrel pilgrimage. Virginia had planned to enjoy the trip but her business obligations had detained her abroad where, as luck would have it, I was to meet her a little later.
After getting gas and oil I hopped off for the Old Country. I had a little trouble with the old bus and was forced down several hundred miles out from the Azores. It so happened that it was only a little carburetor trouble. While I was picking at the carburetor with a hairpin, a large battle cruiser showed upon the horizon and hove to about a quarter of a mile from where I was drifting on the sea. Pretty soon they dropped a boat which put off in my direction and I was presently hailed by a cute little ensign in charge, who asked who I was and where I was from and then said, “Beg pardon, miss, but the admiral says you are to get out of his ocean at once.” I asked him who the admiral was. He said “Admiral McQueen, of course.’ I asked him if his first name was Archie and the ensign said that although no one had ever dared to mention his first name out loud, he believed that it was Archie. I knew there was no use arguing with Archie McQueen now about his ocean than there was twenty years ago arguing with him about anything, so I left his ocean as promptly as possible and parked on the Hotel Cecil landing station in time for my evening meal.
I had planned to turn in early that evening but it appeared there was to be a special concert by an American singer at Covent Garden and I decided to attend. No one seemed to know the name of the singer but it seems she was a favorite of the Prince of Wales, who had never married on her account and is said to have laid down on the floor and cried like a child when she refused to marry him. It looked like a good chance to invest some of my alimony in a little music so I bought an orchestra stall, go in early, and waited for things to happen. Say! when that curtain went up you could have knocked me for a row of pink poodles. The Prince of Wales’ dream woman was none other than my old pal Ellen Huckabee, of whom the folks in Hollywood had lost all track. I’ll tell the world that girl could certainly sing. The Prince was there, his pay was there and his may, too. It was a gala occasion, being slightly marred by the Prince’s copious weeping during some of Ellen’s love songs. I managed to meet Ellen after the concert but she was slated for lunch at Windsor Castle so I left her and hopped off for Paris.
I planned to visit the McLaughlins, as I had heard that Dr. Jim was making a great success in Paris. They were not at home, the butler informed me. It seemed they were having a little domestic difficulty and he said I could locate them at the Hotel DeVille where their troubles were being fixed. As it was the first divorce I had run across in the old class, excepting my one, and having a fellow feeling for Elsie Burnette, who was Jim’s wife, I stepped around to the court room and tuned in on the proceedings. Yes, Elsie was there and she was mad. Paul Moose was her attorney and he was mad too. They had a little trouble making the French court understand what it was all about. It seems as though Elise, who has gotten quite stout as the years roll by, had not been feeling well and had asked Dr. Jim if he didn’t think was a little pale. Dr. Jim, who had had a hard night at the Moulin Rouge, and was feeling it, said he didn’t think she was a little pale but said he thought she was a big tub. When I left they were still trying to explain this to the judge.
After leaving the court room I sat down at a little table in front of the Café de la Paix just to see if anyone I knew wouldn’t drift by. I hadn’t waited long before Virginia Morrow came up in her 1944 model Ford. It seems that Virginia is selling Ford cars in Paris and making a great success of it. I told her about the little scene I had witnessed in the divorce court and she explained to me how Elsie happened to be so fat. It seems that Elsie had been trying some of the new nerve tonic for thin women, invented by Mildred Hill. The tonic is guaranteed to build up thin women but seems to very insidious in that it forms a craving and can be carried to excess like they say drinking and smoking cigarettes can be carried to extremes. It appears that Elsie had become a slave to this tonic and hence her present balloon tire equipped figure objected to by her once living husband. There was some talk of the tonic being prohibited by law and Mildred is now devoting her entire time to the anti-fat problem rather than the anti-thin movement to which she has heretofore devoted so much of her time. Virginia told me that Addie Mae Lyerly was also in Parris, the head of a great hospital. Addie Mae has become renowned for her marvelous grafting operations. Probably her outstanding success is Dewey Fesperman. Dewey came to Paris a struggling, unknown young author. He was found in a garret in a half starved, dying condition in the Latin Quarter and brought to Addie’s hospital for treatment. Not recognizing her old classmate in his straightened condition and believing that he was about to die, Addie Mae continued some experiment she had under way at the time and grafted the optical nervous system of a cuckoo and the auricular-ventricular nerves of the turtle dove into the dying Dewey. He was then nourished on some of Mildred’s anti-thin tonic with the result that he was brought back to perfect health and, as you all know, is the most prominent writer of those Cuckoo Love Stories that are now being published.
Virginia and I had a very interesting talk and while were sitting there along came the most marvelously gowned woman I had yet to see in Paris. It seemed to me that I had seen that “knock ‘em dead” look before some place but Virginia was first to recognize her as Maude Brown. It seems that Maude’s husband –Harley Rowland—had made his money in oil when the going was good, married Maude—who certainly needs oil to dress her in the style to which she was accustomed—and then had himself appointed ambassador to France.
Well, all good tings have come to an end and in this case it was Virginia’s dashing off to interview a Ford prospect which brought me to myself and the realization that the old pocket-book was getting low and I had better be turning my old bus toward home if I didn’t want to have to hock it for a ticket. I decided to hop off across the Bay of Biscay to Spain, Portugal and back by way of the Azores. Virginia had told me that Margaret Ellen Patterson was in Old Madrid practicing her profession, which is that of being an old maid. When she had picked out Madrid of all places to practice I cannot tell. I did not get to see her but they do say she is an old maid from choice. She has looked them all over and found them wanting and prefers her independence to her alimony.
Curiously enough, only one of the old class has become a teacher. I ran across her in a mission school in Portugal in a little village where I came down for gas and lunch. I peeked in at this little white-washed school house and listened to the little olive skinned Portuguese children trying to speak English and not getting further than to say “er—er” so I knew before dashing in that their teacher was Louise Green.
The trip was uneventful, that is, practically uneventful. It makes me furious to think about it but I had flown thousands of miles of perfectly good air and had to have an accident just as I was almost at my own back door. I had gotten over in “Back-of-Nath’s” when, with a terrific class the stick flew off, went through the left wing and before I knew it I was doing a nose dive which wound up in somebody’s barn for the plane and the hospital for me. I remember coming to, sniffing faintly and wondering where the apple blossoms came from although this was not apple blossom time. My whole being seemed to glow with a spiritual warmth which I could not account for until I opened my eyes and saw a beautiful nurse screwing the cap on the Mason jar from which the aroma of apple blossoms in Springtime seemed to emanate. Then I remembered that I was indeed back home and knew that the nurses were from the Jethro Almond Memorial Hospital and that they had revived me with the sovereign Stanly County specific for which the hospital is famous. The nurses by the way were May Osborne and Mary Davis. They had never married but devoted their lives to the alleviation of suffering and the application of this Stanly County specific and sovereign remedy.
Here I am, “Back Home and Broke” as Thomas Meighan says. it will be a month before I get the next check and put my old bus in shape for another trip, but in all these years I doubt if any of my money has been as well spent as the last checks which I invested in the history of the Class of 1924. Perhaps someone would like to know who is responsible for all of these checks, but that really all happened quite so long ago that I am unable to recall the chap’s name.
From page 3 of The Midget, Albemarle High School, May 1, 1924
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