Mountaineer, Spring 1948

P u 1^44$ Published by Hu Students of Montana Stato University VOLUME 6 NUMBER 3 SPRING 1948 Your Friendly Gas Company In the Community To Serve TAKE ALL YOUR PRINTING NEEDS To the MISSOULIAN PUBLISHING CO. • Stationery • Booklets • Bulletins • Announcement* • Programs Missoula Mercantile Company Where Missoula and Western Montana Have Shopped With Confidence for 80 Years BUMBLEBEE Yellow Cab CAFE BETTER SERVICE • Breakfasts SAFELY • Dinners • Lunches • Night Specials PHONE Open 24 Hoars a Day 6 6 4 4 mountaineer SPRING 1948 VOLUME t SPONSORS Allied F ashions------------------------------ _______ 425 North Higginn Associated Students Store — ------------- — ..Montana State University B e s s ie ’s Dining Room, The Dog House..... ...... __________ On Highway W B A H Jewelry C o . ------ --------------— —•— ________ 140 North Higgin* Borg Jewelry and Optical Co. —....—---- ---- ____ ___ .227 North Hlggin* B ro w n ie ’s Donut and Ice Cream Shop— ........ _____ __ 138 North Higgle Bumblebee Cafe ------------------------------- ....... ...... 106 West Mail City Cleaners --- ----------- ----------------- ____ ___ 612 South Higginn Estes Maytag Store...... — ..........— — ---- ________ 312 North Hlggin* I Doll House, The — ----- --------------------- ________ 134 West Front! Dragstedt’s --------------- — ---------------- .... ..... .529 North Hlggin* Fairway Drive Inn---------------------------- .Highway 93 and Middieses F r a se r ’s Meat Market -------- --------------- ...S. 6th W. and S. Higgle Gift Shop, T h e------------------------------- .Hammond Arcade Building H a n sen ’s Ice Cream--------------------------- ________ 519 South Hlggin* | Johnson Flying Service---------------------- ___________________Airport j Kramis Hardware Co. ------------------------- ________ 306 North Hlggin4 Leading Shoe Sh op------ -------------------- ________ .514 South Hlggin* L u cy ’s Furniture---------- — ------------ .....Higgins and East Pin*! Majestic Candy Co.--------------------------- ____________ .210 East Main Missoula Mercantile Co. ......... —.... _____ __Higgins and Front! Miesoulian Publishing C o .--- ‘-------------- .... ________.502 North Hlggin* Montana-Dakota Utilities Co.----------------- ________ 121 South Hlggin* MurriU’8 Cocktail Lounge--------------------- __________119% West Main Office Supply Co., T h e ------------- —-------- _______ 115 West Broadway Pallas Confectionery------------------------- ________ 125 South Hlggin* P e te ’s Fur Sh op----------------- — --------- ____________ 125 East Main S ic k ’s Missoula Brewing Co. —................... _______ _.Head of Madison Yellow Cab Co---- --------------------------- 116 W. Front St SEE YOU AT MURRILL S mountaineer SPRING 1948 VOLUME 6 STAFF ........................................................ David Perkins Business Manager ........................................... Larry Rooney Advertising M anager...............................................Beverley Brink Circulation Manager................................... Anita Phillips Publicity Manager ........................................... Dick Darling Faculty Adviser.................................................John Moore Editorial Board...........................Marge Boesen, Beverley Brink, Dick Darling, Mary Fran Law, Anita Phillips, Agnes Regan, Larry Rooney, John Unfred. Circulation Staff........................ Donna Burr, Lois Jean Chauvin, Barbara Dockery, Gwen Dwyer, Edna Geary, Dorothy Jean Harrington, Ruth Haverkamp, Ruth Heinrich, Imogene Honey, Betty Mitchell. CONTENTS A Poor Place to Die, by Bill Crowley.......................... 4 First Night, by Nelson W elsh........... jq Grandfather *8 Visit, by LeRoy Aserlind.. ............................. lg Brilliant Through Winter, by Mary Fran Law....................... 23 by Joe Pavelich______________ 24 The Largest Whale in the World, by Reid Collins .................... 31 Shoulder to the Wheel, by Agnes Regan........................ 39 Boston* Early March, by Walter King ___ 43 Relinquishment, by Marjorie Boesen_______________________ 44 The Locked Door, by Barbara Dockery ____________________ 49 A Poor Place to Die By BILL CROWLEYj 1 HE CORRIDOR was white impulse, turned down the stairs 1 The sound of the clock followed | T and quiet, and the light was me, tapping at the stillness. I bright and hard and burned its seeming not to diminish as I went I way into the eyes. Occasionally a nurse hurried past, brisk, away from it. A strange thing to I find in a hospital, an old-fashioned I starched and efficient, and disap grandfather’s clock, but then, this I peared through the swinging was an old building and many I doors at the end. Other than this, things, the dark, aging wooden! there was only silence. We sat on banisters, the paneling and the I the benches, huddled and motion door frames, clashed strangely I less, staring at the floor, almost with the severe, antiseptic modem I fearfully avoiding conversation. furnishings. Anyhow, the clock Nothing had been said for almost an hour. The woman with the was there near the head of the bandaged foot was crying, but the stairs, with the long pendulum tears slid down her cheeks with swinging, chopping G in o ’s life away with monotonous mechanical I out a sound. The other woman strokes. I turned at the bottom j brushed aimlessly at the dried mud on her skirt. Shan was be of the stairs and walked toward side her, staring fixedly at the the front door, where the wind floor. I pulled up my coat sleeve drummed on the glass panes, for probably the tenth time, for leaned on a window-sill and getting that my wrist watch was looked out. smashed. There was no clock The rain was sweeping down • anywhere in the corridor. I got steadily, filling the gutters and up and walked away as quietly as flooding over the sidewalks. The, I could, down the hall and around wind, pounding out of the moon the corner, past the closed doors tains, tossed the lone swinging arc of many rooms. Just beyond the light over the intersection into head of the stairs was a tall, old- weird convulsions. The shadowy fashioned clock with a swinging of fire-plugs, telegraph poles, and pendulum, ticking noisily in the iron railings leaped and^ con silence. The hands stood at three- tracted in live and mad calisthem fifteen. Almost two hours since ics. The light of the swinging they had wheeled Gino down the lamp climbed up the side of tjM corridor through the swinging dark brick building across the doors. street and then fell again like the I started back and then, on an rise and fall of the surf. It made mountaineer page 5 queer momentary shapes of the ing someone who had been lost. barred windows of the county jail We talked of the days in the tim opposite. Except for the frantic ber yard, when we were just kids, playing of that light, there was seventeen or so. We sat up half nothing on the street, not a person the night in his kitchen after his nor a car, nothing. There wasn't wife and the youngsters had gone even a light in the windows of to bed, and sipped his home-made that dark building over there from wine. We even went out and got which the doctor had come splash drunk together for old times' sake. ing through the rain, to measure So my few days in the old home Gino, lying on the stretcher, with town soon lengthened out into a trained indifferent eyes. week;, and then I promised Gino It hadn't taken the doctor long. I'd stay two more days for the He looked, and he knew, and we firemen's dance. Those dances knew it, too, then. He moved used to be big affairs back before quickly enough, testing, watching, the depression had settled down looking, but the motions were only hard and sent half of our old gang those mechanical ones that must out to the coast looking for work. be made while life still flickers, Most of the fellows hadn't stayed but there is no hope. He worked as I had, and Gino insisted that I with the quick irritation of a man should come to the dance and see asked to save something that is them all. already past saving. His eyes The dance was the same; they Kwept over us once, half-accusing, were always the same. Same old naif-wondering, unable to fathom roadhouse, same old muddy coun the prodigality that had crushed try road, even the same rain that this body and then brought it with always came for the firemen's child-like faith to him to be kept spree. And then, after we'd been alive. Then he and the nurses there a while and everybody's went to do the things that they hand was shaken and everybody's must, however hopeless, and left story told, it was the same old 118 *° the hours and the silence drunks and the same old fights, and the white blinding light. and the same feeling of relief I wished I had never come back, when Gino's wife said she wanted thought of all the turns, all the to leave. After that it was good decisions, all the small coinci- byes to the ones who were still Ik that could have changed sober, and a dash through the rain ‘be stream of events and put me for Shan's car and the ride back * uusand miles away. I had an to town. old hitter feeling that a word, a It's a funny thing about acci movf> a ^ew days or hours ago dents, you never know how they ould have changed everything, happen. Shan was driving fast turned it another way. I shouldn't and the rain was coming down trove come back. But fifteen years hard. The car slipped and lurched Is a Ion? time, and I couldn't have in the muddy ruts and the head *nown it would have come to this. lights d id n ’t penetrate very far. jtmo had been glad to see me. There was a little talk, mostly be c wasn't much good at writing tween Gino's wife and Shan's. hA*?' and neither was I, so we When the other car came around , kt *he years drift between the curve suddenly there wasn't nd 86 pa rate us. It was like meet much Shan could do. There was page 6 mountaineer the first heavy crash as the front ing card in the St. J o s e p h ’s school I wheels slammed into the ditch and hall to raise money for equipment I then the smashing continuous I remember I was the one who I thumps as the car turned over.

Load more