A Tribute to Excellence...

If this column sounds less coherent end sensible than usual, you may lay it to the fact that just a short while before sitting down to my Remington portable to compose these paragraphs I finished reading and grading some forty-odd examination papers in my Current History course at O.H.S.

The results were highly satisfactory, but by the time I had finished the little grey cells in the cerebellum were slightly groggy. In fact they sti11 are. Were it not highly unfair and unethical to do so at that point I almost wished that I had pursued the course of action which I facetiously described to some of the seniors on Sunday afternoon.

Arriving at the High School for the Baccalaureate Service,I was besieged by figures garbed in caps and gowns with the repetitive question, “Have you read the exams? What did get?” After about the ninth such query, when a dozen or more seniors were grouped around me, my tongue invisible in my cheek, I said “My dear friends, last evening at precisely eleven minutes past midnight, when my eyes were glazed and my reason reeling from reading the erudite knowledge which you displayed on your exam papers, I took the whole batch of them in my hand, walked down through the back yard to the shore of the Cove and cast them upon the waters. The tide was ebbing so that am sure that by now some of those papers are several miles off Nauset Beach.” All but one of my listeners accepted that yarn with a chuckle or a bored smile. However, one young man, gullible as always, asked, "Did you really do that, with our papers, Doc?"

Last, evening marked the end of school days for still another class at O.H.S., the thirtieth class I have seen receive their diplomas in schools in which have taught. Commencement, for a teacher always has a certain note of sadness, for in every graduating class there are certain boys and girls of whom one has grown very fond, students whose presence will be missed when school begins again in September. Looking back over thirty years of teaching there are many faces and names which are vivid in my memory, most of them good students, some of them just grand boys and girls remembered not for scholastic achievement but for some attractive trait of personality. Often I wonder what has become of them all, what they are doing, where they are living and if they sometimes look back, as I do, to the days when we shared a classroom and the experiences therein.

Speaking of teachers, the other day I ran into one of my former students who is now himself a teacher, an Orleans boy who has been teaching for several years in a small town in Kansas, Bobby Bremner. At the moment Bobby is or perhaps was is more accurate, the teacher in a school which no longer exists. The Kansas town in which he taught is one of several which are being abandoned, since before too long land on which they lie will be covered with water, water damned up as the result of the government's flood control project in that state. So Bobby’s school held their final sessions last month. After a summer back home in Orleans, working at the Goose Humrnock Shop, Bobby is going back to his alma mater, Kansas State University, where he will study for his Master’s degree and hold a part-time teaching fellowship.

The fame of the Kultural Koffee Klub at, the Phriendly Pharmacy is now nationwide. In a recent issue of "Drug Topics" a national trade journal, there is a lengthy and detailed account of the KKK, its origin and mode of operation.

The only significant and serious omission in this otherwise accurate and enlightening account of one of Orleans’ most active organizations is the omission of any mention of the name and fame of the first, charter member and perennial President, the affable chap who plays anagrams on the marquee of the local cinema palace. You will notice that I have not mentioned his name, I refrain from doing so (for a while at least) under threat of threatened suit. However, if all runs true to form it will not be long before he accosts me with the query, "What’s the matter? You haven't had my name in the paper lately."

And now with summer practically upon us once more, with the magazines and newspapers full of delicious-sounding recipes for the hot weather, let me suggest that you try a really original recipe concocted quite unwittingly and unwillingly by a well-known and long-time employee of Mayo's Duck Farm. The dish is known as Scrambled Eggs ala Charlie. Its origin is as follows:

on one of his fortnightly visits to deliver eggs at Chaos-on-the-Cove, Charlie was asked by Madame B. if he would bring in a half dozen more than the usual order. Charlie delivered the six extra eggs and then was presented by Madame B., who always believes in getting the fullest use out of all things, with several empty egg boxes, which she had saved from previous visits. Charlie picked them up and rather hesitantly shook them. With a smile of obvious relief he remarked, “You know the last time I was here your ordered an extra half-dozen. I picked up the box I took those out of along with the other empty boxes you gave me, took them out to the truck and threw them in the back. Then I suddenly remembered that one of those boxes still had six eggs in it." "Were any of them broken?" asked Madame B. "Every damned one of ‘em" replied Charlie with no little emphasis.