The Avesta, Volume 21, Number 2, Summer, 1942 Page: 35
36 p. : ill. ; 30 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
"rush," is scarce and long-sought,
but it's the rarity that makes the
worth. There's nothing I can think
of that can top a new dress, a new
hair-do, a new beau, and a steady
stream of stags to tap shoulders and
grin down for the usual banalities. I
repeat, the species Rush is a rare bird,
but according to zoological authori-
ties, he is definitely a Bird of Para-
dise.
1 like to go home. If it's after a
trip to the library or a jaunt to Colo-
rado, I find opening our front door
and stepping inside a thrill that never
dies. I like the cooky jars, the com-
fortable beds, the shirt sleeves, the
daytime duties, the night-time laugh-
ter, the all-time peace which means
home. Maybe that's my prolonged
state of infancy, but I still like it-
I like to go home.
I like new shoes. My dream of in-
heriting a fortune always degenerates
in the end to a shoe--buying spree onPet Likes
(Continued from page 15)
bargain day. I'm looking right now
to some far-distant day when I can
cast a proud eye around my shoe shelf
and take in at a glance umpteen dozen
sandals and slippers and oxfords and
walking shoes and brogues and
pumps and platforms and huaraches
-See? I always end up like that!
I like to get my typing finger go-
ing on a feature story, and I like to
chew my pencil over a would-be
poem. I like May, too, and dinner
rings, and uniforms, and Robert
Benchley, and "Begin the Beguine,"
and kids in the seventh grade, and
evening dresses, and soft lead pencils,
and Thomas Wolfe, and riding in
the rain, and long eyelashes, and
blue, and baked ham, and down com-
forts, and a date with a tux, and val-
entines, and lilacs, and puffed sleeves,
and dancing on the slab, and Edgar
Lee Masters-
Am I getting out of hand? Well,
these are what in the h- I like.down home and see the kids."
When they got to West Texas,
John and Sarah stopped over only
for a few weeks, during which time
John was gone for five days. One
day he came in and asked Sarah if
she would like to go out on a little
trip into New Mexico with him.
Out past the sandy wastelands of
the Staked Plains and into the moun-
tainous regions of New Mexico, they
stopped at an apparently strange
ranchhouse and stayed all night. The
rancher, however, seemed well
acquainted with John.
The next morning John drove
their new Buick up a narrow wind-
ing road. When they were near the
summit, he pointed out a verdant,
velvety, grass-covered valley to the
south of them.
"Here's something new and vig-
orous, Sarah," he told her, the yel-
low early-morning sunlight carefully
defining the tiny crow's feet wrinkles
around his eyes. "We're sure to make
a good lamb crop this spring, and the
shearing crop next spring should put
us back on our feet."
In Defense of Dali
(Continued from page 18)one-seventh for him and Sarah.
'The kids helped us plenty when
we didn't have anything," he ex-
plained to her. "We've too doggone
much money, anyhow, and we
couldn't spend it if we had twice as
much time left to live."
"Then, John, why don't you
turn your part of the interests over
to Jeff?" Jeff, she said, seemed to
have a good head for business, and
besides, they ought to go back East.
"It's been nearly twenty-five years
since we left, you know."
They retired and watched little
shack towns spring up over night on
the alkali flats, and they watched
boisterous pipeliners, tooldressers,
roustabouts, roughnecks, and tank-
ers displace the lean-hipped, sun-
tanned cowboys in the transformed
country.
For the first time in twenty-four
years, John and Sarah went back to
Virginia. With her other clothes, she
packed all her dresses she had shown
the girls during the years they were
growing up. She didn't try to ex-
plain to John why she did it for
she couldn't figure out herself exactly
why she did do it.
Sarah felt almost young again asthey visited both his and her rela-
tives; and when they would sit on
the cool verenda in the late after-
noon, she would listen to the trickle
of the tiny stream that passed close
to the house and think of ways to
approach John about buying a home
and settling down in their home
state.
Just about the time she would
have it all worked out in her mind,
John would tell her Uncle Joshua
what wonderful country it was in
the West, and it would completely
unnerve her.
They were visiting with his aged
aunt, Aunt Emily, when the crash
came in 1929. Jeff's wire came the
next day.
"The boys didn't handle things so
well," he told Sarah briefly after
reading the telegram. "The invest-
ments they made cleaned us out."
"What are we to do?" Sarah
asked sadly, almost automatically.
"It's all right, Hon," he reassured
her, "there's a little nest egg laid back
that will come in kinda handy now.
The boys are liable to find the going
pretty tough for a while-just ac-
cording to what the oil business does
now. Guess we'd better mosey onI know why most people do not
like modern art. It doesn't tell a
story, and people like stories. They
want art to be romantic, illustrative,
graphic, literary. They think that ev-
erybody should be able to stand be-
fore a painting and have the same
feeling and imagine the same story to
go with it. Maybe it is grade school
"picture memory," each picture with
its accompanying pretty tale, that
gets us off on the wrong foot.
Most people think that the ab-
stract or surrealist painter is delib-
erately and maliciously trying to
paint so that nobody will under-
stand, or they suspect that he paints
that way because he really can't paint
realistically.
The universal idea that a picture
should mean the same thing to all
the people who see it is simply a
false one. The best painting means
something different to every man
who sees it. People must forever look
for a reason. They won't find it in
modern art, for it has no apparent
reason; the real reason is to have a
well-balanced plastic ensemble.
As a practical commodity, the best
painting is absolutely useless. The
artist is not a shoe salesman who
must make his product fit and be
comfortable to his customer. Art is
not a shoe to be worn. Contrary to35
Ever Westward
(Continued from page 17)
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Periodical.
North Texas State Teachers College. The Avesta, Volume 21, Number 2, Summer, 1942, periodical, Summer 1942; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2105649/m1/37/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.