Image provided by: Clackamas Community College; Oregon City, OR
About The print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1977-1989 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 2, 1987)
VOL. IX No. 2 Winter 1987 0(ty A Potpourri of the Arts Untitled All of the big ideas come down to this... a rose colored morning, the hill behind my house dark against that bright sky. Whatever brought me here is forgotten... where I go, no longer important Nothing profound will come, no new insight no answers at all. What I thought would be death is, after all, tis rosey birth on a November morning in Oregon. by Claudia O'Driscoll As I sit here in the school cafeteria smoking a cigarette and drink ing a cup of coffee, my mind wanders back thirty years ago when I was the age of the young men and women hurrying about the cam pus from one class to another. I remember my first job when I was fourteen years old, and work ing for a furniture company, twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for twenty-eight dollars a week. Now, thirty years later, you can't get a work permit at the age of fourteen. But, in my opinion, that is good, for there is a time for being an adult with adult responsibilities, and fourteen is not the time. I remember when you put a quarter in a cigarette machine and received the pack of cigarettes of your choice and four pennies change tucked in the side of the package. That same pack of cigaret tes will now cost you $1.25, and you can forget about any change. Furthermore, I remember buying gasoline for nineteen cents a gallon and my windshield washed free. Today the only thing nineteen cents will buy you is an insult There has been, and rightfully so, many contrasts in the last thirty years, or in any thirty year span: girls looking like boys with their very short hair-dos, torn jeans with the zippers in the front, and boys look ing like girls with their long hair and earrings. Sometimes, you just don't know whether to kiss them or kick them. As I look back to my teens I see where my generation had some pretty weird ideas too. Things like boys wearing the scarves of the girl they were going with around their necks, cowboy style. The girls wore dog collars around their left ankle, if they were going with someone, and around their right ankle if they were available. All freshmen high school boys went through an initiation ritual, that was, to be stripped of all their clothing, have their bodies covered with lipstick stripes, and then to be thrown into the lake. But at least the ritual was considerate, for the ice was broken before you were thrown into the lake. This ritual takes place every year during the winter month of December. Holding doors open at the stores, opening car doors, and giv ing up your seat on the bus, so that a woman might have it, are all things I do not see happening any more as it did when I was a youth. Ten thousand dollars a year wages was to be considered a very good wage. Today, it is considered to be on the poverty level, and thirty thousand dollars a year is not an uncommon wage. In fact, you are not considered a success in New York unless you make three times your age in thousands, per year, as income. Some things do not change though, like the reproduction of life. However, as I sit here drinking this cup of coffee that I paid thirty-five cents for, I can't help but think about how I could drink coffee all day for a single dime, thirty years ago. The "GOOD OLD DAYS?" Not really, just days of the past, just as it will be, — thirty years from now. by Joe A. Smith A Literary Supplement to The Print “Mapping Our lives” The roads we journey Long and short Also vary by surface Paved or dirt Though we may race or Stumble and fall The decision of direction Is ours last of all Sometimes misguided or Just lose our way We wander still forward Leaving trust to our feet To carry us on until The trails again meet Some roads are windy, rocky and Cause us to walk While others flatten to let us Race without stop. When connected together, These roads map our lives From the moment we crawl To the moment we die. At times we take out our maps To retrace our steps. Wishing, if only we could journey back Try it again with only smooth roads Erase bad choices and windy trails that we strode But to choose only the roads with fewerbends Is to discover a map that sooner will end by Julia Singer