The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1919-05-24

y lCE 1AoHAP5 was dS tAACo as
only a boy can be at $3.50 p. m.
who has risen at 80 a. m. Yet he lay
awake in his hammock eight feet
above the ground and listened to the
sleep-sounds that came from the
depths of two hundred similar ham
mocks suspended at regular intervals
down the long dark room. A chorus
OF deep regular breathing. with an oc-
casional grunt or sigh, denoting COM
plete relaxation. Tyler Ramps should
have been part of this chorus. himself.
Instead he lay staring into the dark
ness. thinking mad thoughts of which
this Is a sample:
Gosh! wouldn't I like to sit up in
my hammock and give one yell! The
kind of a yell a movie cowboy gives
on Saturday night. Wake 'em up
and stop that-darned old breathing.
Nerves. He breathed deeply him
self, once or twice, because it seemed,
somehow to relieve his feeling OF irri-
tation. And in that unguarded moment
OF unconscious relaxation Sleep, that
had been lying in wait for him just
around the corner. bounced on him
and claimed him for its own.
The trouble with Tyler Ramps was
that he missed two things he hA int
expected to miss at all. And he missed
not at all the things he had been pre-
pared to miss most hideously.
First Of all, he had expected to miss
his mother. If you had known Stella
Ramps you could readily have under
stood that. Stella Ramps was the
kind of mother they sing about in the
sentimental ballads; mother, pal AMI
sweetheart. Which was where she had
made her big mistake. When one
mother tries to be all those things to
one son that son has a very fair chance
of turning out mollycoddle. The war
was probably all that saved Tyler
Ramps from such a fate.
In the way She handled this son of
hers Stella Ramps had been as crafty
and skilful and velvet gloved as a girl
with her beau The proof Of it is that
Tyler had never known he was being
handled. Some folks in Marvin. Texas.
said she actually firted with him. and
they were almost justified. Certainly
the way she glanced up at him from be-
meath her lashes was excused only ty
the way she scolded him If he tracked
up the kitchen floor. But then, Stella
Ramps and her boy were different, any
way. Marvin folks all agreed about
that. Flowers on the table at meals.
Sitting over the supper things talking
and laughing for an hour after they d
finished eating. as If they hadn't seen
each other in years. Reading out loud
to each other, out of books, and then
going on like mad about what they
just read, and getting all het up about
II. And sometimes chasing each other
around the yard, spring evenings. like
a couple of fool kids. Honestly. If q
body didn't know Stella Ramps SO well
and what fight she had put UP to carr
a living for herself and the boy after
that good or-nothing Ramps up and
left her. and what housekeeper she
was and all, a persond thinx-well-
So. then. Tyler had expected to mis-:
her first of all. And now he missed he,
only as the average boy of twenty on'
misses the mother he has been used t.
all his life. He had expected to mis-
the boys at the bank. He had expected
to miss the Mandolin Club. The Mando-
lin Club met, officially, every Thursday
and spangled the Texas night with their
tinkling. He had expected to miss the
familiar faces on Main street. All the
hundred little, intimate. trivial every
day things that had gone to make UP
his life back home in Marvin, Texas
these he had expected to miss.
And he didn't.
After ten weeks at the Great Central
Naval Training Station SO near Chi
cago. Illinois. and 80 far from Marvin
Texas. there were two things he missed
He wanted the decent privacy of his
small quiet bedroom back home.
He wanted to talk to a girl.
He knew he wanted the first, definite
ly. He didn't know he wanted the sec.
ond. The fact that he didn't know Il
was Stella Ramps fault. She had KEEP
his boyhood girlless. year and year. BY
sheer force of her own love for him
and need of him. and by the charm
and magnetism that were hers.
A hot enough little room in the Texas
winters. But his own.
Until he came to the Great Contra
Naval Training Station Tyler's neares
approach to the nautical life had beer
when. at the age of six. he had SAILED
chips in the wash tub in the back yard
Marvin, Texas. is five hundred miles in
land And yet he had enlisted in tn,
navy as inevitably as though he hat
sprung from a long line OF Vikings II
his boyhood his choice of games ha,
always been pirate.
1t was the rowing. restless spirit o
his father in him. I suppose. Gin
Ramps had never been meant for mar
year old Clint had walked over to wher
his wife sat, the child in her lap, ant
had tilted her head back. kissed her o.
the lips. and had gently pinched tn
boys roseleaf cheek with a quizzica
forehnger and thumb. Then, indolent
ly, negligently. gracefully. he ha,
strolled out OF the house. down tn
steps. into the hot and dusty street an,
so on and on and out of their lives
Stella Ramps had never seen him agar
Her letters back home to her folks Il
Kansas were triumphs of bravery an
bare-faced lying. She managed t
make out, somehow, at first. And late
very we'll indeed. AS the years wen
on she and the boy lived together in
sort of closed corporation paradise c
their own. At twenty-one Tyler, VIII
had gone through grammar schoo