Moving On

With high school behind me and the Navy apparently out of the question, I had to face up to what I was going to do.  Dick was back working at the cannery to save money for Eastern College of Education at Cheney.  I had no job, no bank account, and little in the way of prospects.  The U.S. was starting to pull out of the Great Depression of the Thirties; however, jobs were still scarce around Vancouver. 

A time or two I contemplated calling Charlie Barnett to see if the barn job was still open at the Columbia Riding Academy, but I could not face shoveling horse manure again even as a temporary stopgap.  Neither did I want to hear Art Farr calling me “boy” again.

A friend and classmate, Corburn Actley, tipped me off to a possible job.  His older brother Norman and another friend, Edie Sutherland, were working at a combination restaurant and motel, The Summit Grove Inn, several miles north of Vancouver near the little town of LaCenter.  The boys were furnished a small cabin on the grounds to live in, took their meals at the inn, and worked as maintenance men.  They were bus boys in the evening in the restaurant which had a reputation as far away as Portland, Oregon.  It was located on old Highway 99 a mile south of LaCenter.

It was not necessary to go out to Summit Grove to apply for a job.  Coburn said that Mr. Marshall, the owner, came into Vancouver every Thursday to conduct business and that he always got his shoes shined at the stand on the sidewalk around the corner from the entrance to the Evergreen Hotel right after lunch.  The next Thursday noon, I was at the shoeshine stand.  I talked to the black man who shined shoes and he said, he knew Mr. Marshall and would tip me off when he came.

I sat on the sidewalk beside the three-seat stand and read the paper.  In a little while, the shoeshine man nudged me with his foot and gestured with his chin at a short fat in a natty double-breasted brown suit who was climbing into the end chair.  I waited until the man finished his small talk with the black man, then I stepped up.

“Excuse me, sir, are you Mr. Marshall?”

The friendly little man pulled his driver’s license from his vest pocket, pretended to stydy it in surprise, then said, “By golly, I guess I am.  That is what it says right here!”

“Well, sir,” I said, looking him right in the eyes, “I hear that you might have a job out at Summit Grove.  I sure could use one.  Got two friends working out there, Norman and Eddie.  Just graduated from Vancouver High.”

He looked me up and down.  “Friend of theirs, eh?  You think you could chop wood and bend your back once in a while?”

“Yessire!  I split lots of wood back in Missouri and I can do any kind of chore there is.”

He looked at me critically.  “Oh, Missouri puke instead of a prune picker, are you?”  I grinned at him and he continued, “Tell you what, guess I could use one more boy at that.  You come on out to Summit Grove tomorrow morning and we’ll see.  Bring a pair of dark pants, a white shirt, and a black bow tie besides your outside work clothes in case we can use you bussing tables.  If it works out over the weekend, we will work out a day off schedule with Norman and Eddie.”

It was difficult not to break out in a big grin as I asked, “Excuse me, Mr. Marshall, what does it pay?”

He chuckled.  “Dollar and a half a day like the other boys.  Besides that, you get all your meals and you live in a cabin with Norman and Eddie.  Any time in the morning will be all right.

The pay would be as much as I had been getting at the riding academy plus I would get my meals and a bed.  I was elated.  There was air beneath my feet after we shook hands and I started home.  I went by the CC Store and spent the last two dollars I had for a black clip-on bow tie.  I knew that I could do whatever Mr. Marshall wanted and it would be fun to work and live with Norman and Eddie.

The next morning my mother gave me the money for the bus to LaCenter.  I packed my good clothes, black oxfords and toilet gear in a small zippered bag, then hiked down to the depot and caught a northbound bus.

Summit Grove as it appears today.

Summit Grove Inn was well-named.  The restaurant was a large log building with a shake roof that slanted down to low eaves.  It was situated on the top of a hill south of LaCenter in a grove of hug Douglas firs.  There were leaded windows on the side toward the parking area and Highway 99, a large stone fireplace on the south side, and a main entrance on the north.  Two gasoline pumps stood to one side and, beyond those a row of five or six tourist cabins.

Across the highway from the inn, a small white house stood on an open knoll (the Marshall residence) and just down the hill from that, also beneath fir and alder trees, there was a small log cabin.  Beyond that there was a park-like picnic area with neatly raked paths through ferns and grassy areas with heavy picnic tables and benches.  It was an idyllic setting.

I went into the restaurant.  Facing the entryway there was a gleaming oak counter with six stools.  A cash register was at one end.  Around beyond the counter was the main dining area.  It was spacious and had a small fish pool with rocks and ferns slap dab in the middle of the floor.  There were ten or twelve polished oak tables with spindle-back chairs.  Each table held a small vase of fresh flowers.  They were set with white napkins and silverware for lunch.  The big grey rock fireplace dominated the room on the far wall.

The kitchen was to the right.  A woman came from there through swinging doors behind the counter.  She was a tall grandmotherly type.  Her grey hair was gathered into a bun on the nape of her neck just like my Grandma Stanley always wore her hair.  She had a round face, now ruddy from the heat of the kitchen range or grill.  Gold rimmed spectacles were perched on her nose.  She was carrying a plate of delicious-smelling golden brown crullers which she placed on the counter under a clear glass cover.

The lady peered at me over the gold-rimmed spectacles for a minute then her face brightened as she saw the zippered bag in my hand.  “Oh, you must be the new boy!  I am Mrs. Marshall.  What was your name?”

I told her and she said briskly, “Well, Conrad, sit down there for a minute.  Marshall is around here somewhere. Go ahead and have one of those crullers.  They are right out of the oil.”

The cruller was absolutely delicious—like a raised doughnut only long and twisted.  (In the fifty-odd years since, I have yet to find a bakery that can equal Mrs. Marshall’s crullers.)  Mrs. Marshall did not ask if I wanted coffee but simply brought me a glass of milk—which was fine with me as I did not like coffee at the time.

She hurried back into the kitchen.  While I was licking up the lst traces of the cruller, Mr. Marshall came in from the outside.  He was wearing the suit, vest, and tie that I never saw him without the entire time I knew him.  When I had finished the milk, Marshall led me across the highway to the cabin to drop off my bag.  I asked, “Where are Norm and Eddie?”

“Got them doing a little cleanup out back of the tourist cabins,” he replied as we went back across the highway.  “Try to keep them busy so they don’t get into any devilment.”

Marshall removed his felt hat and scratched at his thinning grey hair.  “Let’s see now, you said you could chop wood.  Well, I’ve got a pile up there in the woods that needs splitting.  Might as well start you on that.”

He got a sharp double-bitted axe from an equipment shed beside the inn kitchen and led me up the path into the sun-dappled woods.  The underbrush had been cleared except for the ferns, some boulders, and some fallen logs with ferns growing out of the rotting bark.  It was quiet and park-like in that little forest and I breathed deeply of the pure air.

Fifty yards up the path, in a small clearing, there was a pile of logs that had been sawed to fireplace length.  Marshall handed me the axe and pointed at the pile.  “There you are.  Have at it, boy.”

“How big you want the pieces?”

“Oh, fireplace size.  Just quarter the larger ones and half the smaller ones.  I’ll be back by later.”

Marshall turned and went off down the shaded path without waiting for me to answer or get started.  I shucked off my jacket, took another breath of the clean air, spit on my hands, and stood up the first piece of log.

It was duck soup—the alder was far easier to split than that blackjack and white oak back in the Ozarks.  The alder popped apart almost as soon as the axe hit it unless it happened to be a length with a big knot where a limb had been.

The exercise made my muscles feel good and I worked up a pretty good sweat by the time my pile of split wood was as big as what was left of the logs.  I was tackling a tough and burly cut about an hour later when Mr. Marshall came ambling back up the path.  He halted in surprise when he saw the pile of wood I had split.

“Good lord, boy,” Marshall chuckled, “I didn’t mean you had to split the whole pile today!  You better take a rest—it’s almost lunchtime anyway.  Didn’t sit down much, did you?”

Knowing I had a job, I grinned at him as I leaned on the axe and said, “Well, sir, where I came from, if we went out to split wood, we split some wood and got it over with!”

Well, Conrad, if you can pump gas and bus dishes without breaking too many, you got yourself a job.  Let’s go see what Missus Marshall has for lunch.”

Graduation

It is quite possible that I could have wound up higher on the honor roll for graduation had I not despondently let my grades slip after the Navy turned me down.  I just did not care.  I quit taking books home with me and spent more evenings at Gearhart’s, down talking to Patty, or going to a movie.

There was only a part of a semester to go, however, and I coasted though as sixteenth on the honor roll in a class of 289 students—not quite as good as old Dick had done the previous year, but I was not ashamed of it either.

Even though I was nowhere near being valedictorian or salutatorian for the class of ’39, I did wind up as a commencement speaker.  Each class elected on individual to give an address as class representative.  They elected me—I know not on what grounds except for the play and some successes I had on debating teams and in Friday assemblies.  It was very gratifying.

All the student commencement speakers were require to write their own speeches, based on a selected theme.  In retrospect, I think I realy blew it.  When my mother passed away three years ago, I found a copy of the manuscript of my commencement address, titled “Control of Life”, among her effects.  It ran to several single-spaced typed pages and is so pompous and pedantic that I would be very surprised if it did not put some of the audience to sleep.  Hopefully, my delivery may have kept most awake.

Even after the Navy turned me down, I had continued to keep track of developments in by then what was known as “the War in Europe”.  I knew, even on the day of commencement, that I had written the wrong speech.  I should have expanded on the theme of my “Mice or Men?” editorial and dwelt on what was going to be expected of the class of ’39, but I did not have the guts.  It would never have been approved by the faculty anyway.

While I sat on the auditorium stage during the commencement exercises waiting my turn at the podium, I was wishing I had done something more like that.  What I had written was empty, hollow, and meaningless.  Had I been more experienced as a public speaker at the tie, I would have opened by saying that Phyllis Conover down in the front row (my prompter) could put away her copy of my address because I had something different to say.

I sat there, unhappy that I apparently had no control of my own life, and unable to come up with the words for the feeling boiling within me.  When it came my turn at the podium, I started my opening greeting and from there the memorized words came automatically.  I ploughed doggedly through my stilted phrases, then sat down to await the awarding of our diplomas.

When Mr. DeYoung handed me my red leather covered diploma he smirked what was apparently intended to be a benign smile.  My time at Vancouver High School became history except for fond memories and a few relationships that have endured to this day.

Prom and Senior Play

By the time the senior prom approached in late April I was feeling more like my old self again.  My self-confidence had taken such a beating, however, that I could not bring myself to ask one of the popular girls to go to the prom.  Elaine and I had continued to be very good friends.  She was fun to be with and had invited me to a party at her house.

“Hey, Elaine,” I said one afternoon, “how would you like to go to the senior prom with me?  Don’t know of any law that says I can’t take a junior.”

“Of course I would like to go to the prom,” she said brightly.  “I went to the junior prom with Ernie Hoff last year when I was a sophomore, didn’t I?  I can tell you now, though, that I am NOT going to ride on the handlebars of our bicycle!”

(the story of Elain’s having gone to the Junior Prom in 1938 was well-known around school.  She had gotten all gussied up in a beautiful long dress then Ernie had shown up to pick her up on his bicycle.  Elaine was a good sport and, indeed, had ridden up Main Street in her formal on the handlebars of Ernie’s bicycle.)

“No way,” I said.  “We have a car now (the old 1928 Chevrolet) and I have already asked Dad to use it for the dance.”

When, resplendent in a new grey suit acquired with my pay from the Columbia Riding Academy, I showed up at the grey stone house on Thirteenth Street, Elaine was all dressed up in a new long pink formal.  In spite of her glasses, she looked very pretty and was as bubbly as usual.  We had a fine time at the dance.  Afterward, I bought her a soda or something at the Holland on Main then had to take her straight home as she was not allowed to stay out late.

Meanwhile, my bitter disappointment about being rejected by the Navy was abating—accelerated by the fact that we were in rehearsal for the senior class play.  I did not belong to the honor dramatic society and fail entirely to recollect why, but I had been selected to play the male lead in the play.

The play was “The Seven Keys to Baldpate”, a murder mystery, and I was to play William McGee.  The leading lady was Ruth McNary, a very pretty little brunette who was quite shy.  The female “heavy” (and murder victim) was Norma Howard, a tall and beautiful brunette for whom I could have developed a good crush except that I felt that she was “out of my league”.

I do not recall much about the story line now but there was a large cast and much coming and going of different people in a deserted hunting lodge in winter. [Now you can Google the play]  Actually, “Seven Key” is a play within a play.  McGee, a writer, retires to a deserted mountain lodge to write a murder story.  The story he writes is the play.

At the end of the prologue, McGee goes into an upstairs room and the sound of a typewriter could be heard as the curtain fell and again as the curtain rose for Act I.  Since I could only hunt and peck on a typewriter, it was (you guess it) my dear little friend Elaine sitting behind the scenery rattling away on the typewriter for me.

One problem we had with the play was that the climax called for me to sweep the leading lady into my arms and give her a big kiss.  Neither Ruth McNary no I was prone to do that in front of an audience. We really were not sure about how to go about it during rehearsals.  Finally, Miss Ruth Hall, our faculty advisor for the play, took the two of us aside in a room by ourselves and showed us how to do a stage kiss that looked good form the audience but really was no kiss at all.

It did not work that way the night of the play.  It went off so beautifully, with no one missing a cue or forgetting a line, that by the close of Act II we were all elated and probably hamming it up a bit—which was all right because it really was a farce.  When we got to the final scene, I swept Ruth into my arms and planted a real kiss smack on her surprised mouth.  The curtain came down to a satisfying ovation and I think we took three curtain calls.

After the final curtain and while we were celebrating our “hit” backstage, Ruth came around and belligerently stated that she had heard I had made a bet that I would really kiss her and demanded a share of the profits.  I had a hard time convincing her that was not true.

(I believe I may have misjudged Ruth as being shy.  At our 50^th reunion of the class of ’39, “shy” little Ruth McNary showed up with her fourth or fifth husband.)

But the Navy didn't Want My Dad

War in Europe erupted.  Hitler’s panzer “blitzkrieg” rolled over Poland and England and France declared war.  It was a “paper war” for a time with British bombers dropping only leaflets over enemy territories.  Then Hitler attacked and his seemingly invincible goose-stepping Wehrmacht and panzers rolled into the Lowlands and started driving the British Expeditionary Forces toward a little town on the Belgian coast called Dunkirk.

Although the U.S. remained neutral and was still divided by isolationist and pacifist policies, American industry stirred and began cranking out the materials of war that would be convoyed to England on a “Lend-Lease” program.  We became “the arsenal of democracy” and the last vestiges of the Great Depression were wiped out by rising employment.

Unhappily for those such as Mr. DeYoung, my little editorial was being proven right on the mark.  The bumbling and ineffective Nevile Chamberlain was replace by Winston Churchill as England geared for war and for possible invasion once Hitler’s forces rolled through France and stood on the shores of the English Channel.

A personal tragedy awaited me in the spring of 1939.  As the war in Europe gained momentum, I became always more and more determined to get into the Navy.  I turned seventeen on March 3^rd and decided the time had come to take the plunge and enlist.  I had inquired and knew that I could sign up then and leave for boot camp right after graduation.

My good friend Dave Daniel’s family had moved away to Rainier, Oregon, the previous fall andI had begun to pal around with Kenneth David, a genial tall, black-haired boy who lived on a farm east of Vancouver.  I did not really want to join the Navy alone so, without mentioning my ambition about the Naval Academy, I told Kenny that I was going to join the Navy.

Being a happy-go-lucky type, Kenny declared that was a great idea.  He would like to see the world so he would sign up with me.  The only problem Kenneth had was that he had turned a tractor over on himself the year before and he walked with a decided limp.  He was fit enough to play football, however, and figured that would not be a problem.

One Friday in April, we were out of school because of a teachers’ conference.  Kenny and I caught the Portland bus (the old interurban trolley had been abandoned), found the Federal Building, and marched into the third-floor Navy recruiting office.  We filled out all the papers then they took us separately for physical examinations.  Being still toughened by those years on the farm and heaving those bales of hay, I breezed through the physical until I got to the dental part.

When I was about twelve years old, one of my molars on the upper right side developed a big cavity—in fact, it was half rotted away.  Instead of trying to fill it or make a crown (Dad did not have the money for that sort of thing), the dentist in Greenfield simply pulled it leaving a gap in my teeth.  I was accustomed to it and could chew on that side as well as the other.  (As a matter of fact, that gap is still there. I never did have a bridge installed.)

I still believe that part of the reason that I was rejected was that the Navy dentist was in a hurry.  He was wearing golf clothes and a bag of golf clubs was propped inside the door of his office.  He plunked me into the chair, started his examination, then tossed his tools onto the tray and said to the corpsman standing by, “Molar missing—not enough chewing surface on the right side—rejected.”

The dentist picked up the golf clubs and departed.  The corpsman removed the neck cloth and said, “Too bad, Mac.”  He handed me my papers with instructions to leave them at the recruiting desk on the way out.

I sat there in the chair stunned for a moment.  It was a devastation blow.  My plans were suddenly all down the tube.  There would be no Navy white hat for me and no “Crackerjack” dress blues, not to speak of the coveted gold braid.  I walked down the stairs and out of the building in a daze.

My glumness undoubtedly showed clearly.  Kenny David was sitting on the concrete balustrade along the steps.  He took one look at me and said, “Turned you down, huh?”

I nodded mutely and Kenny went breezily on, “Well, don’t worry about it.  They turned me down, too.  Said I had too much of limp in that leg that got caught under the tractor to march right.  Told ‘em I didn’t know sailors had to march much but they turned me down anyway.

“Hey, the Army recruiting office is in there on the first floor.  They aren’t as particular as the Navy, I hear.  Let’s go join the Army.”

I shook my head.  “No way, boy!  Don’t want anything to do with the Army.  Dad was in the infantry during the World War.  I don’t want to be slogging around in the mud packing a rifle!”

I had very little to say during the dismal bus ride back across the Interstate Bridge to Vancouver.

For days I moped around and was not my usual ebullient self.  I felt aimless and did not know what I wanted to do when school was out.  My mother noticed, of course, and kept asking if I was sick.  Richard had a different idea.

“Aw,” he said flippantly, “he probably thinks he is in love again.  Old nipple-noggin there gets a crush on a new girl as often as I change my shirt!  Who is it this time, bird-brain?”

I just smiled wanly and ignored my sarcastic brother.  Patty Cross was the only one to whom I poured it all out.  She could only sympathize but it got it off my chest.  It was several days before I began to feel like myself again and started trying to make plans now that my little dream world had come crashing about my big ears.

Tolo Time

That winter went by relatively uneventfully.  In my happy-go-lucky way, I continued to fall in and out of “love” with great regularity.  Still being somewhat a bashful country boy, however, it was difficult to ask a girl for a date for fear of being turned down, so often I simply did not ask.

At one time or another, I “had a crush” on several of the girls—Oreva Parker, Dorothy Belisle, Vivian Burr, and Frances Pounds who worked part-time at Gearhart’s Drug Store.  I dated some of them and others but never wound up “going steady”.  I frequently saw Patty Cross and she was blossoming into a very luscious young lady; however, she was still back in her first year at Shumway Junior High and I never thought of her as more than a very good friend whose company I enjoyed and who I could talk to about anything.  Elaine was pretty much in the same category.  I adored both of them.

I recall one dating incident early in 1939.  Each year in March the VHS Girl;s League put on a Tolo Dance.  It was a social event of the year prior to the junior and senior proms.

At Tolo, roles were reversed—the girls had to ask and take the boys.  Waiting for someone to ask us to go to the Tolo dance gave us boys some idea of the suspense that the girls went through regularly with regard to the regular dances.  I had little confidence that any of the more popular girls would invite me.  Most of the had their eye on one of the football varsity.

One afternoon when I started home from school, I found Lena Helm loitering along slowly outside the back gate I always used.  Lena, and her brother Manuel, lived on the west side not far from our house and I knew them casually.  Lena was a pleasant and attractive girl—pretty but not really beautiful.  She was short and stocky but she had a nice face surrounded by well-kept dark hair.  She was always friendly.

On this occasion, Lena walked along with me on the way home.  We talked idly about this and that, then finally she blurted out, “How would you like to go to Tolo with me?”

I liked Lena and was very pleased.  The dance was only a week away and I had not had any other offers.  I grinned at her and said, “Sure, Lena, I’d like that!  You have to come and get me, you know.”

She blushed and said, “I know.  Maybe Manuel can drive us in the car and we won’t have to walk.”

I got a shock the next day.  When I left the school building at noon, Marcia Chaffins, one of the popular girls from a quite well-to-do family, was waiting outside the door.  She invited me to go to Tolo with her.

I would have liked going with her, although I had never seriously considered Marcia as a girlfriend.  For a fleeting moment I considered making some excuse to Lena but I could not do that. My father had always taught us boys that a man’s word is his bond—better than any piece of paper—and that going back on a promise was unthinkable.  Besides, I could not do that to dear sweet Lena who never hurt anyone by word or deed.  Lena was my kind of people.  I simply had to tell Marcia that I already had a date and thanked her for asking me.

On the night of the dance, I decided to make Lena do it right.  My mother had always insisted that we boys not just pull up in front of a girl’s house and honk, but that we should go to the door properly.  That night I got all dressed then sat down in the living room to read a book.  Soon Manuel and Lena drew up to the curb and honked.  I just ignored the horn and sat there.

Mother said, “Conrad, they are here for you.”

I just smiled and replied, “I know it.  She hasn’t come to the door yet.”

After a couple of minutes, the doorbell rang.  There stood an embarrassed Lena.  She shyly stepped in and held out a small florist’s box.  It contained a small corsage and now it was me who was embarrassed.  I took the single white gardenia from the box wondering if I really was supposed to wear it.

“Uh, well,” I stammered, “I don’t think it would look so good on me but it would look nice on you.”

I pinned the gardenia on Lena’s coat.  Off we went to the dance and we had a great time.

Facing Up and Facing Down

Mr. Henry DeYoung, a short rotund man with a round face surmounted by a fringe of grey hair, was our high school principal.  I did not much like Mr. DeYoung.  He smirked rather than smiled and I always had a feeling that he was partial to the more affluent eastsiders and rather looked down on us who came from the west side over toward the railroad tracks.  Whenever I was dealing with student affairs, I always preferred to go to Mr. W. H. Conover, the vice-principal.  Mr. Conover was a tall, friendly Irishman who showed no favoritism and always listened closely to what a student had to say.

Looking at Elaine’s upset face, I had a sudden sinking feeling in my stomach that maybe I had overstepped, but I airly brushed aside her rapid-fire comments.  “Aw, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.  Every word of it is true, isn’t it?”

“Yes, the truth as YOU see it!  I might agree with you, but the fact remains that it is downright warmongering and you know how a lot of people feel about that these days.”

“Well,” I said defensively, “that is what editorial opinions are all about, isn’t it?  After all, The Log is a school newspaper.  It isn’t as if I had put it in the Columbian or the Portland Oregonian.”

Elaine shook her head.  “Maybe so, but you can bet your life you haven’t heard the last of it!  I’m late for class.  I have to go.”

I watched her march away down the hall.  The more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right.  I slowly walked down to the Journalism room to see Miss Hurd.  She scolded me severely but I got the idea that she agreed with my editorial.  She upbraided me for not having turned the copy in for approval on time, but she seemed to understand my wanting to make the deadline.  She finished by saying, “Mr. DeYoung would like to see you in his office right away.”

Elaine had been absolutely correct.  DeYoung was fit to be tied.  He scowled at me and tapped a yellow pencil on the paper.  I do not recall and cannot reconstruct the details of his tirade, but at times he was nearly apoplectic.  He ended by stating flatly that he had every right to suspend me from school.

My heart sank.  If he did that, all my plans about the Naval Academy were right down the drain.  I was determined, however, and never dropped my eyes from him.  When I finally had an opportunity, I squared my shoulders and pulled myself up to my full height.

“Mr. DeYoung, I am entitled to my opinions.  That is what editorial are all about.  A good editor does not write what the reader wants to hear—he writes the truth as he sees it.  That is what I have been taught in Journalism class.  If you and I have different opinions, that’s all right because (and here I was quoting my old Ozark teacher J. B. Mitchell) if it were not for differences of opinions, there would be no horse races!”

There was a prolonged silence while DeYoung looked down at the paper and continued his infernal tapping with that yellow pencil.  Finally, he looked up at me and his stormy face cleared somewhat.

“Well, Conrad, you have spirit—I’ll give you that.  My concern is simply that some of the parents and other who read The Log may think we are using it for rabble-rousing in favor of war.  We do not want war, and we should do everything we can to promote lasting peace in the world—even if it does include appeasement sometimes.”

At that time, I threw caution to the winds.  I did not care if he expelled me.  I had taken a stand that I believed in and I would defend it because I felt very strongly about it.  I would not compromise my principles.  That is the way I had been raised.  I wondered briefly to myself if DeYoung contributed to the German-American Bund that we read about and saw marching in newsreels, but I had the good sense to keep my mouth shut about that, at least.

“Sire,” I said, “I agree with you that we want peace in the world, but it is my opinion that the only way we are going to have lasting peace is to stop Shicklegruber.  Hitler is trying to start the World War all over again and no little piece of paper is going to stop him regardless of what Mr. Chamberlain says.  I do not want to go out and get shot at or for anyone else to have to do that, but the only way to stop a madman dictator is with force!”

I waited resignedly for the blow to fall.  The principal was silent again for what seemed a long time, staring at the paper on his desk.  When he finally looked up, his voice had become much more mild.

“Well, Conrad, I am not going to sit here and debate world policy with you.  You have made some good points, but the fact remains that you published your little tirade without getting faculty approval form either Miss Hurd or Mr. Miller.  If you ever do that again, I guarantee that you will not graduate with your class.”  He folded the paper and pushed it aside.  “You can go now, but consider yourself on probation.”

I was so flooded with relief that I simply stared at DeYoung for a few seconds.  Then, with a “thank you, sir” I wheeled and marched out the door without looking back.  As I went in search of Elaine to tell her what had happened, I felt I had really dodged a bullet.

Machine Gun Fire in Europe, Typewriter Fire at School

When school opened in September, it was good to get back to the now-familiar red brick building.  I was at ease there now and was well acquainted with many of my classmates.  I would have all the pre-requisites for the Naval Academy examination.

I still had one elective course and I selected Journalism and joined the staff of our bi-weekly newspaper “The Columbia Log”.  That one extra-curricular activity resulted in my acquaintance with an individual who became a life-long friend, Elaine Eberle.  She was a junior that year and I was a senior.  Even though we were not in the same Journalism class, she was also on the staff of “The Log” and we saw each other there often when we were preparing copy for the paper.

Elaine was very attractive.  She was small and slim with a piquant face on which were was always a happy smile.  She had long thick hair.

It was little Elaine’s personality that was truly outstanding.  She iterally bubbled with vitality and enthusiasm, and she was seemingly involved in every activity in the school, most especially those having to do with writing and the arts.

Our acquaintance began, I believe, with Elaine twitting me about my typing when we were there working on copy for the paper.  Her typing was smooth and she rattled words onto the page like a machine gun.  My typing was very slow and uneven because I had not taken a typing course and had developed my own style like an old-time newspaper reporter—two fingers on each hand and a thumb for the space bar.  It was strictly hunt and peck—and I still type that way, crudely but quite rapidly.  [My father made sure I took typing and I am a fair hand.  My husband’s father was a business teacher, Dave took typing, but he still pounds away with two fingers.  Sigh]

I retaliated for Elaine’s comments by occasionally walking by her desk while she was busily typing and hitting the carriage release on her typewriter so it would slip to the left in the middle of a sentence.  That annoyed her, of course, and I sometime got out of the door barely ahead of a flying eraser.  It also resulted in our becoming fast friends and we often worked on school projects together—she directing and me doing.

It was my involvement on the school paper that, in the spring of 1939, very nearly resulted in my being suspended from school.  I had been assigned by Miss Hurd, our faculty editorial advisor, to provide and editorial based on current events.  The subject I selected was the worsening situation in Europe where Adolf Hitler was leading the German people to a glory that would soon become a world disaster.  The war clouds were heavy over Europe and, since I fully intended to go into the military, I followed developments there quite closely.

On this occasion, I had put off writing my editorial for the paper that was to be published the next day until the last minute.  A few days before I had seen a newsreel of the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, returning from a meeting at Bertchesgarten with Adolf Hitler.  Chamberlain came off an airplane clutching his rolled up umbrella in one hand and waving a document with the other.  He halted at a bank of microphones and made his statement that there would be “peace with honor”.

At the time, while Europe was plunging headlong into a war that would make the original World War look like a preliminary bout, the United States was a very divided nation.  There were three distinct schools of thought.  First there were the isolationists and pacifists who wanted peace at any price.  Then there were the German sympathizers in surprising number, many of whom belonged to the German Bund.  Finally, there were the “war hawks” (among whom I counted myself) who did not want war, but who felt that if Herr Hitler was not checked, war was inevitable.  I did not envy Franklin Delano Roosevelt his position in the White House.

To get back to VHS, on this occasion I was to turn in an editorial after school that would be typeset that evening and would appear in the school paper the next day.  At the last minute, I laboriously pounded one out on the typewriter, then went looking for Miss Hurd who was to approve all copy for the paper.  She was nowhere to be found.  Apparently there was sickness in her family and she had left early.  Neither could I find our other faculty advisor, Mr. David Miller, and the student newspaper editor, Jean McKellar, had gone home.

I knew that I was in trouble with Miss Hurd if my editorial did not appear so, in desperation and thinking that what I had written was accurate and very timely, I made an illegible scrawl on the corner of the copy where Miss Hurd’s initials should have been.  Then I trotted down to the pressroom and handed the copy to the typesetters.  No one but me had seen it.

The next day, when the paper came out Elaine got one of the first copies off the press so that she could check on a Column she had written.  She was a very astute young lady and was appalled when she read my editorial.  She came on the double looking for me, copy of the paper in hand.

I have a yellowed old clipping of that editorial here before me.  It reads:

MICE OR ME?

Out of the chaos that was Germany after the World War there has arisen a menace to world peace.  We are watching today the most humiliating chain of events in history.

One man, supported by a literally hypnotized nation, is marching across Europe with disregard for national boundaries and for the feelings and rights of other people.  While this is going on the nice that call themselves the great leaders of democracy are scurrying around carrying their umbrellas and squeaking for peace at any price.  We all want peace but the price has already been set—and it is war.

Hitler says treaties are made to be broken.  As long as he retains this scornful attitude, in the light of present affairs who will say there can still be peace with honor?

Peace with honor today?—PHOOEY!

Elaine was a voluble talker at all times and this time she ws sputtering like a thirty-caliber machine gun when she found me.

“CONRAD FRIEZE!  Did Miss Hurd ever in her life approve this editorial?!”

I took the copy of The Log she was waving in my face and saw with satisfaction that it had been printed exactly as I had written it.

“We-ell, no,” I said meekly.  “I got it ready late and she was already gone.  Couldn’t find Miller, either.  What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s WRONG?!  Conrad, it is downright warmongering!  You know that Mister DeYoung is a confirmed pacifist!  You have heard the things he has said in assemblies about the trouble in Europe!  Weren’t you paying attention?  Boy oh boy, is he going to be upset!”