fourth floor, and casually asked what it was all about. To my surprise, she blushed and said, “I can’t tell you, Will,” and then went right on to tell me. That was when the bell sounded for the air-raid drill.
She made me promise upon pain of death and torture that I would never reveal my source of information, and I kissed her swiftly on the check and then raced back to my home room, which was what we’d been trained to do like robots whenever those three successive gongs sounded. A fire drill was a single steady repetitive gong, and an air-raid drill was three gongs in quick sequence, and then a long pause, and then three gongs again. For the fire drills, we always marched out of the school silently and solemnly and looked back at it from four blocks away, near St. Chrysostom’s Church, presumably to witness the old brick building crumbling in flames.
I thought of what my sister had told me outside the bio lab, and I began planning and scheming all the way back to home room about how I would break the news to Charlotte Wagner. This was, of course, the eighth period, which was the last period of the day. We had never had an air-raid drill in the history of Grace School that did not take place during the eighth period. The routine was unvarying. Sometime between three-thirty and four-fifteen, the successive gongs would sound sharply and insistently, and we’d all rush back to our home rooms, crouch under our desks, clasp our hands behind our heads, and wait in cramped silence for about ten minutes until the gong sounded for the all-clear. Our teachers would then dismiss us, since by that time the last period would be almost over, the school day practically ended. It was my theory that this imaginative approach to protection against enemy attack was based on secret information delivered to our city officials by the Japanese themselves, who had doubtless promised that any bombing of the school would come sometime during the eighth period.
It was no different this time, except that this time I knew what “Keep ’Em Flying!” meant. I could hardly wait. The whole thing with Charlotte Wagner had started about two weeks ago, on the way home from school. Charlotte, like myself, was a senior at Grace, which had not been named after God’s greatest gift to the soul, but merely after a man named Jeremiah Grace who had founded the school back in 1891. Grace was a private school, the nearest public school being Robert A. Waller High over on Orchard Street, which was quite a bus ride from the Gold Coast, where we lived. Our house was on East Scott, and Charlotte lived on Banks. Most of the other kids going to Grace lived in the immediate neighborhood, too, so we usually walked over to Division after school, for sodas. The only kid in our crowd who drove to and from school, in a black ’39 Buick, was a guy named Dickie Howell, whose father was supposed to be in “essential industry,” and therefore in possession of valuable C coupons which entitled him to an unlimited amount of gasoline.
My
father was in the paper industry, but Uncle Sam did not consider that essential enough to rate anything better than a B ration. Besides, he actually used the car to go back and forth to work at his mill in Joliet every day, and we only had the one car, so I couldn’t have driven even if I’d wanted to.
Actually, I enjoyed that walk home after school every day. Linda sometimes came with us, but I tried to discourage that because she was only fifteen and a lot of the jokes and kidding around were over her head. We were, after all, seniors. Michael Mallory had, in fact, enlisted in the Air Force just before his eighteenth birthday, and was expecting to be called right after graduation. His move, of course, was the only sensible one. Nobody in his right mind wanted to be drafted into the Army just then, because it was an almost certain bet that the Infantry would grab you, and you’d wind up in the invasion of Italy, which was
She made me promise upon pain of death and torture that I would never reveal my source of information, and I kissed her swiftly on the check and then raced back to my home room, which was what we’d been trained to do like robots whenever those three successive gongs sounded. A fire drill was a single steady repetitive gong, and an air-raid drill was three gongs in quick sequence, and then a long pause, and then three gongs again. For the fire drills, we always marched out of the school silently and solemnly and looked back at it from four blocks away, near St. Chrysostom’s Church, presumably to witness the old brick building crumbling in flames.
I thought of what my sister had told me outside the bio lab, and I began planning and scheming all the way back to home room about how I would break the news to Charlotte Wagner. This was, of course, the eighth period, which was the last period of the day. We had never had an air-raid drill in the history of Grace School that did not take place during the eighth period. The routine was unvarying. Sometime between three-thirty and four-fifteen, the successive gongs would sound sharply and insistently, and we’d all rush back to our home rooms, crouch under our desks, clasp our hands behind our heads, and wait in cramped silence for about ten minutes until the gong sounded for the all-clear. Our teachers would then dismiss us, since by that time the last period would be almost over, the school day practically ended. It was my theory that this imaginative approach to protection against enemy attack was based on secret information delivered to our city officials by the Japanese themselves, who had doubtless promised that any bombing of the school would come sometime during the eighth period.
It was no different this time, except that this time I knew what “Keep ’Em Flying!” meant. I could hardly wait. The whole thing with Charlotte Wagner had started about two weeks ago, on the way home from school. Charlotte, like myself, was a senior at Grace, which had not been named after God’s greatest gift to the soul, but merely after a man named Jeremiah Grace who had founded the school back in 1891. Grace was a private school, the nearest public school being Robert A. Waller High over on Orchard Street, which was quite a bus ride from the Gold Coast, where we lived. Our house was on East Scott, and Charlotte lived on Banks. Most of the other kids going to Grace lived in the immediate neighborhood, too, so we usually walked over to Division after school, for sodas. The only kid in our crowd who drove to and from school, in a black ’39 Buick, was a guy named Dickie Howell, whose father was supposed to be in “essential industry,” and therefore in possession of valuable C coupons which entitled him to an unlimited amount of gasoline.
My
father was in the paper industry, but Uncle Sam did not consider that essential enough to rate anything better than a B ration. Besides, he actually used the car to go back and forth to work at his mill in Joliet every day, and we only had the one car, so I couldn’t have driven even if I’d wanted to.
Actually, I enjoyed that walk home after school every day. Linda sometimes came with us, but I tried to discourage that because she was only fifteen and a lot of the jokes and kidding around were over her head. We were, after all, seniors. Michael Mallory had, in fact, enlisted in the Air Force just before his eighteenth birthday, and was expecting to be called right after graduation. His move, of course, was the only sensible one. Nobody in his right mind wanted to be drafted into the Army just then, because it was an almost certain bet that the Infantry would grab you, and you’d wind up in the invasion of Italy, which was
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