uncivilized even by the loose standards of those days—and Dave came from so far back in the hills that the hoot owls trod the chickens.
His education was in a one-room country school and ended at thirteen. He enjoyed it, for every hour in school was a hour sitting down doing nothing harder than reading. Before and after school he had to do chores on his family’s farm, which he hated, as they were what was known as “honest work”—meaning hard, dirty, inefficient, and ill-paid—and also involved getting up early, which he hated even worse.
Graduation was a grim day for him; it meant that he now did “honest work” all day long instead of spending a restful six or seven hours in school. One hot day he spent fifteen hours plowing behind a mule…and the longer he stared at the south end of that mule, breathing dust it kicked up and wiping the sweat of honest toil out of his eyes, the more he hated it.
That night he left home informally, walked fifteen miles to town, slept across the door of the post office until the postmistress opened up next morning, and enlisted in the Navy. He aged two years during the night, from fifteen to seventeen, which made him old enough to enlist.
A boy often ages rapidly when he leaves home. The fact was not noticeable; birth registrations were unheard of at that time and place, and David was six feet tall, broad-shouldered, well-muscled, handsome, and mature in appearance, save for a wild look around the eyes.
The Navy suited David. They gave him shoes and new clothes, and let him ride around on the water, seeing strange and interesting places—untroubled by mules and the dust of cornfields. They did expect him to work, though not as much, or as hard, as working a hill farm—and once he figured out the political setup aboard ship he became adept at not doing much work while still being satisfactory to the local gods, namely, chief petty officers.
But it was not totally satisfactory as he still had to get up early and often had to stand night watches and sometimes scrub decks and perform other tasks unsuited to his sensitive temperament.
Then he heard about this school for officer candidates—“midshipmen” as they were known. Not that David cared what they were called; the point was that the Navy would pay him to sit down and read books—his notion of heaven—untroubled by decks to scrub and by petty officers. O King, am I boring you? No?
Very well—David was ill prepared for this school, never having had four to five years’ additional schooling considered necessary to enter it—mathematics, what passed for science, history, languages, literature, and so forth.
Pretending to four years or so of schooling he did not have was more difficult than tacking two years on the age of an overgrown boy. But the Navy wished to encourage enlisted men to become officers, so it had established a tutoring school to aid candidates slightly deficient in academic preparation.
David construed “slightly deficient” to mean his own state; he told his chief petty officer that he had “just missed” graduating from high school—which was true in a way; he had “just missed” by half a county, that being the distance from his home to the nearest high school.
I don’t know how David induced his See-Pee-Oh to recommend him; David never discussed this. Suffice to say that, when David’s ship steamed for the Mediterranean, David was dropped at Hampton Roads six weeks before the tutoring school convened. He was a supernumerary during that time. The Personnel Officer (in fact, his clerk) assigned David to a bunk and a mess, and told him to stay out of sight during working hours in the empty classrooms where his fellow hopefuls would meet six weeks later. David did so; the classrooms had in them the books used in tutoring in academic subjects a candidate might lack—and David lacked them all. He stayed out of sight and sat down and read.
That’s all it took.
When the class convened,
His education was in a one-room country school and ended at thirteen. He enjoyed it, for every hour in school was a hour sitting down doing nothing harder than reading. Before and after school he had to do chores on his family’s farm, which he hated, as they were what was known as “honest work”—meaning hard, dirty, inefficient, and ill-paid—and also involved getting up early, which he hated even worse.
Graduation was a grim day for him; it meant that he now did “honest work” all day long instead of spending a restful six or seven hours in school. One hot day he spent fifteen hours plowing behind a mule…and the longer he stared at the south end of that mule, breathing dust it kicked up and wiping the sweat of honest toil out of his eyes, the more he hated it.
That night he left home informally, walked fifteen miles to town, slept across the door of the post office until the postmistress opened up next morning, and enlisted in the Navy. He aged two years during the night, from fifteen to seventeen, which made him old enough to enlist.
A boy often ages rapidly when he leaves home. The fact was not noticeable; birth registrations were unheard of at that time and place, and David was six feet tall, broad-shouldered, well-muscled, handsome, and mature in appearance, save for a wild look around the eyes.
The Navy suited David. They gave him shoes and new clothes, and let him ride around on the water, seeing strange and interesting places—untroubled by mules and the dust of cornfields. They did expect him to work, though not as much, or as hard, as working a hill farm—and once he figured out the political setup aboard ship he became adept at not doing much work while still being satisfactory to the local gods, namely, chief petty officers.
But it was not totally satisfactory as he still had to get up early and often had to stand night watches and sometimes scrub decks and perform other tasks unsuited to his sensitive temperament.
Then he heard about this school for officer candidates—“midshipmen” as they were known. Not that David cared what they were called; the point was that the Navy would pay him to sit down and read books—his notion of heaven—untroubled by decks to scrub and by petty officers. O King, am I boring you? No?
Very well—David was ill prepared for this school, never having had four to five years’ additional schooling considered necessary to enter it—mathematics, what passed for science, history, languages, literature, and so forth.
Pretending to four years or so of schooling he did not have was more difficult than tacking two years on the age of an overgrown boy. But the Navy wished to encourage enlisted men to become officers, so it had established a tutoring school to aid candidates slightly deficient in academic preparation.
David construed “slightly deficient” to mean his own state; he told his chief petty officer that he had “just missed” graduating from high school—which was true in a way; he had “just missed” by half a county, that being the distance from his home to the nearest high school.
I don’t know how David induced his See-Pee-Oh to recommend him; David never discussed this. Suffice to say that, when David’s ship steamed for the Mediterranean, David was dropped at Hampton Roads six weeks before the tutoring school convened. He was a supernumerary during that time. The Personnel Officer (in fact, his clerk) assigned David to a bunk and a mess, and told him to stay out of sight during working hours in the empty classrooms where his fellow hopefuls would meet six weeks later. David did so; the classrooms had in them the books used in tutoring in academic subjects a candidate might lack—and David lacked them all. He stayed out of sight and sat down and read.
That’s all it took.
When the class convened,
Similar Books
