Of My Birth to Early Teens

Looking Back (Chapter 2)
by John E. Hunt
Copyright 1996

This is a continuation of the story that began with my birth in March of 1940. Chapter 1 tells of my early life in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, how my brother and I ended up in an orphanage, were removed and lived for a while on a farm in MA. It told of my subsequent move to Virginia and some of the adventures I had there, then the move to Cuba and my exploits there. When we concluded that chapter, we had just returned from Cuba to Central Falls, Rhode Island. The story continues:

C C H A P T E R 02
(1953-1959)

When I left Central Falls in 1953, my father was stationed at Patuxent Naval Air Station, at Patuxent River, Maryland. That is where experimental test planes were/are flown, to iron out the bugs. Keep in mind that this was 1953 through 1955. During that time, I personally know of three fatal aircraft crashes on the test ranges. The planes that were being tested were the forerunners of the Stealth bomber that was recently unveiled. I used to see the plane from time to time, and my parents were personal friends of one of the pilots that crashed. They called it the flying wing. It may not have been the exact same plane they unveiled, but it was one of the early test models.

Before we left Central Falls for Pawtuxent River, Maryland, we visited our relatives in Sabatus, Maine. My aunt and uncle gave me a set of skis for Christmas, and as a going-away present. I used them exactly once in Maryland when we had a half-inch snowfall that lasted all of five hours. I fell quite a lot and gave up trying to be a Jean Claude Killy, downhill racer.

My forte then became exploring the woods around the housing area on post. I led many an expedition, ala Lewis and Clark, into the surrounding vegetation, and discovered many good streams and places of solitude, where a boy my age (thirteen to fourteen) could lose himself from the cares of urban living. My constant companion at that time was my collie, Scotty. We had him since 1949 at Newport News, in Virginia. He was very faithful and smart. Sometimes when I left him at home and meal time came, my mother would tie a note to his collar and let him out of the house. He would invariably find me no matter where I was.

Those streams I mentioned were very tempting places on hot days at school. Butch was a playmate of mine. We began sneaking cigarettes and playing hooky from school together. One day we had gone to one of these streams in the woods and decided to go swimming. We went in au natural after folding our clothes on the bank.

The swimming was great for about forty minutes, but unfortunately, we weren't the only ones who passed through those woods. We heard some voices coming, so we scrambled out, grabbed our clothes and ran to hide and dress. We had been seen, however, and recognized. Our parents did find out about it, and mine forbade me to play with Butch again. That dictum couldn't be enforced forever, so it wasn't long before we were playing together again. My parents didn't like Butch, because they thought he was leading me astray. Truth to tell, I couldn't tell you to this day who was leading whom astray.

The elementary school I went to was located just outside the gate of the post in College Park, Maryland. I used to brown-bag it to school in those days. That is, I'd carry my lunch. Schools didn't have cafeterias and lunchrooms, so one brought one's lunch in a bag, and perhaps traded with another, if he/she had what looked like a better lunch. We did bring some change for sodas, milk, or candy bars, although I seldom used the monies for what they were intended. At first I was into commemorative stamps, which I bought or traded from other students; then I got into foreign coins and bills. A lot of the students were from military families, and had done a lot of traveling with their fathers to different lands. They had some good-looking currency. The temptations were all around.

Later, I found out that the pinball machines, in the various stores in the park, had payoffs in cash if you won games. That became a big thing for Butch and me. Naturally, the machines did most of the winning.

My parents were happy when we moved off post to Tall Timbers, to a house in the pines, on the shore of the Potomac River. I was starting at a new school, and I think they thought the move would split Butch and me up, and I would no longer get into trouble. Though Butch stayed on post, he, too, was bussed to the same school as I. It was a stalemate. I also made another new friend named Jimmy Calisanto who I had some adventures with, about which you shall hear soon.

I was fourteen, and it was a very exciting age; I lived in a great place. Dad found this place nestled in the tall pine trees, bordering the Potomac River, on the Maryland side. When you walked out the back door onto a screened veranda, the vista was all river, with the Virginia side visible on the horizon about seven miles distant. About forty feet from the back door, was an eight-foot seawall, which dropped to the river itself. There was no beach, but at low tide, it was only about three feet deep at the base of the seawall.

Various houses along the shore had well-built piers, that jutted out into the river some 40 to 220 feet. One had to ask permission of the owners to use their pier, but the neighbors were great about sharing. We fished off their piers a lot, and swam also. Most of the homeowners were Summer People, but some stayed year round. We fit the latter category.

Living right on the Potomac, occasioned a lot of seafood meals in our house. Mom was crazy about crab, so every day, my brother or I would check the two crab pots directly offshore from our house. Generally we'd find several crabs there. Another trick was to take fish heads, tied to long strings, and throw them out and slowly drag them back. Invariably there would be a crab that could be scooped up in a long-handled net carried for that purpose. The crab didn't want to let the fish head go.

Sometimes I went along the shore about three-quarters of a mile, where the seawall tapered off, and a small beach formed. Crabs could be readily caught, by net alone, in the shallows there. This was where I liked to fish also. The most common fish we caught were what we called spot and perch. Sometimes we'd catch eels, but they wriggled in the frying pan gruesomely.

In the deeper waters, rock fish (striped bass) could be caught. This end of the inlet was separated by an expanse of open water about forty feet wide, and having a very swift current when the tide was changing. The shoreline continued on the other side, and sometime, in the slack tide, we kids would swim across, but it was dangerous. If the tide was going out, a swimmer could be swept way out into the Potomac and drown. An incoming tide, led to a harbor for the boats belonging to the local populace.

One day, Jimmy Calisanto and I visited the harbor and took a rowboat out to a launch that had an inboard motor on it. Jimmy and his family knew the owner, so when a guard who watched the marina stopped us to asked what we were doing, Jimmy said we had permission to use the launch. You guessed it! No such permission had ever been given. We managed to fire the engine up, slip the mooring, and take her out for an hour or so. That was great fun, and we got away with it.

Several days later, we tried it again with success. We tried to make it out of the inlet, but the current was too swift, and it's a good thing too. There is no telling what would have happened had we managed to get out and not been able to get back in. When we tired, we brought the launch back to its mooring, secured it and went home.

Jimmy and I were both called to task for our adventures that night. It seems the owners had returned and the guard had asked them about a couple of kids using their boat. I know I got my bottom blistered for that one and placed on restriction too; I don't remember how long, but it seemed forever.

Vallery Grimes was my secret and unrequited love here. She was a beautiful girl, but had a big brother who used to pull the legs and shells off the crabs while they were still alive. I thought that gross! At least my mother cooked them in boiling water, where they died instantly, before she pulled them apart. As I was saying about Vallery, we used to have swims at night at the end of the pier near her house. The pier had lights on it, which allowed late swimming. Sometimes we would just sit out there and sing songs or talk. I didn't realize until later when my brother, Harold, went into the Navy, that he had been sweet on her also.

While living in Tall Timbers, Maryland, and in the eighth grade at Great Mills Middle School, we had a brother and sister of German extraction, who were new to our school, and convinced the school to start up a soccer team. The boy's name was Jacob, and he taught most of us the rules of the game as well as designing the playing field. Looking back on it today, he seemed like a young Pele to me. Boy, he could handle that ball with his feet! It was purely magical.

The only sibling in my family was my brother. He had joined the navy by the time we returned to Central Falls and I enrolled in Central Falls High School. You might say I was an only child from the age of fifteen on, because my brother made a career of the navy, and the only time we were all together again, was when we were all in the navy in 1960-1961, and stationed in Virginia. We had a very disunited family life after that, with never any two of us being stationed at the same place.

In late 1955, we returned to Central Falls again and to the same house at 391 Dexter Street, second floor. I enrolled at Central Falls High School, and once again renewed my friendships and made new friends. Those were great years for me because girls became a focus of my imagination, if not a figment. You really couldn't tell by my actions, because I was most unashamedly bashful in a one-on-one situation. But I could look my fill, and I did that a lot.


Central Falls High School never did have a swimming pool or track, but we kids always managed to stay in shape with some sport or other. For swimming, as I recollect, we used to go to a place called Lincoln Woods. We would ride our bikes, and it would be an all-day affair. Sometimes, we'd go to the YMCA.

On my side of Dexter Street, just down from my house, was a pizza parlor, and a fish and chips store. We used to play the jukebox (Fats Domino, Paul Anka, etc.) while waiting for the best pizza in the world. They used to serve milk shakes there too, only we called them frappes.

After school, I'd jump on my bike and go to Jenks’ Park and over to Sacred Heart, which I believe is on Broad, and on down to Ashley's playground. Sacred Heart Park, as it is now called, is where I used to do most of my basketball playing, year-round. We would shovel the snow off the court in the winter. There was a railroad track running next to the court, and some swings, but most of it was just field.

Cross Street always was a nice tree-lined street from Dexter to Broad. There were no bars on it, but there was a funeral home on the left-hand side of Cross, about halfway between Dexter and Broad. It had a fancy blue neon sign out front. I remember one evening, an uncle I had, who lived on lower Cross Street, had visited my mom and me on Dexter Street, and had availed himself of an abundance of alcohol at our place. My mother asked me to see him home when he left after dark.

We had to walk because he was in no condition to ride my bike. So with his arm draped across my shoulder, we started for lower Cross Street. Naturally we had to pass the funeral home and they had the neon sign on. You can guess what my uncle thought it was! I had a devil of a time to pass that place with him, but I managed to convince him that the only fluid he could get there, was embalming fluid, and he was well on the way to that state of being anyway.

My father was gone on a Navy assignment someplace whenever we lived in Central Falls. My mother had to raise my brother and me by herself. Sometimes she worked during the interval of separation as a Creeler/Doffer at Coates & Clark in Central Falls. So yes, I guess you could say I had a lot of freedom and might even be compared to what is called today, a latchkey kid. Mom only expected me to stay out of trouble, get good grades in school, and be home on time for supper. I managed to do all that pretty well.

Other families had different situations, and some of my friends' parents kept a pretty tight rein on them. Mostly though, we had fun and freedom enough to enjoy ourselves. The diverse racial and ethnic groups present today in Central Falls, were also present in my day. That made for some very good times because we learned more about each others' customs and ways of life. A favorite pastime I enjoyed was going to my friends' houses to eat the different native foods.

We kids had a lot of pressures also from our peers and from the times. They weren't the same kind of pressures that youngsters of today have to live with. Drugs were almost non-existent and the communications media weren't so quick to jump on world catastrophes and present them to you over the supper table or breakfast table as a fact of life. We didn't have nuclear holocaust hanging over our heads constantly. People cared more for each other, or so it seemed. Teen suicides seldom happened and their morals were not corrupted by the environment we live in, such as has happened in a lot of places today.
When a boy and girl went on a date, they usually kept their clothes on for the duration. That's not to say that we didn't kiss and pet, which was acceptable for the times. Parties we attended were usually school or church functions and were well chaperoned.

I generally wore a tie to school (one of the few oddball affectations I had) and was quite studious. My nose would generally be buried in some book or other. We only had one study period during the latter part of the day, and I would usually have my homework finished by the end of that period. After school, if I didn't go to the library to get some reading material, I would go home and get my bike and head for Frank or Jim's house or Jenk's Park or what was then Ashley Field. There was always something to do and someone with whom to do it. On weekends, I would pedal over to my cousin's place in Pawtucket and we would ride our bikes to the roller skating rink, where I could fall with the best of skaters.

Central Falls is a small city, and a disproportionate amount of drug traffic was found to be passing through there a few of years ago. Drug abuse is a nasty happening, and it's a shame that Central Falls was saddled with that reputation, but that should not stand in the way of cleaning up the city. It's a good city, and the people who made it a good city are inherently good; at least I shall always have fond memories of it.

Some of my secret loves were Marsha Goshenski and Maxine Slakowski. I had other secret loves, but woe is me, they never knew it. Had any one of them even dropped a hint that we could get to know each other better, maybe something more positive could have come of my yearnings. Sometimes the girl has to be the aggressor, I think.

My first money-making job ever, was acquired there in Central Falls. I don't recall exactly where it was located, but it was a Swift Meat Packing Plant. I worked there for two weeks, packing sausage. A skin would be placed over the outlet of the meat-grinding machine and when the grinder was turned on, the meat would be fed into the grinder at the top and would come out and fill the skin at the outlet. A man would twist the sausage into links, pile them into a cart, and take them to the freezer. That is where I worked, along with about five other boys during the Summer.

They gave us parkas to work in the freezer, but when you have to work with knives to cut the sausages into the proper length links, and then pack them into boxes with a see-through cellophane cover, you cannot wear gloves. Let me tell you, it got mighty cold in there and we had to take frequent trips outside to warm up. Sometimes it was so cold, we would cut ourselves and not notice it until someone spotted the blood on the sausages. It usually was just wiped off and packaged anyway. I didn't eat sausages for over twenty years after that experience. I only worked there two weeks because I caught bronchial pneumonia.

My next job was a lot more lucrative. I worked for W.T. Grant on Broad Street. Actually, I was a stock boy and worked in the warehouse diagonally across the street from Grant's, and on a slight uphill on the left. This other stock boy and I, would load merchandise on dollies, take it down the hill and across Broad Street, and into the store, to the appropriate floor and department. It was a rough job, but a muscle-builder also. It taught me to be nimble when crossing Broad Street during the rush hour. The lucrative part was that at Christmas, I got a discount on a model train set that I gave to my cousin. That made a nice Christmas for him and made me feel good too.

Biology was a favorite class of mine in high school. Unfortunately, I wasn't too good with a scalpel and botched a couple of dissections. My drawings and research on the subject were more than adequate to advance me to the next higher grade.

One show-stopper that I can recall from biology class was the day we first discussed the reproductive cycle in humans. Being an erudite student and well read, when the teacher, Mr. Fay, asked if anyone knew where the sperm that fertilized the ova came from, and nobody raised their hand to answer (as a matter of fact, sex education was not taught in school in those days and was a bit embarrassing to discuss), I volunteered the answer as the penis.

How was I to know that he only wanted a general location like "male" and not the actual physical organ? A pin could have been dropped in that room during the next thirty seconds and it would have been heard by all. A lot of faces turned red, including mine, when the teacher stammered out the answer he was looking for. Occurrences such as that seemed to plague my life for some reason. Perhaps it is my Karma.

I prided myself on my wrestling ability. I had never been beaten. This was mainly due to the fact that I had tremendous strength of shoulders and biceps and my forearms had strong bones that were close to the surface. My most devastating hold was a headlock, which I would then proceed to grind my forearm into my opponent's neck until he hollered "uncle." Most of my adversaries gave up once I got that hold on them. Ed Arage, however, was different. He was always the consummate athlete and excelled at every sport. I, on the other hand, was average.

One day, in Jenks’ Park, Ed and I decided to wrestle. We had agreed that punching was out, but other than that, it was no-holds-barred wrestling. Ed, by the way, stood a good head taller than I. It didn't take me long to get my headlock on him, but try as I might, I could not get him to give up. He had the strongest neck of anyone I'd ever wrestled. Eventually, I had to shift to another hold because I tired with that one and it wasn't successful in achieving my goal. I went to a scissors hold around his waist, but he had me down on my back on the ground. I squeezed a little bit, and he grimaced with pain. I had found his Achilles' heel!

At one point, he raised his fist as if to hit me in the face and make me let go. Our friends were watching, though, and were quick to point out that this action had been agreed upon to be unfair. He didn't strike, and with a final squeeze of the scissors, gave up.

I don't know if Ed has been holding animosity against me all these years for that little episode. I certainly hope not. As far as I know, that was the only chink in his armor. He and Bill Nicynski were always admired by me as being the greatest athletes of the school in those days.

I played mostly basketball for the high school, as did many of the boys at Central Falls, but I did play baseball also, and Allie LaChanch used to be my main pitcher. Frank Juchnik was the back-up pitcher, I was the catcher, and I like to think, a good one. At least I was the only one among our crowd who would volunteer for that position.

It is hard for the catcher to strap on all that extra gear when his team is in the field, catch for a half inning, and then be able to hit and run the bases during the next half-inning. That is why, when you see a good hitting catcher, he is really a good athlete. I didn't hit too good during games, but during warm-ups and practice sessions, I used to hit flies and grounders to the boys in the field. I could hit long distances and place the ball exactly where I wanted it to go.

Getting back to Allie, he was our star pitcher and could really put a lot of stuff on that ball. Batters had a hard time hitting him, because they never knew what he would throw next. It was an elaborate set of hand signals we had worked out. To be honest, though, I would have to admit that Allie didn't always throw what I had signaled him to throw, and what he nodded approval of. Sometimes he was as surprised at where the ball would go as was I. I don't believe our baseball team was ever the caliber of our basketball team, but we had fun anyway.

That leads me to our next topic, which is that Allie, me, Jim Panichas, and Hank Dugan had formed a sort of barbershop quartet and used to practice singing in Jenk's Park. We had worked up a nice little ditty, which we practiced over and over to make the harmony sound good.

When I returned to Central Falls for a short visit in 1959, on my way to Virginia, I attended a basketball game at the high school. I remember Allie, Jim, and several others sitting on the top seat of the bleachers behind me, and I think I was sitting with Frank. Allie, et al., kept singing that song to catch my attention, which they did, but I didn't join them, and I think they got peeved. I have always felt bad about that, and should have apologized to them after the game, but I left without doing so. I hope they didn't hold a grudge against me for that.

In 1957, my mother and I moved to Argentia, Newfoundland, where my father was stationed at one of our country's Distant Early Warning (DEW) lines. In those days, the Naval Air Station at Argentia existed solely to support the flight of Super Constellation aircraft that were loaded with sensitive electronic eavesdropping, and radar equipment. Like pregnant ladies wearing top hats, these huge planes had a bulbous belly, and a round, elevated radar antenna on top, in the middle. They were in the air on a twenty-four hour rotation, and flew the entire northern corridor. Their function was to detect any encroachment to Canada or the Americas from the North.

My father was a Master Chief Storekeeper, in charge of logistical supply for the airmen and planes that flew those missions - no small task that! He had to order everything from the food the men ate, and the clothes they wore, to parts for the aircraft.

I would have to make new friends in a new school at the Naval Air Station in Newfoundland during my junior year. My father sent for us when he found housing off post. We would have to wait until a place on post became available before moving among the military families. Meanwhile, we lived about fifteen miles from the base, in a place called Dunville. Only the roads on base were paved. It was a dirt road all the way to my house, the only road between Argentia and Saint John's, the capitol.

Leaving the base, we passed Placentia Bay with its quaint houses, some of them on stilts. This area was all a fishing and whaling area. The bay ran the length of the road on our right to way past my house fifteen miles distant. On the left of the road was mostly mountain and forested area. Upon reaching my house, there was a small sawmill on the left, up the hill a little way, and my house was across the road, and down the hill about eighty feet, where it leveled off for about a hundred feet, and then dropped to a small lake at the bottom of the hill. We did some fishing for trout in that lake periodically.

On the other side of the lake, and across a small rise of land, was the continuation of Placentia Bay. I used to hike over there from time to time. I've seen whales wash up on the beach and die, pilot whales moving up and down the bay amidst the icebergs. It was a very scenic area, and if you could put up with the loneliness of the spot, it became comfortable.

Our nearest neighbor lived about three miles away (this was not counting the workers at the small sawmill at the top of the hill). The temperature seldom got out of the seventies in summer, and only in the teens in winter. This was a wet cold, though, and if it were windy, you felt it. The Gulf Stream swings up along Newfoundland in the winter, or it would be colder.

When I enrolled in Arthur L. Bristol High School, it was the first year of its' existence on post. Military dependents had been going to Saint John's, the capital, for schooling at Pepperrell Army Base near there. There were only five seniors that year, and there were eleven juniors.

I was in seventh heaven because I had spent the summer off-post, with not another teenager to talk with. I had to make up for lost time! All the teenagers, from freshman to senior, totalled less than forty souls, so nobody was ever ostracized from the teen social activities. We formed all kinds of clubs, and joined as many as we could, just to have some socialization.

I joined the teen bowling league at the officers' club and eventually became a team captain. I became a good figure skater on roller skates, and was asked by the military recreation manager to referee afternoon skating sessions at the gymnasium to make sure there was no horsing around. They even gave me a whistle and a black-and-white striped shirt.

Two events that took place during my stay in Newfoundland are clearly linked to the cold war. They stand out in my mind. The first is the launching by the USSR of Sputnik in 1957. That event was the topic of discussion throughout the school and I can tell you that it scared us kids quite a bit to think that the Russians were that far advanced in space technology.

We had a rocket club in the school at that time. A kid named Dennis Groggin was the president. He lived and breathed rocketry and built and demonstrated a model rocket for the school. He was sure the U.S. was not far behind in their space endeavors, which proved to be correct.

The second event was Fidel Castro's emergence as a strong reactionary against Batista. Most of us were pro-Castro at that time, because he didn't show any leanings toward communism, and he promised to rid the island of the dictator, Batista. By the time he had consolidated his power, it was too late for the U.S. to do anything about him.

To look at an aerial photo of the base at Argentia, it looks rather desolate and barren. For the most part, it was. There were few trees in the populated areas of the post, they had been removed to make room for the airfield, administrative, housing, and recreational areas. In many places the wind, rain, and snow had swept the topsoil from the surface, exposing the underlying rock. That is how it got it's nick-name of "The Rock." That is what everyone called it and it seemed most apropos.

In the winter, it was unbelievable how the winds cut right through you, stinging any exposed surface. It felt like a cluster of tattoo needles trying to imprint a picture all at once. It is an exposed area right on the edge of the sea. Most foot traffic came to a halt during the coldest of these days. We only ventured out in vehicles, even if it was just to go a short distance.

A friend of mine, Pete Chamberlain, wanted to go camping on a lake we had found. It was early winter, the ice hadn't yet formed on the water and the temperatures weren't too bad. I didn't have a sleeping bag, so my dad got one from recreational services. We hiked in to the lake and inspected its shoreline for a suitable camping site. When we found one, we proceeded to build a lean-to facing outward toward the lake, and about twenty feet from the shore. We lined the bed area with the softest foliage we could find, spread out our sleeping bags, built a fire, and got out our fishing gear. Before it got dark, we had caught and eaten a couple of trout and exchanged not a few stories of our prowess with the opposite sex (most of that being fabricated on my part - probably on his too).

As dusk settled, we began to see "V" shaped waves forming from time to time out on the lake. I'd brought a pair of binoculars, and was surprised to see that it was beaver swimming that caused this phenomenon. Soon, they moved closer and I didn't need the binoculars. I'd heard that the beaver slapped it’s tail on the water and dived when they thought danger was near. To test that theory, I threw a stone in the water close to them. Sure enough, they acted to expectation. I'd never seen beaver at work before, nor close-up. We watched them towing branches from point to point until it was too dark to see anymore. Sleep was late in coming that night. We were warm and comfortable in our sleeping bags and the adventure of being out in the wilderness, lent a tang to our life. The night sounds of the animals lulled us to sleep finally.

One time my dad and I went fishing for salmon with a friend of his, a "Newfie" named Paul. This man was the owner of our house in Dunville. We went to a place called Heart's Delight. Newfoundland is full of places with quaint names like that. Nearby was Heart's Content and Heart's Desire, two other small villages. Almost anywhere you went in Newfoundland was good for fishing.

Paul was a huge man and very jovial. We found a stream bed that looked promising and proceeded to walk upstream. The salmon were running, returning to their birthplace to spawn. I'd seen pictures on television of salmon leaping up falls, and battling strong currents to the point of exhaustion, but to actually see this in person is quite remarkable. It's a sight that I'll never forget.

When we found a suitable pool, Paul showed me how to "jig" a salmon. It was an illegal method of catching them. You're supposed to use live bait or lures to attract them to feed, but at this time of their lives, the salmon only have one thing on their minds, and that's getting back to their birthplace to spawn. It is seldom that they will stop to feed. Most Newfies only fish inland for subsistence, and if they think they can get away with it, will jig the fish. This involves finding a salmon that is resting in the water, dropping a line with a triple barbed hook on the far side and behind him, and working the line up toward his head. When it is in the right position, quickly raising the line, and pulling it toward you, is likely to hook the fish somewhere around the head. He won't have "struck" the line, but he will be hooked nonetheless. Then you'd best hold on for a fierce fight!

The salmon is the greatest freshwater game fish that I've ever seen. Paul hooked one that was three feet long and weighed over twenty-two pounds. That fish was up stream, down stream, half in, and half out of the water for the next ten minutes. It was a gorgeous fish when he finally landed him! After such a gallant fight, it seemed a shame to eat him, but we did that the very same night.

When I became editor of the school newspaper, I learned how closely tied to the military we were. Our advisor on the school staff was the gym teacher. He had to make arrangements with some military office for the use of their mimeograph machine so that we could run off copies of the paper. We students decided the layout for the articles and pictures, and typed up the stencils needed, but the expertise of transferring pictures to the page was handled by the military. When we got the finished pages back, we formed stacks of each page on tables in the cafeteria, and formed lines that moved along those stacks, picking up each page until we had a complete set, then stapling them together. I later learned that this is called collating.

As editor, the advisors gave me leeway in deciding what went into the paper. Articles were submitted by both students and teachers. I considered myself a fair poet (debatable), and when several poems were submitted by a teacher, I didn't think they were anything special. Still, I printed them because I didn't want to irritate the adults. His work was prose, whereas I thought, to be called poetry, the work had to have rhyme and rhythm to its flow. It wasn't until recent years, while perusing an old copy of my school newspaper, that I realized how good his poetry really was. It had a depth of feeling and expression that I have to work hard to achieve. It's amazing how the passage of years will make you view things differently.

In my senior year, I taught chemistry for a week until the teacher arrived from the States. The base commander wrote me a nice letter for doing that. We were extremely shorthanded on teachers for a while. I became editor of our school newspaper and co-president of the student council. It was nice because classes were so small that the teachers had time to give a little one-on-one instruction.

Connie Francis came up with the USO, and put on a show for the boys on the DEW line. All dependents went because this was an event that seldom happened. I sat in the balcony of the theater and Miss Francis sounded as though her voice filled the whole hall. Some singer that! I sat with Carol Townsley, she of the sweet lipstick! She only let me taste it once.

My brother, Harold, hadn't been with us in Newfoundland, because he was aboard the USS Forrestal, an aircraft carrier, at Norfolk, Virginia. The plan for returning to the states, was for me and my father and mother to take a small passenger ship out of Saint John's, Newfoundland, down the coast to New York Harbor, where a catalog-ordered, new Buick automobile was to be waiting for us to pick up; thence by car to Norfolk for my brother, and return by car to New England to visit relatives.

My parents and I boarded the ship in Saint John's Harbor on a cold and blustery day. The whitecaps on the water were heavy and were throwing off spume. We were shown to our cabin, which, while small, was quite luxurious and had two large bunk beds. The three of us would share the cabin for the five-day trip to New York.

Saint John's sits within a sheltered harbor, some three miles long and no more than half a mile wide, with cliffs or hills surrounding this bight. The housing along both shores was low-lying for protection from the winds; it was colorful and spread out, with a lot of docks and piers jutting into the harbor. It is a fishing town, just like Placentia, only bigger. Cod was the main industry, with lobstering running a close second.

As I said, the day we departed was blustery, and it is a rule of the government that ships navigating the harbor in rough weather had to carry a pilot to navigate the inlet into or out of the harbor. Our pilot joined us on a small mail packet (maybe twenty-five feet long), which angled alongside as we were leaving the harbor. I marvel today at the dexterity of those boat-handlers. The packet looked like a cork as it came up on us. The pilot did not hesitate to jump to our ship. A very agile man that! Just after leaving the harbor, the packet drew alongside once again and the pilot departed with it back to the harbor. We were on our own for the next five days.

The first two days were all rough weather, and poor Mom couldn't hack it. She stayed in the cabin mostly, groaning and heaving alternately. She looked ghastly. I only had one moment of doubt before I got my sea legs and began to enjoy the trip. Of course, Dad was an old salt from way back, and wasn't troubled by seasickness. He had to take care of my mother, though, and that wasn't pleasant.

There were about thirty passengers aboard, but due to the mode of travel, we were seldom all together at the same time. Invariably, someone was confined to their cabin with the heaves. Several were strangers for the whole trip. My favorite time of day was when the steward walked the passageway with his little chimes and played various cheerful tunes. This was the call to meals. I enjoyed this the most, and after the first couple of days, even my mother began to enjoy the trip. Of course, it helped that we were in calmer waters.

Entertainment revolved around parlor games and the movies. It wasn't a large luxury liner like you see on Love Boat. Still, we had a very nice sea voyage for our return and when we pulled into New York Harbor and I saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time, it was a very stirring moment.

We picked up the car and traveled to Virginia to get my brother. From there, we went back up Highway 1 to New England to visit the relatives. While in Massachusetts with them, I did manage to cross into Central Falls, and see some of my friends, and attend a high school basketball game. I have alluded to that earlier.