Steve took a deep breath and said, very slowly, “One would hope that when folks have more than enough for their own needs, they would automatically start thinking of what they can do for others who do not.”
Kay sensed the sorrow, almost the anguish, impregnating these words. Getting up from the chair in which she had been sitting, she crossed the room and sank into the sofa beside Steve.
“I love you,” she breathed softly, pressing against him. “The world cannot be altogether bad as long as it contains a few men in it who quietly give away what they don’t need, and even some of what they do need.”
Then she kissed the man she was talking about and laid her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her. It felt so good to be so close.
As they were sitting in the semidarkness of the room, three cars passed in front of their house in the full moonlight. Two of them were pulling large boat trailers behind them down the highway. Both Steve and Kay had the same thought. Those outfits were expensive!
The sound of the cars died away in the darkness.
The little worm was not dormant now. It was feasting on Steve’s one great conviction. Not that he surrendered it! It just became more challenging for him to hang onto it when evidence of man’s self-worship seemed to be growing out of control and evidence of God’s overriding goodness seemed harder to find by the day. Thank God for the liturgy! It was the one source of sanity in an insane world.
“Honey,” he whispered at last. “Let’s go to bed. I’ve had enough of this day, haven’t you?”
“Not quite, sweetheart,” she cooed.
“Oh?”
“Do your math.”
Pause.
“You’re right! Tonight we can have each other completely.”
“So, what are we waiting for?”
“Right! What are we waiting for?”
And they did.
VIII
It was a year and a half later, October 1958. Thoroughly troubling days had been comparatively few and far between for Dr. Pearson, but the number of petty annoyances within each day kept growing. As long as he remained absorbed in his teaching, his worship, and his domestic happiness, it was not hard for him to slough off these annoyances if they didn’t come at him too thick and fast. Underlying his usual serenity was the conviction that advancements in science would ultimately serve to eradicate evil and suffering on earth and do more good than harm.
The Reedville Board of Education had invited him to be the principal speaker at their high school’s annual “Looking Ahead Day,” this year to be held on a Friday in October. His overall theme would be “Preparing for the World of Tomorrow.” He would address an all-school convocation at 10:30 in the morning, spend the afternoon visiting several science classrooms, and close the day with a forty-five-minute speech before the Reedville Association of Parents and Teachers that evening. It would be a busy day, but it would offer him many opportunities to fire up the enthusiasm of students to dedicate themselves to the cause of peace and progress. And so he had accepted the invitation gladly, replying that he and his wife would arrive at the school library by 9:30 a.m. as requested. Thus, leaving behind their respective responsibilities for one day, they set off for Reedville by car.
Reedville was a town which, until the years after the war, had been located about fifteen miles southwest of Minneapolis. It had been the hub of a specialized truck farming industry. Now, however, its population had quintupled, its size in area had quadrupled, and its farms had mostly been parceled out into rolling estates. Two freeways ran through the municipality, spokes leading commuter traffic into downtown Minneapolis. In other words, it had become the ideal American suburb, less than half an hour from “the loop,” spangled with shopping centers large and small, and blessed with a quaint old-fashioned downtown. The residents of its sprawling estates, which had been carved with some skill out of its wooded hills and its fields, enjoyed a broad selection of new schools, competing automobile dealerships, elite country clubs, and antiseptic churches.
The drive to Reedville was pleasant for the Pearsons. They considered their 1951 DeSoto a fine road car. The bumps melted away under its large shock absorbers, and its six-cylinder engine purred along on a minimum of gas. They left St. Mark at 7:30 a.m. in order to give themselves ample time to contend with the inflowing traffic. Arriving at Reedville at 9:15, they stopped at a filling station to get exact directions to the high school.
“Go straight ahead for two blocks and make a right,” they were told. “Then go straight ahead for a mile or so until you hit Highway 17. It’s just across the highway. You can’t miss it.”
Indeed not! Surrounded by a vast sea of cars, it spread out in all directions like a great island. At the first sight of it, the Pearsons were astonished by its opulence. But, scooting across the highway in the few seconds allotted by the stop-and-go light to allow lateral traffic to consume six lanes, their astonishment swiftly turned into bewilderment.
Before them in graceful curves and orderly rows were acres of automobiles of every imaginable color and combination of colors. Pink Cadillacs, purple Mercuries, green-and-gold Studebakers, fiery red Pontiacs, gaudy winged Plymouths and Chryslers, jet-black Buicks, tiny sports cars, lowered hot-rods, converted pickups, racy convertibles: every sort of vehicle ever produced or crossbred was on display there, it seemed.
“What do they do, commute from Iowa?” Kay puzzled, stroking her chin.
“I don’t know, but it’s a good thing we’re a little early. Where do you suppose we should park?”
“I’ll bet there’s a faculty parking lot closer to the school.”
“Good idea.”
Steve started off in the direction of the building as Kay kept her eyes peeled for the faculty parking lot. He got twisted up in the confusing maze of cars but eventually emerged under a broad overhanging carport measuring perhaps one-hundred fifty by three-hundred fifty feet in front of what appeared to be the main entrance. Windows overlooking the parking lot and the active highway occupied three sides of the single-story structure whose floor was the carport.
“Interesting,” pondered Steve out loud. “Protection for people coming and going in inclement weather, with the roof space devoted to classrooms.”
“I wouldn’t care to teach in a classroom with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a freeway,” observed Kay. “How would you ever hold the kids’ attention?”
From there they clung to the side of the building until they came to the faculty parking lot. Their DeSoto looked a little more at home back there. Parking on the edge of the lot, they made their way back to the main entrance on foot, asking each other what that giant goldfish bowl on top of the carport could possibly be used for in a school.
No sooner had they reached the doors than they were greeted, all out of breath, by a buxom blonde whose school sweater, pulled painfully tight, left little to the imagination. Seizing the startled professor’s hand, she blurted out virtually in one breath, “You must be Dr. Pearson, our special guest for the day! And this lovely lady must be your daugt … wife! I’m Sally Larsen! Welcome to Reedville High School!”
“How do you do, Miss Larsen,” he replied calmly. “Yes, this is my wife, Mrs. Pearson.”
“How do you do, Sally.”
“Well, my job was to greet you and take you up to the library where Mr. Pfister (he’s our real cool principal!) is waiting for you.”
“Thank you, Sally,” they said together, following her up the broad steps to the lobby.
This was to be a day of surprises, and here was one of them. The lobby was a cavernous space lined with ten-foot potted plants and inlaid with designs in exquisite ceramic tile. Leading off from the lobby were three corridors, each measuring some twenty feet in width and framed in the same ceramic tile as the lobby. Steve and Kay followed Sally to the flight of stairs on the left. The splendor of it all had a more pronounced immediate effect on Kay than on Steve who normally awoke more slowly to what was going on around him. As they
reached the landing, Kay was moved to ask Sally a question that had been on her mind since their arrival.
“Sally, this fine school must serve a very large area, judging by all the cars in the lot, right?”
“Well, not really,” she replied both tentatively and emphatically, stopping on the landing to gaze out the window. “It’s really awful,” she explained, trying to sound disgusted. “If you don’t come to school driving at least a ‘55 Pontiac, you’re totally out of it. It’s so bad that our dads have to come to our rescue as soon as we turn sixteen and get our driver’s license. Otherwise we’d just be humiliated, that’s all there is to it.”
Then suddenly she sparked up.
“My dear daddy gave me that pink ‘57 Oldsmobile convertible over there just last month!” she enthused. “And he pays for the gas, too! Isn’t he just too cool? That’s it over there beside the black rod,” she said, pointing into the middle of the sea of cars. “It’s the one, two, three, four, five, sixth one in the third row of the second section.”
The Pearsons scoured the lot in vain for a few moments until Sally mercifully terminated the search with a flourish.
“Well, it’s real neat anyhow. Wish you could ride in it. I’m already on my second set of tires.” She paused briefly. “I’ll bet you folks have a really neat car, too, eh?”
Before they could answer, she bounded up the stairs, beckoning them to follow her. At the top they turned to the right and—was it possible?—stepped out onto the carport through glass-paneled doors sporting the word LIBRARY in gold letters.
In a bit of a daze they followed her into the bright enclosure, glancing at the handful of students standing at the windows watching the cars go by on the highway.
“Dr. and Mrs. Pearson, may I introduce you to our principal, Mr. Pfister, and this is our librarian, Miss Hazelitt.”
“Welcome and good morning to you, Dr. and Mrs. Pearson,” exclaimed the principal, extending his hand to each of them alternately. “We are so honored to have you both as our guests for the day. I trust that your drive from St. Mark went well.”
“Yes, very well, thank you,” replied the professor.
“We’re happy to be here,” put in Kay.
The principal, a tall immaculately dressed man of about forty years of age, launched immediately into the business at hand.
“We knew you’d want to get acquainted with our school family before the all-school convocation at 10:30. So with your permission, I shall personally guide you on a tour of our modest facility and introduce you to a few people as we go.”
“Thank you. We’d appreciate that.”
“Yes,” began the administrator as though reminiscing over a long and difficult struggle, “it took quite a while to get here, but now we can be rightfully proud of our little schoolhouse.”
With that, he set out with them from the library and led them on a tour of the entire school with the exception of the science wing which, he said, “you will be getting well acquainted with before the end of the afternoon.”
If they thought the library—with its window-walls, its poverty of shelf space, and its five exterior surfaces to try to heat in the winter—was the only extravagance in the new school, they were in for a rude shock. In the course of the tour they were ushered into the main auditorium (“for general use”), the music auditorium (“You’ll be speaking in here. The acoustics are better.”), and the smaller auxiliary auditorium (“to foster a more congenial atmosphere for smaller groups”). Next they visited a capacious vacant room which Mr. Pfister called the Band and Orchestra Practice Room. As they came through the door, a young man jerked his feet off the top of his desk, scattered out some papers, and snapped to attention in one smooth well-practiced motion. The next room down the hall was the choir room, a little smaller than its neighbor but equally empty. “Mr. Giles has only one choir at the present time, but he has offered to give private voice lessons for credit next semester,” their guide clarified.
From here they passed by the Home Economics Department, “furnished with the latest culinary equipment,” and entered the manual arts wing, darting in and out of the printing shop, the aviation warehouse, the auto mechanics garage, the sheet metal shop, the carpentry suite, and finally the large supply storage area.
Next they were directed through a complex of corridors (“English, history, social sciences, and language laboratories for French, German, and Spanish”) to the one remaining unexplored section. As they approached it, Mr. Pfister’s pace quickened, his back straightened up tall, and his chin rose. Turning down yet another corridor, they came to a large set of doors over which hung the sign “Women’s Locker Room and Gymnasium” (“We’d better not peek in there”). Some distance down the same corridor they came to still larger set of doors that boasted the sign “Main Gymnasium” (“for spectator sports”). The last set of doors was, of course, “Men’s Locker Room and Gymnasium” (“We promote the total person: body, mind, and spirit”).
But the climax was yet to come, the crown jewel yet to be displayed. Up to the third story they climbed. Around to another wing they followed the beaming principal where, to their surprise, he led them up a narrow spiral staircase in the center of the roof, much like the staircase leading to Steve’s turret office. At the top was a small door on which were lettered the words: “OBSERVATORY. No admittance without written permission from the Principal.”
“Here, my friends, is our crowning jewel, our tribute to science and the future of our planet, and indeed of our race! You have no idea what it cost me to get this gem written into our blueprints for the school.”
He unlocked the door with some effort and shoved it open.
“The second largest telescope in the Upper Midwest!”
Steve and Kay looked at the telescope and the room in which it was housed.
What a magnificent piece of equipment for a high school, thought he.
How dusty! thought she.
The principal casually sat down on one of the stainless-steel tables as though this crowded little room were truly home to him. In so doing, he raised a cloud of dust that made Kay sneeze. Aware of the splendid disuse of this room which the thick coating of dust betrayed, the principal hastened to add, “Ah, of course, we haven’t yet got an astronomy instructor worthy of this grand equipment. But Mr. Walthers, our man in printing, has been dabbling with astronomy for years and gets up here now and then to play around with it. I hesitate to let anyone else in here. You can imagine what this gem cost our good taxpayers,” he said, stroking its eyepiece affectionately.
“Indeed!”
Mr. Pfister glanced at his watch. “Ah! Twenty minutes until the convocation. We’ll head down to my offices where you can collect your thoughts for a few minutes.” He gestured toward the door and the Pearsons descended the stairwell. Carefully he locked his jewel up tightly—to protect the community’s investment in the future.
Back down on the ground floor they passed through the lobby and took the corridor to the right which led to the administration offices. The main area of these offices housed a dozen or more clerical workers and secretaries, and beyond it along the same corridor were the private offices of the principal and the assistant principal.
“Here we are at my modest seat of operations,” announced Mr. Pfister, swinging open the door to his plush office. A funereal hush came over him as he drew them over the thick carpet into his inner sanctum.
“I would have settled for something less, but the people insisted…,” offered the principal, noticing not without delight the Pearsons’ shock at the opulence and conspicuous extravagance of the room. Twenty feet wide and thirty-five feet long, its ceiling was overlaid with an exotic design of acoustical fresco and its walls subdued by full-length heavy gold-flecked draperies. The four bookshelves sported only neat symmetrical sets, mostly limited editions. The large oak desk was obviously made to order by a true craftsman, as were the other furnishings. When the principal deemed that his guests had sufficiently soak
ed up the evidence of the esteem in which he was held, he ushered them into a smaller adjacent office of comparable extravagance.
“This is our guest office, your home for the day. That door opens directly into a corridor leading back to the main corridor. And this door opens into your own private washroom. Let’s see—we have twelve minutes. Shall I tap on your door in seven minutes? I’ll take you through my private passageway to the music auditorium.”
“That will be fine,” returned Kay politely. “Thank you.”
The principal smiled and shut the door. Steve sank into the nearest chair. Kay followed him into the one next to it. He had long since lost touch with the tour.
“Well, my dear Dr. Pearson. Do you want me to turn on the television set in the corner, switch on some piped-in mood music, or start up the stereophonic set over there?”
“Just hold my hand. I think I am getting old.”
IX
Although Dr. Pearson’s address that morning managed to hold the interest of the audience, Reedville High School never saw the visionary scientist who routinely fired up the imaginations of his students back at Christiania. He was simply not in a very visionary frame of mind when 10:30 rolled around. Nevertheless, the contents of the notes he had prepared proved exotic enough on their own to keep his listeners attentive, while his reputation and scholarly mien lent them a distinctive aura of authority. Around the core theme of the gradual elimination of the evils that plague human life on earth, he arranged and related many of the scientific advances then on the horizon, most of which have become commonplace since then but which were almost unthinkable at the time. Each advance, he declared, if properly harnessed and responsibly utilized, could address a real human need and could release for better things the time and energy presently tied up in trying to cope with that need. He then proceeded to use the emerging satellite technologies to illustrate this point. Already there were on the drawing boards satellites to provide instant communications worldwide through telephone and other means, to beam television and radio signals in every direction, to gather and collate weather data instantly for the whole world, to explore outer and inner space unencumbered by the earth’s atmosphere and to track accurately military maneuvers anywhere on the face of the globe with extremely high resolution cameras. His description of his own projects involving both fusion and synthesis, with their many anticipated benefits, kept the audience spellbound. Some peaceful uses of atomic energy were right around the corner, he informed them, whereas other promising uses would take time to develop with adequate safeguards. He challenged the students to join in the crusade to rid the human race of the shameful elements of its sorry past and to become part of a universal positive energy which, under God, would be dedicated to “turning swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks,” in the highly suggestive words of Sacred Scripture. This, he concluded, was not only the best hope for the future of mankind on planet Earth: it was its only hope.
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