This I would never manage-I had eighty-seven cents at that moment -but it had caused me to think about it steadily. Of the boys in our school half admitted that they wanted to space, half pretended not to care, knowing how feeble the chances were-plus a handful of creeps who wouldn’t leave Earth for any reason. But we talked about it and some of us were determined to go. I didn’t break into a rash until American Express and Thos. Cook & Son announced tourist excursions.
I saw their ads in National Geographic while waiting to have my teeth cleaned. After that I never was the same.
The idea that any rich man could simply lay cash on the line and go was more than I could stand. I just had to go. I would never be able to pay for it-or, at least, that was so far in the future there was no use thinking about it. So what could I do to be sent?
You see stories about boys, poor-but-honest, who go to the top because they’re smarter than anyone in the county, maybe the state. But they’re not talking about me. I was in the top quarter of my graduating class but they do not give scholarships to M.I.T. for that-not from Centerville High. I am stating a fact; our high school isn’t very good. It’s great to go to-we’re league champions in basketball and our square-dance team is state runner-up and we have a swell sock hop every Wednesday. Lots of school spirit.
But not much studying.
The emphasis is on what our principal, Mr. Hanley, calls “preparation for life” rather than on trigonometry. Maybe it does prepare you for life; it certainly doesn’t prepare you for CalTech.
I didn’t find this out myself. Sophomore year I brought home a questionnaire cooked up by our group project in “Family Living” in social studies. One question read: “How is your family council organized?”
At dinner I said, “Dad, how is our family council organized?”
Mother said, “Don’t disturb your father, dear.”
Dad said, “Eh? Let me see that.”
He read it, then told me to fetch my textbooks. I had not brought them home, so he sent me to school to get them. Fortunately the building was open-rehearsals for the Fall Blow-Out. Dad rarely gave orders but when he did he expected results.
I had a swell course that semester-social study, commercial arithmetic, applied English (the class had picked “slogan writing” which was fun), handicrafts (we were building sets for the Blow-Out), and gym-which was basketball practice for me; I wasn’t tall enough for first team but a reliable substitute gets his varsity letter his senior year. All in all, I was doing well in school and knew it.
Dad read all my textbooks that night; he is a fast reader. In social study I reported that our family was an informal democracy; it got by-the class was arguing whether the chairmanship of a council should rotate or be elective, and whether a grandparent living in the home was eligible. We decided that a grandparent was a member but should not be chairman, then we formed committees to draw up a constitution for an ideal family organization, which we would present to our families as the project’s findings.
Dad was around school a good bit the next few days, which worried me -when parents get overactive they are always up to something.
The following Saturday evening Dad called me into his study. He had a stack of textbooks on his desk and a chart of Centerville High School’s curriculum, from American Folk Dancing to Life Sciences. Marked on it was my course, not only for that semester but for junior and senior years the way my faculty advisor and I had planned it.
Dad stared at me like a gentle grasshopper and said mildly, “Kip, do you intend to go to college?”
“Huh? Why, certainly, Dad!”
“With what?”
I hesitated. I knew it cost money. While there had been times when dollar bills spilled out of the basket onto the floor, usually it wouldn’t take long to count what was in it. “Uh, maybe I’ll get a scholarship. Or I could work my way.”