Warday

One evening a funny-looking jet flew over the school and we thought, oh God, the Russians. We lost the war and now the Russians have come.

All night there were planes landing at the airport, which is only a couple of miles away from us here in Baldwin. We hadn’t seen a plane in six months. Boy, was this place in an uproar! I’ll never forget, we were planning to surrender the town. I went out there with half the rest of the people and we saw all these planes on the runway with target insignia on the side. Most of us were on foot, a few in trucks and cars. We were coming up the road to the terminal when a man in a white uniform came out with a bullhorn and called out, “We are a Royal Air Force Relief Support Unit. We are friends.”

The RAF! I just sat down in the road and cried. They came over and checked us for radiation. When they found we were clean, they sent up a cheer.

They were all in white uniforms. They’d come up from Atlanta.

They gave us kippers. They had zillions of kippers that had been salted in Ireland and packed for export in plastic bags, so they were totally uncontaminated. We filled our pockets with kippers and went home.

One of the most vivid memories I have is of those kippers. They were so good. I’d never had one before in my life.

You know, another thing I’d like to tell the rest of the world about the people of Baldwin is this: we work hard, but we also have lots of fun. We have a rugby team and a baseball team and a Gilbert and Sullivan troupe and a little theater and reading clubs and a thriving 4-H. Pittsburgh has the only satellite uplink in the Midwest, and we have been allocated short-wave receivers so we get the BBC North American service. As a teacher, the one special allocation I get is books and computer programs.

Which, by the way, reminds me of my Prince Andrew story, because it has to do with books. How long have I been talking? I’m getting hoarse! But this is really fun. I haven’t actually sat down and talked like this before. Not ever, just talked and talked.

Now I have to tell you I was really impressed with Prince Andrew last June. We were so excited. I remember Martha Dorris—she’s our Relief General Officer—got the RAF to give us shoe polish so we could get ourselves fit to see the Prince. Shoe polish!

We hadn’t polished a shoe for at least two years. But we shined ’em up for the Prince. The English were hilarious about the visit.

Or, as they put it in their bulletins, The Visit. Polished shoes. Best clothes. He came to inspect a farm, the school, the Relief operation. He was here for two hours, which was considered a great honor. Most places he only stayed half an hour.

I must say that before he came I was not all that overawed.

This is America, after all. We don’t have a king. But I was totally won over by what happened at the school. We had all been out to watch the royal plane arrive, of course. The most beautiful white airplane. To see that huge Airbus and the royal entourage, you would not have known that there had ever been a war. Here is the world turned on its ear, and the royals are going on just as always, like saying it’s all going to be all right. Civilization isn’t over.

The Visit was a totally self-contained production. First a band came marching down the stairs. Then they rolled out their own red carpet. Then a bunch of officers came along and saluted while some lords and generals came down. Then came the High Commissioner of the North American Relief. He had flown in from Toronto. He was dressed in a blue uniform, and did he ever look imposing! Then the Prince. He was in white. In my imagination I had visualized him as a very big man. But he was normal size. He moved quickly. They played “God Save the King.” We sang “America the Beautiful.” Then “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Then he met the local Relief officials. Martha was very poised, but she was shaking like a leaf.

We teachers and the kids rushed back to the school. We had been selected for inspection, I think, mainly because we’re so close to the airport. I thought it would be a very formal thing. But he spent half an hour sitting on a chair in the auditorium, asking questions. What is the most important thing you are learning here? Tell me about the curriculum. Is it useful? Is it interesting?

He asked how well heated the school was. He asked after the health of the children. He went to the infirmary and read the records and inspected the medicine chest. He issued a Royal Warrant for tablet ampicillin, and we have never been without it since.

After he left, an equerry arrived with two suitcases of books.

They were a gift from the Prince. He asked that we read one poem each day from The Oxford Book of American Poetry, and suggested that we form a Shakespeare society, which we have done.