Creating A Ripple

Out of the welter of contracts, and awards, Standard Stock Catalogs, and Pratt and Whitney engine spares . . . out of the chaos of birthday parties at ten o'clock, baseball games at three, telephone calls in the alcove with wet wash slapping one in the face, lusty singing through the streets of Cambridge to the continued amazement of the elder citizenry, not to speak of grubby, small boys who want to know if we are WACS . . . out of the pleasant overtones of cigarettes over coffee after dinner, gala evenings in town with the inevitable mad rush to beat the 7.45 bell back to Briggs, the frantic borrowing, lending, and devouring of the hall's incredible stock of Pocket Book murder mysteries ("Death in the Dawn" challenges in popularity the latest Memo change) . . . out of all this, dank, drab and insidious, emanates a contagious disease . . . known only to Naval personnel in training . . . billet fever! One may detect the more obvious symptoms at first glance . . .

. . . small groups, clinging together for support during blows, from which come murmurs . . . "Potato, Idaho . . . Sunstroke, Texas . . . Are there Indians in Wyoming? . . . It goes down to 20 below in Minnesota . . . Yes and they have tornadoes in Kansas! . . . There isn't a man left between the Alleghenies and the Rockies anyway."

A sudden vast interest in maps, in geography, in the home states of all one's friends, especially California (one realizes the all-pervasive influence of said state's Chamber of Commerce when 94 out of 103 asked for it as a first choice . . . the high susceptibility to each crumb of Scuttlebutt, treasured cherished, passed tenderly from hand to hand . . . "I heard Mr. Ashler say, with may own ears" . . . "I know, but Mr. Hill told us." . . .