Finally, as if getting tired of the game, the tormentors stopped the car and ushered me out.  They warned me not to remove the blindfold until I had counted to 100, out loud -- some punishment being threatened if I didn't comply.  I guess I started the counting, but hearing the car drive off, I yanked off the blindfold.
                 I found myself on a dirt road/track where it ended at the edge of the here quite wide Menominee River.  This was also at the edge of Riverside Cemetery.  I imagine the whole point of the blindfolded drive was to leave me in a scary place from which I would have trouble finding my way home.  But I knew the general area from other summertime wanderings with my neighborhood, not so elite, chums, and I quite easily walked the mile and a half to home.
                 I vowed to myself to never get involved with that sort of occultist ritual organization again.  And my parents didn't push it.
           
A Partner in Deviance
            In the very first year at MHS, I began a friendship with Bob (a.k.a. Groucho or Flato) which grew until we graduated together in l940.  He and I seemed to have common interests not shared by any others. He was awesomely smart and two years older, but unassertive and shyly cautious not to offend anyone,  In spite of that he earned the nicknames of "Groucho," no doubt because of his dry witticisms, and "Flato," I suspect a derivative of Plato.  We sharpened our wits off one another with great delight, but neither seemed to dominate.  There was probably some unacknowledged competition in this, at least on my part. 
            Bob was not very physically prepossessing or athletic although he got into some games, usually at my urging.  I now realize that, being his superior on this one field, I, too much, unwholesomely, enjoyed rubbing it in by indirection. 
            In our last year at MHS, Bob was chosen the "class brain" and I the "class wit."  The last was more because of clownishness, anything for a laugh as one classmate acutely, sarcastically observed; just begging for attention, rather than purveying genuine wit. But I did get inveigled (a Bob word) by one teacher in my first years at MHS into appearing in a few "assembly" plays -- later I managed to avoid such discomfiture.  Groucho, another classmate, Jim, and I did work up a comic skit on one occasion, and it went over big at a school wide ‘gymkhana’ event.   I sometimes helped Bob deliver on his newspaper route, where one day one of a pack of pursuing dogs bit into my bike-peddling leg.  For the months before our skit while we were working on it and for some months after that we formed a friendly threesome.  But overtime Jim faded out while Bob and I stayed very close.  One day in class I had an almost Christ-like event.  In our geometry
class Mr. Taylor was very persnickety and like a Pecksniffian Puritan minister in both looks and manner.  His silent stare of  disapproval after identifying  a misbehavior was rather frightening since it implied imaginable penalties of the sort only the most derelict student would be unmoved by.  On the day of issue, Jim had not brought the required geometry compass.   He had recently had some other reprimanded behavior and felt doomed if he were to be caught so soon in another delinquency.  He asked to borrow my compass, and with a thought on the order of “What would Jesus do?” I nobly passed it to him even though I was not a Taylor favorite and had reason to fear enforced embarrassment or dismissal from the class. because of just such malpractice as forgetting to bring my compass.
            Bob and I saw one another a few times after we returned from the war in l946.  I went to his wedding in Milwaukee while I was at the U. of Chicago, and visited him later when I was in New York and he was at Yale.  There he introduced me to a quite intriguing wench whom I let slip through my fingers after easy physical contact in swim wear at a park with Bob and his new wife.  Helen and I phoned one another and exchanged a few notes suggesting mutual interest over several weeks.  I had already met the “Goddess” (described later) but didn’t know where that would go.  With notice Helen came to visit me in my new digs in Hasting-on-Hudson one weekend day that autumn. For some reason I was uneasy, anxious and I avoided any possibility of intimacy though Helen was quite toothsome and warm in manner. I later regretted that mood since I believe that intimacy was possible and probably would have been welcomed.  Helen kindly helped me do some
shopping and furnishing until late evening.  My coldness must have put her off because that ended any further interest from her, and the Goddess soon absorbed my attention.   Bob and I also lost touch around this time when he got a teaching post at a West Coast University.  There even may have been a sense on both sides that he and I had used up our relationship.  After a few letters, nothing more until a late in life exchange of letters.
            With girls at MHS I was a total loss.  I was somehow afraid of them.  They seemed so much more in control, more mature; not surprising because of our relative ages in my classes; but it operated even with girls of my own age in lower grades.  I never came close to proposing a date, and avoided the Proms, feeling very outside that world.  I couldn’t possibly have danced with a girl.   When playing in a mixed softball game, I didn’t know where I dared to tag one of the girls for an out.  To indicate my callowness, I didn't discover that I could masturbate until I was 16 and out of school.
            A Halloween night escapade that won’t slip memory occurred in my sophomore year.  A gang of about 20 boys of my class set about playing not so innocent tricks, such as pulling off the steps to wooden porches, lifting manhole covers askew, knocking down rickety fences and even some more harmless annoyances.  A police car spotted us and the cops gave chase on foot, down an alley, but they hadn’t a chance.  I was keeping up with the fleeing gang when a clever deviation occurred to me:  I would hide in the dark, narrow space between two barns in the alley route, and let the cops run by. 
            But one of the puffing cops shined his light into my niche.  I was hauled to the station and sternly debriefed as to the members of our gang.  Over awed, I shamefully gave them some names, but, only of the gang members of ’good family’ in town, omitting the guys who seemed familiar to the police or had less social clout.  Next day we got a scolding from the high school principal, and nothing else came of it, but I felt, and still feel shame over that ’squealing.
              Just as Bob and I had interests outside our classmates' world, one of the MHS social studies teachers, Ferdie Davis, seemed unique and out of place in Menominee.  He was from Chicago, and a University of Chicago grad.  He was part of a larger (Jewish) world, and what later would be called  "prematurely anti-fascist."  He made sure that we were aware of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, even if some of us didn't understand his learned asides.  Bob and I loved his classes, and Davis seemed to enjoy putting tricky questions to each of us.  We both got his top grades.  Bob got his all over; over all, mine were more inconsistent.
              Davis must have first put the U of C in my head.  When I left for the army at the beginning of l943, I somewhat foolishly, dramatically -- 'we who are about to die' -- sent him a packet of all of my ill-assorted scribblings on 'life.'
            After high school I had a variety of odd jobs to fill the time until I went to war, at just turned 19.  During the after graduation year of l940-41, while taking an extra class or two, I worked part time in a New Deal project, the National Youth Administration,.  During that winter I was assigned to the out-door city ice-rink, which at times in summer served as the “circus grounds,” now flooded.  So in coldest winter I took my turn with the hose, slowly walking around the rink while administering a fine spray of water onto the frozen surface.  The spray and the leaky hose usually got my heavy mittens and jacket cuff covered with freezing water.  Between outings, we sprayers got spells inside a drafty warming shack, crowding around a make-shift oil drum stove.            
            Next summer with two other Menominee boys, I hitch-hiked to Detroit and got a job in a car upholstery plant.  After several weeks I fell out with my fellow travelers and got lonely, so I took the Greyhound home. 
            After a very brief tour, as inspector-packer, at a local glove factory, another pal, Ralph, and I hitched rides to Chicago to watch a Bears-Packers game, and then decided to stay and get jobs.  Mine was in the mailroom and Ralph's in another department of a large insurance company on racy Rush Street, where we would gawk at the posters at the sub-sidewalk entrances of the unapproachably worldly joints.  We did manage to save up for and occasionally crowd into the more respectable Panther Room of the Hotel Sherman's College Inn on Randolph Street.  We could afford the cover charge and that was all.  They featured big swing bands and that kind of Jazz was our passion, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Les Brown.  In those pre-war days the big bands also appeared regularly on stage at the top movie houses; aaaaaaahh: Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Artie Shaw and all that jazz.
            While listening to another football game on a Sunday, December 7, the news of Pearl Harbor blasted through.  Ralph and I began to speculate on being drafted into military service. Friend Ralph got homesick first, but I lasted a few months longer before returning to Menominee.
            While in Chicago, I heard of open tryouts at the Cubs' Wrigley Field and went on the appointed day.   Perhaps overly excited, I didn't get signed up, but the setting was fascinating.  Back home I got jobs as a bricklayer's helper, summer maintenance then chemist's assistant at a beet sugar refinery, and as a helper in the packing and shipping department of an electrical fan and motors factory.  And I played baseball and softball on local teams.
            Ralph, who was older, got drafted a month before me.  Then it was my turn in January l943.  Along with sending my oeuvre to Ferdie Davis, I thought about becoming a conscientious objector. Chapter 3 . . .:  The Not So Good Soldier   
              Finding a draft notice in my mail near the end of l942, I applied for conscientious objector (CO), non-combat status.  I thought it was a justified war, but I felt unable to kill anyone, both on my understanding of Christian principle and my instinctive squeamishness.  To my surprise and relief, the local draft board, without any hesitation, accepted my petition and classified me as requested.  But, as soon as I got a uniform at Fort Sheridan, outside Chicago, I was sent into infantry training at Camp Roberts, CA. The hastily mobilized WW II Army was notorious for such SNAFU-ed assignments.
            When I complained that I should not be there, a surreal period of several weeks ensued.  Barely literate old army training cadre tried to argue and persuade me against my position.  That was hardly intellectually challenging, but my complaint was not effective.
            One night, very early at Camp Roberts, I experienced my first clear anxiety attack. In the closely packed barracks, I couldn't bear to lie in my cot unable to sleep.  I got up and went to the barracks in-house latrine where I paced for several hours, trying to get some control over my near panic.  The Officer-of-the-Day on his rounds found me there and assumed that I was homesick, which was in fact the farthest thing from my mind.  Somehow I got over that spell.  I even became something of an example of training hardiness, in physical exercise, sports, even crawling under alleged machine gun fire through barbed wire, etc. 
            One small satisfaction came when a camp baseball team was being formed.  I was allowed to try out and surprisingly found myself, by remarkable coincidence, competing with the young man who had been the 1st baseman for the Menominee town team where I had been discouraged from wanting to compete for that position.  At camp, now, I was chosen to play 1st, and he was invited to try another position.  But only a few practices took place before I was transferred.
            Old World War One Enfield rifles were racked near our Camp Roberts barracks entrance.  There were not quite enough weapons for every last trainee in the barracks.  Since everyone else was eager to grab a gun, it was easy for me to hang back and fall out on the parade ground empty handed with out attracting attention, at least at first.  One of the arguments put against my CO’s position was that while I started out on training marches without a rifle, I would come back with two or three draped over my shoulders.  Hence I could not be allergic to weapons of destruction after all.  Of course, this had happened because some of my fellow marchers, new soldiers, were less fit and after a time, when I offered to carry their weapons, they gladly offered them up.
            After some weeks I learned that a dozen other COs, scattered all over the huge camp, were getting their cases acted upon through a Chaplain, and so I joined the effort.  Most of the others were hardly my type, being members of officially recognized ‘objector’ churches: Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists, etc.  After a few more weeks, during which I was assigned to “kitchen police” (KP) duty in the mess hall and kitchen, our group of twelve was sent off to a medical basic training unit at another huge camp outside Abilene, Texas.
            One quondam little episode there, strangely, regularly still turns up in my mind.  On an ordinary evening, while in the Camp Post Exchange a young rather voluptuous girl serving behind the counter whisked her way from one end to the other.  Feeling ‘chancey, I said loudly, “Shake it but don’t break it!”-- a rather hep (hip’s predecessor) phrase of the day.  The girl’s rather bovine face instantly showed a mix of embarrassment and anger.  That somehow got to me.  When that image occurs to me today, I get a powerful wish to have said, ”I’m sorry,” almost as if I could go back and do it.
             After that camp it was off for eight weeks of training in a Surgical Technician course near Fort Bliss outside El Paso.  At first all went well enough since I could play a lot of softball and get recognized as one the best players. On one afternoon we played a team down near the huge airfield.  We faced a remarkable pitcher, a national level competitor with great speed and control, even behind his back.  I got our only hit and that was questionable or “scratch.”  We faced his team again on our home field.  Again I got the only “scratch” hit.  This phenomenon, Wally Luna, later joined my 279th Station Hospital unit in training near Brownwood .  Come autumn, in the Texas Central Region Tournament our 279th won that championship, where Wally pitched four consecutive winning nights, the last a no hitter, and then he went into the hospital and never rejoined our unit.  I got a hit in every game.
            But my last week or two at Surgical Tech. training were miserable for me.  I was assigned to work at a ward in the nearby Beaumont General Hospital. There I found that I experienced unbearable stress and anxiety, even clumsiness, in handling bodies in great distress and pain   Although I made this known, I was told that I had to go through this training until its fixed term was over. 
Juarez 
  Just across the border is Ciudad Juarez, the preferred attraction for GIs in our training group bent on a cheap, wild “respite” on the eight Saturday nights of passes from our dusty camp above Fort Bliss. One man in our 16 soldier barracks rates a remembrance, ‘Big Bill,’ much older and looking even older and well traveled without ever having left Texas.  Bill hit Juarez every Saturday. After one or two of his late returns, reputedly with the aid of the Military Police in cooperation with their counterparts on the Mexican side, profoundly boozed, loud and bent on waking everyone of  us already in our sacks, his subsequent Saturday/Sunday night  arrivals were anticipated for their excitement.  After the first few Saturdays, some mischievous mates played tricks with his simple cot, ‘short-sheeting’ it or fixing his collapsible metal cot so that it would indeed collapse with his weight.  Some of my barracks mates found entertaining his roars, his tipsy struggles to right his cot, and even his efforts to collapse a few other cots.  Since my sack as well down the row from Bill’s he never vented his wrath at my distance although I wasn’t sure of sanctuary.
              by paying them a US quarter.     I was as drunk as I would ever get and readily took my seat at the kit.  We played Deep in the Heart of Texas, a top hit of the day.  Built into the chorus at regular intervals was a break for four uniform hands claps.  At each such occasion I attempted a brief drum solo.  All went well for several choruses and the band as ready to stop, but I continued and the band picked back up.  Only when I got tired did we stop. 
I rejoined my friends and we somehow made our way b back to c amp in time to experience Bill’s return of the prodigal.

Chapter . . . .   The 279th Stateside
 I found myself a few weeks later, in mid l943, with the start up stage of the 279th Station Hospital Company at Camp Bowie, Texas.  Except for the officers and non-commissioned officers, we were almost all recent inductees l8 or l9 years old, and were assigned in groups of l6 to very simple hutments in this alkaline scrub country near the town of Brownwood.  We each had a wired-spring cot, arranged head to foot with about two feet between.
            On the first Saturday in Bowie we were to have our company's first general inspection, including sleeping quarters.  That Friday evening our hut's non-resident cadre man, one Corporal Chocol, directed us to prepare the Saturday-morning display: tightly made-up beds with gear arranged on top of the blanket, and all that.
         With my tendency to question and even rebel against authority, I considered some of this stupid, especially since we would be sleeping in our beds before the morning inspection.  Besides we were jam-packed in the small hut, getting in one another's way, and there weren't enough mops for every one to be mopping at once -- or so I reasoned.
         Other huts seemed not to be preparing at the same time as ours.  A few lads were out in the open tossing around a softball, and I joined them.  Two or three times Corporal Chocol or his hut-resident deputy came to tell me to return to the hut and get to work.  I said I would as soon as there was room, and I continued practicing pitching.  Finally, Corporal Chocol "ordered" me inside.   (Chocol strutted about as very “G.I.” and was fussy to the point that he had the creases in his army pants sewn in.)  But I pointedly had a few more casual tosses as he was leaving before complying.  Anyhow, it was getting dark. 
         Shortly after I was inside at work on my layout of gear, Chocol came in with Sergeant Fusco to whom Chocol was almost tearfully describing the extremity of my disobedience of his orders.  Fusco expanded on the horridness of my offense.  I unabashedly replied that this whole episode was stupid and un-American, and that this way of running an army was probably no better than that of the enemy Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese, which I wouldn't mind observing to see if my suspicions were true.  (Ah, the madness of youth)! 
           This seemed to really upset my superiors, who by then felt that this called for serious treatment by their superiors.  I was escorted to the slightly more spacious quarters of the senior Non-Commissioned Officers (Non-Coms) where the Company's First Sergeant arrived some time thereafter.  Sergeant Muratore just seemed puzzled at first, but then asked why I had behaved so "crazy," disobeying orders.  I paraphrased my previous criticism of the U.S. military as I found it, which sent him into paroxysms of Sicilian profanity, and he roughly ordered me to stop tapping my foot to the rhythm of a Glenn Miller tune on the hut's low-volume radio.  
         His puzzlement, now mixed with anger, seemed to have returned with greater force, and Muratore excitedly said that my rebellious behavior required the senior-most attention.  I was taken to the Company office, which had collected the sweaty heat of the July day, and where a few other Non-Coms loafed or drifted in, apparently having heard word of some bizarre uprising.  The Officer of the Day was sent for and soon appeared. 
         Second Lieutenant Reeder was clean-cut, just short of handsome, a recent graduate of a Texas university.  Throughout this meeting he affected a calm, open-minded curiosity about this strange young man who was so loquacious in answering the questions from all sides.  Reeder at times had to hold back the attempts at a grilling style of questioning by Muratore and other Non-Coms.  Muratore repeatedly demanded that I address the Lieutenant as "Sir" although Reeder said that wasn't necessary just now.  I said it impeded my "speeching" -- more madness of youth.
          I was at my most expansive and articulate and must have been enjoying the consternation and puzzlement I produced. This went on for some time.  Reeder's questions had given me the opening to expound on my whole philosophy of life, such as it was.  In the end he said the equivalent of "how interesting!" and asked that this odd fellow be assigned to his platoon when these were being organized. 
         After Lieutenant Reeder left, Muratore and the other Non-Coms were puzzled about what to do with me, since Reeder had left no further instructions.  They certainly felt that I should not be let loose on the 279th world, so they finally decided that I should be put under guard and taken for the night to the guard-house with the off-shift guards who were taking their turns from the Company roster.  As I was getting ready to go to bed, there appeared another sergeant who was known to be a person of great piety.  In the mellowest of cautionary words, he acknowledged my ‘pacifism’ but quoted the Bible on “rendering unto Caesar . . . “ As a believer in Christian ethics, I was briefly impressed.    
         The young guards, about my age, seemed startled to find this new phenomenon, a "prisoner," among them, and one whom they were ordered to hold incommunicado and watch.  Those near my guard-house cot ogled me from theirs, as if afraid to sleep.  I was still enjoying the ridiculous celebrity, and fell asleep before most of them. 
         The next morning I was taken, under guard, to get a fresh dress uniform from my own hut.  Then I was presented to the Company commander, First Lieutenant Thebault, in his office, which was on the other side of the plywood wall next to the area where I had been interrogated the night before.  Who knows what Thebault had been told, but this 30-ish officer came on glowering, with the Manual of Courts Martial strategically placed on his desk for my observation, opened at the section headed "Offenses Punishable by Death."  For the first time I was becoming intimidated -- and maybe I hadn't slept that well.  All I remember about this encounter was its ominous tone, and I was glad this time when it was over. I was returned to my original hut and told that judgment would be rendered soon. 
         A few days later at the first morning formation of the Company, the First Sergeant somewhat dramatically read out an order of "Company Punishment" and reduction from the rank of Private First Class for now Private Edgell for failing to obey orders.  This seemed to be getting strong emphasis as the first punishment for wrong-doing in the new Company, to make a forceful point, to dissuade any other potential miscreants.  Now I was a Company-wide celebrity.  Who knows what the rumors were, but I seemed to become something of an abused brother-man to many.
         My first punishment was to clean the stones from the drill field after its use at the end of that day.  After drilling, all of us were ordered to shovel and rake the stones into small piles all over the big field.  Then the rest were allowed to drift off, since this was the end of the formal duty day.  A truck was brought up and I was directed to shovel the piles up onto its open bed.  A few of the soldiers had lingered behind and began to help me.  When this was observed by a Non-Com, they were ordered off and I was thereafter closely watched to ensure that I worked alone.  But even the truck driver wanted to be pal-y. The work wasn't too onerous since I was in good shape and glad to show it off.  It continued until I was excused when darkness fell.
         The following day at the Company formation after lunch a huge rock was to be seen lying before us on the Company ground.  Sergeant Muratore read out a notice that, as part of my Company punishment, I was to break up this large stone with a sledge hammer and the small pieces were to be placed as bordering for the paths between the hutments.  It seemed expected that this task would fill out the rest of the week of my sentence. 
         But again, I meant to show them, by busting up this monolith as soon as possible.  I now realize that by a certain kind of common reasoning I might have more wisely concluded that I would be better off just dragging out the task for the full term.  But I was young, marching to my own rhythm section.
           I made a game of it, as practice for my baseball swing, and I attacked the monster with fulsome zeal.  I had not asked for gloves and none were offered.  At the end of the first day I had a few blisters.  On the second day, Muratore hauled me before the early Company formation and told me to hold out my hands, presumably as further discouragement to possible transgressors.  Then he, with mock generosity, said that I would be allowed bandages and to wear gloves from now till my week ended.  But I had already demolished almost half of the huge rock, and after the next day it was completely shattered.
          Since the location of the stone made my exertions clearly visible to several passersby during the course of each day, my mythical stature among the rank and file grew.  Many of the company wanted, some furtively, to be friendly.  My fame could only go down from this point as the real me was gradually exposed. 
            On the fourth day of my sentence, I was called out before the Company formation and embraced, almost joyously by Muratore!  Imagine my (and probably the others') surprise!  He then complemented me on how diligently I had worked at my penance, even how proud the Company should be about this example.  His whole performance was way over the top!  I was to be forgiven the balance of my sentence and accepted back into the warm bosom of the Company, and I was urged to apply my rumored softball skills on the Company team being formed.
          After a minimum of thought, it occurred to me that Muratore's superiors had taken in the wide, sympathetic response of the young soldiers to my treatment and enhanced image, and that our leaders now meant to show that they vibrated on the same humane wavelength. 
         Relieved of formal disgrace, I was assigned to work in the Company Supply Unit under Lieutenant Reeder, who showed no particular interest in me in my more hum-drum role for the more than a year that we were still together in the 279th.  But at this job I met another soldier, under Reeder, who became my best friend for the rest of my army days, and for some time thereafter. It was the somewhat older Sam Cherner with whom some further adventures were later shared.
            In full autumn we played in a touch football league.  As the team punter I collected two painful wrists when a burly opposing lineman broke through and hit my extended foot while I was still in the air after actually getting off the punt.  This sent me on a backward semi- cartwheel, trying to break my fall with my hands.  The next day I went on ‘sick call’ over the pain in both wrists.  The immigrant Jewish Dr. Captain who spoke barely understandable English simply had me taped up and sent back to duty in the Supply Room.  The pain for the left wrist got progressively worse when I tried to use it for one week before I again went on ‘sick call.’  This time it was x-rayed.  A few days later I was told that the X-ray was nor clear enough and so it had to be repeated, and this time was found to be broken at the navicular.  This got me a cast and the usual gang’s signatures or obscenities.  It also got me gratefully excused from going on
a chilly field bivouac of a week by the rest of the Company. But, perhaps because of the delay, the wrist was not set right and it has a strange look to this day.  But somehow its frequent pain was never too much for me.   For years I taped it before sports use.
             One of my best friends during these training days was Bob Meyers, a street smart kid from Chicago who also played on the football team.  While the rule of play was “touch,” the line play and blocking was fierce, In one such effort of mine, the blockee laid his knees into my ribs to such effect that t was painful to breath deeply for several days.  Meyers was a lineman and was built like a fireplug.  In late autumn he and I had taken overnight passes and the bus to Dallas.  We just sort of wandered around, went into a few bars and got a little drunk.  But we had made no provision for overnight quarters.  At about midnight this realization struck us with no fall back plan.  Our first improvisation was to get on a streetcar and hopes to ride all night.  But after an hour or two the car went out of service and we were back on the street, now in a residential neighborhood.  Seeing no salvation, we found an empty lot and wrapping ourselves
with newspapers ineffectively against the nighttime chill, we tried to sleep.  But we had awakened some neighborhood dogs and their barking seemed endless.   I remember shivering till dawn when after some wandering we somehow found the bus back to camp, appreciating its security and a Sunday off as never before.  
            I still had the cast on when we boarded the train for the unknown destiny of Camp Miles Standish between Boston and Providence.  It was a slow three day journey.  When I got my turn at the lower bunk in the ancient Pullman, I hardly slept for looking out the window for wonders.  Our smoky train took us through the streets with the fancy iron work of New Orleans and endless miles of featureless swampland after that.  When one opened the car windows, bits of soot from the puffing engine wafted in when the wind was right.  
            At the end of the train ride there was plenty of snow and it was very cold in the standard double tiered bunks barrack.  We tried to keep the large cast iron coke fed stoves going and tolerated the smoke and particles that floated up.  After carefully protecting my cast for weeks during ablutions. I finally let it soak and tore it off in the shower, even though was supposed to last for another week or two.    Somehow Christmas passed with hardly a notice in those last days before shipping out.  Sam and I did spend a day each in Boston and Providence.