John F. Kennedy Page 4

  “If you won’t come down, there’s no reason to tell you,” she replied. “But Margaret baked a chocolate pie with whipped cream.”

  Whoosh! Jack slid down the pole so fast he ripped his knickers. Holding the seat of his pants, he rushed toward the kitchen.

  “Jack!” Kick called after him. “What about the flagpole sitting record?”

  “What about it?” He laughed over his shoulder. “There’s not a flagpole sitter in the country—not even Alvin ‘Shipwreck’ Kelly—who wouldn’t come down off his perch to taste one of Margaret’s pies!”

  Later that evening, Jack was twirling the dials of the radio trying to get Graham McNamee’s sportscast. Loud squawking and a shrill whistling seemed to be the only entertainment.

  “I used to be able to work the radio better when we had that old loudspeaker set,” Jack said impatiently. “At least you could put earphones on with that outfit!”

  “Progress, Jack, progress!” Joe Jr. said without looking up from his papers.

  “It isn’t progress if it doesn’t work,” Jack retorted and turned back to the dials.

  Squeak! Squawk! Once he caught the unmistakable tones of H. V. Kaltenborn. Squawk! Amos and Andy tuned in faintly, then faded away. Squeak! The sportscast seemed to be completely off the air. Squawk!

  “Stop fiddling with that radio, Jack,” Joe spoke sharply. “Can’t you see I’m trying to do my homework?”

  “I’m not fiddling with the radio. I’m trying to tune in the sports. And you’re supposed to do your homework in the library.” Jack’s tone was as sharp as his brother’s.

  “Watch it!” Joe doubled up his fist and took a menacing step toward his young brother. “Better not use that bossy tone!”

  “Look who’s talking!” Jack didn’t budge.

  Joe Jr. took another threatening step. “You’re just asking for trouble, Jack.”

  The younger boy held his ground. “I’m not afraid of trouble, Joe. You know that!”

  “Want to fight?” Joe asked belligerently.

  “No, I don’t want to fight. I’d rather get along with people than fight them, and that goes for you too, Joe. But if there’s a reason to fight, I’ll fight,” Jack said.

  Jack’s attitude seemed to pacify Joe. “To tell the truth, Jack, I really don’t want to fight either. I was just cross, I guess. Everybody in the house is cross today. Have you noticed? Even Margaret!”

  “I can’t imagine Margaret being cross,” Jack said. “It doesn’t spoil her cooking, that’s for sure. She made her best chocolate pie today. What’s bothering Margaret?”

  “She’s all upset over the election results,” Joe explained. “She voted for Al Smith.”

  “So did Dad. But I guess a lot of Democrats must have voted for Hoover,” Jack said thoughtfully. “I wonder why, Joe?”

  “Everybody has his own answer to that one,” Joe replied. “But I guess radio really had a lot to do with Mr. Hoover winning the election. Not because he sounded so good, but because Al Smith sounded so bad! Dad says it’s a shame Al Smith wasn’t judged on his record. He’s been a good Governor for New York, one of the best the state has had.”

  “How come you’re so interested in the election?” Jack asked curiously.

  “How could anybody with two ears and two eyes help being interested in politics in this family?” Joe answered with a laugh.

  “You’re so right. The first thing I can remember as a little boy is Grandpa Fitzgerald campaigning for governor of Massachusetts. I can still hear him singing ‘Sweet Adeline’! He doffed his hat to all the ladies, kissed all the babies, and slapped the men on the back.”

  “Too bad Grandpa didn’t win,” Joe said. “It would be fun to have a governor in the family.”

  “Cheer up, Joe. If Dad’s dreams come true, we’ll all be related to a president.”

  “What do you mean by that, Jack?”

  “You may think Dad is fooling when he says you are going to be president someday. He’s dead serious, Joe.”

  “Oh, I suppose every father would like to have his son be president. I might lose, Jack, if I came up against the same prejudice that Al Smith did in this last election. I think this religious thing can be bad.”

  “By the time you are grown up, Joe, there probably won’t be this feeling about religion,” Jack said thoughtfully.

  “Do you suppose there will ever be a Roman Catholic in the White House?” Joe asked.

  “Already has been,” Jack said. “And the roof didn’t fall in, either.”

  “What are you talking about? You know there has never been a Catholic president.”

  “No, but there was a president who had a Roman Catholic wife. President Tyler.”

  Joe was astonished. “You’re a walking encyclopedia, Jack. Where do you learn it all?”

  “Simple. I read books.” Jack looked smug.

  “Okay. So you’re a bookworm,” Joe said.

  “Take that back!” This time, Jack was the one who doubled up his fists.

  “Okay. I take it back.” But Joe chuckled.

  “And what’s so funny?” Jack asked warily.

  “I still think you are!”

  “Are what?” Jack was cautious.

  “A bookworm!”

  As he left the room, Joe dodged the pillow Jack threw at him.

  If Jack Kennedy was a bookworm, he knew he was in good company. The men of history he most liked to read about had been bookworms—Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, the two Roosevelts.

  He found the life of Teddy Roosevelt especially interesting. As a child, Teddy had been frail and plagued by ill health just as Jack himself had always been.

  Just as Teddy Roosevelt’s father tried to build up his son’s weak body by installing a gymnasium, so Joseph P. Kennedy arranged for athletic instruction so that his children would be in top physical form. Swimming, sailing, horseback riding, golf, tennis, all sports known to boys and girls were played by the Kennedys.

  “So I’m a bookworm,” Jack thought to himself with a grin. “Maybe it’s the early bookworm that gets the bird! Now there’s a pun for Grandpa. I can hear him chortle now!”

  TENDERFOOT AT WEST POINT

  HIGH ABOVE THE Hudson, the ancient ramparts of West Point are always an impressive sight. One John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Tenderfoot Scout in Bronxville’s Troop Number Two, looked about him in delighted awe. For a boy who loved history, West Point was Utopia!

  Here on these heights, George Washington had supervised the construction of Fort Putnam. The ruins of the Revolutionary fortifications were still standing.

  Jack Kennedy stood on the site of the ancient fortress and tried to imagine what it might have been like to be a soldier in the Continental Army. He could almost hear the clank of the great iron chain as it was laid across the Hudson River from West Point to Constitution Island. Forged by hand, the huge iron links were meant to keep the British warships from sailing up the Hudson, and going north to Fort Ticonderoga and Champlain.

  In his mind’s eye, Jack could see Benedict Arnold plotting to surrender West Point to the British. How, he wondered, could General Arnold have been such a hero at Saratoga, then a traitor at West Point?

  Here on these same fortifications, the United States Military Academy had been started after the Revolution. Ever since 1802, the officers and gentlemen of West Point had served their country in peace and in war.

  Jack counted off the wars on his fingers—the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I. He remembered all the unsung heroes of the Indian Wars in the West, of the 7th Cavalry, of the troops that made the frontier safe for the pioneers.

  The men of West Point would never have to fight in another war, Jack thought, for now America was at peace with the world. But, the boy said to himself, every patriotic American ought to visit this historic landmark.

  The Cadet motto, “Duty, Honor, Country,” reminded Jack of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
The covenant of the knighthood was even a little like the Boy Scout Code. Perhaps the noble King Arthur had influenced Cadets and Scouts alike!

  The sunset parade had been a thrilling sight. The stirring music of the Army Band made every boy wish he was marching with the corps of Cadets. As the Long Gray Line passed in review, the colors dipped while the Stars and Stripes flew high in the sky.

  Watching the Cadets march off the parade ground in perfect precision, Jack realized that on these same grounds George Washington had commanded, Robert E. Lee had marched, Ulysses S. Grant had drilled, George Custer had ridden, and “Black Jack” Pershing had studied, taught, and fought. History was part of the very atmosphere, as far as the eye could see, as near as the hand could reach.

  The excitement of the parade over, Jack decided to explore the West Point that had not been part of the official Scout tour. His tentmate, Chunky, joined the “Off Limits” safari.

  The two boys sauntered off, past the Library with its odd-looking redbrick turrets. Directly in front of them was the huge riding hall. Before they could sneak inside, a crusty old non-com of the 1802nd Regiment directed them back to their tents.

  The boys waited until the sergeant turned his back. They ran stealthily into the shadows by the side of Cullum Hall.

  “That’s Doubleday Field over there in front of us,” Chunky whispered. “It’s named for General Abner Doubleday, father of baseball.”

  “I can take or leave baseball. But football! That’s something else. Biff Jones is coaching the Army team. Wish we could see him instead of all the Cadets,” Jack said.

  “I really like the Cadets, Jack.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the Cadets, but there’s everything right about Biff Jones. Of course,” Jack agreed, “one Cadet I would like to meet is the captain of Army’s football team. Red Cagle plays a great game and he even writes about football, too.”

  “Brawn and brains both?”

  “You bet,” Jack answered. “There’s an article by Red Cagle in this month’s Boys’ Life.”

  “You mean it?” Chunky asked.

  Jack nodded. “It’s called ‘Playing the Backfield.’ By Christian K. Cagle. That’s his real name. Sometimes they call him Chris, sometimes Red. If you want to read the article, it’s on page seven of the November issue of Boys’ Life.”

  “What a memory you’ve got, Jack!”

  “My memory is great for what I want to remember, but I’m a real mess when it comes to the things my father thinks I ought to know.”

  “Think we should get back? They may miss us,” Chunky said.

  “I suppose so,” Jack agreed reluctantly. “But as a Tenderfoot who has to do all the dirty work around camp, I’m not in a hurry!”

  The two boys ambled across to Fort Clinton, looking up the Hudson and enjoying the magnificent view from Trophy Point. Jack could see boats going up and down the river, port and starboard lights gleaming in the twilight. There were several tugs and tankers on the water, and once a foreign freighter gave a toot of its horn as it headed upriver for Albany.

  “What a sight it must have been when sailing ships traveled up the Hudson! And just think, Fulton’s steamboat used to pass right by this point.” Jack was alive to the beauty and meaning of the past, although no boy could possibly be a more active part of the present.

  Around the campfire that night, Jack was strangely silent. The flickering orange light sent eerie shadows racing across the canvas tents. The popping and snapping of the wood added a staccato note to the music of the Scouts’ gay songfest. They sang rollicking tunes of the present and the past, hiking songs, and Scout ditties.

  As the fire died down to embers that glowed against the dark of the night, the scoutmaster led the troop in the Scout Oath.

  Jack joined with the other boys in repeating the creed. Once again, he found himself thinking that Boy Scouts were a sort of modern-day version of King Arthur’s noble knights.

  “Then all the knights arose, and each knight held up before him the cross of the hilt of his sword, and each knight spake as King Arthur—” Jack remembered the Covenant of the Round Table even as he heard himself saying, “On my honor, I will do my best—”

  And all the boys’ voices rose as one, “—to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout law; to help other people at all times to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”

  SAILING AGAINST THE STORM

  THE OFFSHORE BREEZE blew gently on the surfless waters, stirring the dunegrass and bending the feathery gray tufts of the beach rushes. This world of the sand dunes held a special kind of enchantment for young Jack Kennedy, a changeless yet always changing background for the Cape Cod he loved.

  Motionless though they seemed to be, the dunes were always moving, restless as the sea itself. Nothing grew there but dusty miller, beach pea, bayberry, and poverty grass. The occasional tree was stunted and toughened by the winds and the salt air. Even the scrub pine gave up the struggle with the sands and the sea. Yet there was a beauty in the pale shadows of the shifting sands, in the flowing shapes sculptured by the wind.

  In a sheltered cove beyond the dunes, Jack and his sister Kathleen were digging clams, their only companion a grave-faced gull.

  Digging clams, Jack Kennedy could tell you, was serious business. Clams—Cape Cod clams, at least—lived exactly nine inches below the surface of the sand and they moved with the speed of lightning. Each time Jack located his target and poked his shovel straight down, sure of success, the clam had shot six feet to the left and was laughing heartily up his shell!

  After what seemed eternity, Jack and Kick had acquired a bucket of clams. They had also dug up a cart full of old shoes and discarded bottle caps.

  “Is there any legal limit to the number of bottle caps you can dig up?” Jack asked in a tone of utter disgust.

  Kick laughed. “I don’t mind the bottle caps. They don’t spit at you the way clams do!”

  “Let’s call a halt to this clammy business and go sailing,” Jack suggested. “Join me?”

  “Where are you bound?” she asked.

  “Nowhere special. Just out for a little bit of salt air.” He slipped his bare feet into an ancient pair of sneakers.

  “That’s forbidden, Jack, and you know it. No one in this family goes sailing without telling where he’s bound. Suppose a squall comes up? If you’re caught in it, nobody will know where to start looking for you.”

  “You sound just like Miss Cahill, and I’m too old to have a governess. Remember I’m going away to school in another week. You’ll miss me, Kick. Better go sailing with me while you can. The two of us can handle any old squall on Nantucket Sound.” Jack knocked on a piece of driftwood, smiling at Kick as he did so.

  “I’ll go if you’ll name the spot where we’ll be headed,” Kick insisted stubbornly.

  “Okay, you win. And you’re right of course. If we don’t go too far, we’ll be back in time to see the new Harold Lloyd movie. It’s his first talking film. Welcome Danger. Ought to be funny. Where do you want to sail?”

  “You name it, Jack, as long as we tell somebody here at the house where we’ll be.”

  “If we took the boat over to Osterville, I could stop a minute and talk with Captain Manley. Dad says if I go to Canterbury and get decent marks all through the school year, he just might ask the Crosbys to build me a sailboat—a Wianno!”

  Jack wasn’t at all anxious to go away to boarding school. He loved the close family life, the give and take of the Kennedy clan. He would miss the togetherness of the large, happy family. But, anxious or not, Jack was entered at Canterbury School for the fall term and would leave for Connecticut and the New Milford campus in another week.

  Later that afternoon, Jack had a man-to-boy talk with H. Manley Crosby, the Captain Manley of Wianno fame.

  “You brought that boat into harbor like a real sailor, Jack,” Captain Manley said, “almost like a native!”

  “We ought to be call
ed natives by now, hadn’t we?” Jack asked the elderly gentleman.

  “Impossible!” Captain Manley said.

  “But why not, sir? We’ve been coming to Hyannis every summer since I can remember.”

  “Well,” and Captain Manley looked seaward as if in search of some kind way to explain this obvious truth, “it’s this way—”

  He leaned down on the wharf and picked up a kitten from the litter nestled there asleep in the warm afternoon sun. “If this mother cat jumped on your stove and had these kittens in the oven, you wouldn’t call them biscuits, would you?”

  The boy doubled up with laughter. “Wish my Grandfather could have heard that one, Captain Manley. You explained and then some. I wish you could explain to my dad why I ought to have a Wianno to sail next summer!”

  “I could try,” Captain Manley said, “but the Wianno explains herself. Whether your dad wants a family day sailer or a powerful racing boat, this craft fills the bill. Nantucket Sound can be windy and treacherous. The Wianno stands up in these rough waters.”

  “I figure she can take me any place I dare to go,” Jack said. “The keel class doesn’t stand much of a chance on the Sound.”

  “No,” Captain Manley agreed. “These shoal waters take a shallow draft.”

  “You designed the Wianno, didn’t you, sir?”

  “Yes, Jack. I suppose that’s why I’m so proud of her. There have been Crosby boats in these waters since 1850, but the first Wianno Senior raced in the summer of 1914, a few years before you were born. Your father will be interested to know that in all these years, a Wianno has never capsized.”

  “When you build my first Wianno,” Jack said, “I’m going to call it Victura. That means something about winning and I like to win.”

  Kick called up from the boat, “What’s keeping you, Jack?”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Jack said. “Kathleen’s impatient to be on our way.”

  “You youngsters don’t want to get too far out in the Sound this late in the afternoon. Those clouds overhead might mean trouble.”