During one of her stays at the Palmer House—she loved the place and personally decorated one of the bedrooms—my mother turned to me in the kitchen and said, “How did you become so neat? Keeping things so clean and orderly? You weren’t like that as a boy.”
“Three years of military school, Mom,” I said.
If the practice of a good habit produces virtue, and if tidiness is a good habit, then when it comes to housekeeping I am man of high virtue. Between the ages of twelve and twenty I spent thirty-six months in military academies. Eighteen months—two academic years—found me at the now-defunct Staunton Military Academy in Virginia. For another eighteen months I served as a cadet at the United States Military Academy in New York.
Though both schools drilled their students in the importance of order and tidiness, Staunton was the more demanding taskmaster when it came to housekeeping. Let me explain.
“Three years of military school, Mom,” I said.
If the practice of a good habit produces virtue, and if tidiness is a good habit, then when it comes to housekeeping I am man of high virtue. Between the ages of twelve and twenty I spent thirty-six months in military academies. Eighteen months—two academic years—found me at the now-defunct Staunton Military Academy in Virginia. For another eighteen months I served as a cadet at the United States Military Academy in New York.
Though both schools drilled their students in the importance of order and tidiness, Staunton was the more demanding taskmaster when it came to housekeeping. Let me explain.
Staunton at that time was an ROTC affiliate, and every spring gentlemen from the United States Army visited the campus, watching us drill and parade, and inspecting our barracks. To prepare for this inspection, we cadets polished our shoes until you could see your reflection in the polished leather. We washed the walls of our room with Spic and Span, dusted the presses holding our clothes, swept and waxed the floor, and stood like tin soldiers as the inspectors ran a white glove across the top of a press or peeked under a bed looking for stray lint.
Now, one of my classmates, the scion of a wealthy Arizona family—I once rode in his father’s Rolls Royce—returned from Christmas break with a brand-new floor buffer. He had asked for this machine as his holiday gift. This was unusual, I’d say, but even more incredible were the reactions of the rest of us. There we were, twelve and thirteen year old boys, gathered around this machine, oohing and ahhhhing at this amazing treasure. This was the point of fanaticism and general lunacy we’d reached.
And Gordon set to work. Every week for a couple of months he waxed his floor and then buffed it with that machine. He put a base on that floor the same way you put a base of polish on a pair of shoes. He waxed and buffed, buffed and waxed, and soon he had that floor so polished that when you stood in his room—socks only, please—you felt as if you were standing on a mirror.
Then the inspectors arrived. They went through the barracks relatively fast, spending no more than a few seconds in each room. We were confined to our rooms until they departed, and since there were only twenty rooms or so in the junior school barracks, we were sure their departure would be swift. But a quarter hour passed, then thirty minutes, and still they hadn’t left.
Gordon’s room had captured them. There he and his two roommates stood, glittering from head to toe with fresh haircuts, military tucks, and shining shoes, with everything in that room—every shirt, every piece of underwear, every book—aligned as if Mr. Clean himself had come and done his magic. But what really stopped the inspectors was the floor. They just couldn’t get over that floor. I’m sure some of them took pictures, and at an assembly the next day they declared Gordon’s room the best they’d seen.
I still smile whenever I think of that buffer and a thirteen-year-old boy who transformed his floor into a mirror.
To use time wisely was another virtue inculcated by both academies. Here West Point would take first place. Beast Barracks is the name of the training time for new cadets before the academic year commences, and the name fits like the gloves we wore on parade. For six days a week, from reveille to taps, we lived on a schedule. We ran everywhere. We rolled shirtless in dew-covered grass as we did calisthenics, sat at attention at every meal, shot rifles, practiced fighting with bayonets, maneuvered through obstacle courses, and memorized maddening and generally useless information, all the while being screamed at and badgered by upperclassmen.
Even when classes began, the schedule was tight. We were hazed through the year, required to play sports after classes, and spent our evenings studying. At that time the Academy taught math to is plebes six days a week, so that by the time I transferred to Guilford College the dean looked at my record and declared me a minor in math.
Because of that strict schedule—and perhaps because of my personality—I also found when I arrived at Guilford that I could complete my studies and homework easily by late afternoon. So I took a job in the college kitchen washing dishes. I don’t know if Type-A personalities are born or made, but I’m pretty sure I belong to that club.
Here’s one final thought on gifts from those years in military school. Staunton’s motto was “Truth, Honor, Duty.” West Point’s motto was and is “Duty, Honor, Country.”
We don’t hear much anymore about duty and honor. Think about it. When was the last time you or a friend discussed preserving your honor? When did you last hear someone speak of “doing his duty?” Those two old words still mean something to us, but mostly they go unused, collecting dust in the back closet.
Even so, when I look at that sword on the wall, I remember the boy who carried it and who tried to live up to ideals like duty and honor. Over the half century that separates the boy from the man, I have frequently failed to measure up to those standards he had set for himself. Too often have I played the hypocrite, or kept silent when I should have spoken out, or done those things I ought not to have done. But I remember the boy and I know that his beliefs were real and worthy of my veneration.
Like the bright sword sheathed in its dented, rusting scabbard, that boy and his beliefs live on in me.
Now, one of my classmates, the scion of a wealthy Arizona family—I once rode in his father’s Rolls Royce—returned from Christmas break with a brand-new floor buffer. He had asked for this machine as his holiday gift. This was unusual, I’d say, but even more incredible were the reactions of the rest of us. There we were, twelve and thirteen year old boys, gathered around this machine, oohing and ahhhhing at this amazing treasure. This was the point of fanaticism and general lunacy we’d reached.
And Gordon set to work. Every week for a couple of months he waxed his floor and then buffed it with that machine. He put a base on that floor the same way you put a base of polish on a pair of shoes. He waxed and buffed, buffed and waxed, and soon he had that floor so polished that when you stood in his room—socks only, please—you felt as if you were standing on a mirror.
Then the inspectors arrived. They went through the barracks relatively fast, spending no more than a few seconds in each room. We were confined to our rooms until they departed, and since there were only twenty rooms or so in the junior school barracks, we were sure their departure would be swift. But a quarter hour passed, then thirty minutes, and still they hadn’t left.
Gordon’s room had captured them. There he and his two roommates stood, glittering from head to toe with fresh haircuts, military tucks, and shining shoes, with everything in that room—every shirt, every piece of underwear, every book—aligned as if Mr. Clean himself had come and done his magic. But what really stopped the inspectors was the floor. They just couldn’t get over that floor. I’m sure some of them took pictures, and at an assembly the next day they declared Gordon’s room the best they’d seen.
I still smile whenever I think of that buffer and a thirteen-year-old boy who transformed his floor into a mirror.
To use time wisely was another virtue inculcated by both academies. Here West Point would take first place. Beast Barracks is the name of the training time for new cadets before the academic year commences, and the name fits like the gloves we wore on parade. For six days a week, from reveille to taps, we lived on a schedule. We ran everywhere. We rolled shirtless in dew-covered grass as we did calisthenics, sat at attention at every meal, shot rifles, practiced fighting with bayonets, maneuvered through obstacle courses, and memorized maddening and generally useless information, all the while being screamed at and badgered by upperclassmen.
Even when classes began, the schedule was tight. We were hazed through the year, required to play sports after classes, and spent our evenings studying. At that time the Academy taught math to is plebes six days a week, so that by the time I transferred to Guilford College the dean looked at my record and declared me a minor in math.
Because of that strict schedule—and perhaps because of my personality—I also found when I arrived at Guilford that I could complete my studies and homework easily by late afternoon. So I took a job in the college kitchen washing dishes. I don’t know if Type-A personalities are born or made, but I’m pretty sure I belong to that club.
Here’s one final thought on gifts from those years in military school. Staunton’s motto was “Truth, Honor, Duty.” West Point’s motto was and is “Duty, Honor, Country.”
We don’t hear much anymore about duty and honor. Think about it. When was the last time you or a friend discussed preserving your honor? When did you last hear someone speak of “doing his duty?” Those two old words still mean something to us, but mostly they go unused, collecting dust in the back closet.
Even so, when I look at that sword on the wall, I remember the boy who carried it and who tried to live up to ideals like duty and honor. Over the half century that separates the boy from the man, I have frequently failed to measure up to those standards he had set for himself. Too often have I played the hypocrite, or kept silent when I should have spoken out, or done those things I ought not to have done. But I remember the boy and I know that his beliefs were real and worthy of my veneration.
Like the bright sword sheathed in its dented, rusting scabbard, that boy and his beliefs live on in me.
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