I've always blamed my inability to balance my checkbook on Pearl Harbor.
Well, sort of. I can't balance a checkbook because I got a D in Economics I -- and that is because Pearl Harbor got bombed.
In 1941, I was a sophomore living in Branner. My friends and I were known as Stanford roughs, mostly because all we could afford were T-shirts and blue jeans, and not very many of these. We were working our way through school by washing dishes, hashing, sorting books in the library. We spent a good deal of our time debating whether or not the United States should intervene in Europe.
I was washing silverware at the Union on that Sunday in December when we learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Huddled around the radio in the lobby, all of us, including one Japanese-American hasher, listened in stunned silence. The news didn't immediately change our lives. I went back to washing, albeit in a kind of daze. Then it occurred to me that no matter what was happening in the Pacific, finals were a few days away, and I ought to study. I ought particularly to study Econ I.
The course was taught by Professor Elmer Fagan, a man who talked faster and drew more graphs than anyone I ever met. I didn't understand it, but I intended to pass it, and I suppose this helped me maintain some sense of reality that week.
A kind of panic had set in on campus. Rumors abounded: The Japanese had landed at Santa Cruz; troops were moving to the coast to repel invaders. We went to classes, but numbly.
It wasn't easy to focus on the test, but I had to try. On Monday night, I got out my books, repaired to my desk -- and the lights went out. Someone, thinking an air raid was about to happen, had blacked out the campus. In the darkness, confusion ensued. Men were milling up and down the halls, wisecracking, cursing or both. Everyone was looking for flashlights. No one, of course, was studying. The same thing happened the next night, and then it was too late. Exam time -- and I got a D.
Somehow, this didn't prevent me from getting into Econ II, in which I got a C. A modest improvement -- but I still cannot balance a checkbook.
-- Carl F. Heintze, '47
