Pete Dean, leader of our forces, had prided himself on being a commander-in-chief second only to General Pershing and a few other notables not worth mentioning. To have an insignificant mortal, wearing the green skull cap insignia of the Freshman ranks, consistently outwit and thwart his best laid plans for keeping the first year fellows in their places, was only to add fuel to the day when the Sophs should drive through to a high and mighty revenge.
“He can’t get away with it every time,” Pete insisted, the morning after we saw the Freshman colors of green and white rippling in the breeze from the reed-like flag-staff on top of the Lillard High belfry.
“But who’s going up and get those colors down?” I asked, not caring to volunteer for reasons plainly obvious!
“If anyone’ll tell me how that human fly climbed up there and tied those colors to the top of that flag pole without breaking his neck and dislocating both ears ... I’ll get it down!” exploded Pete.
But he knew blamed well that nobody could tell him! And anyhow, when Principal Sawyer spotted those colors he posted a notice on the bulletin board saying that he’d expel anyone who tried to take ’em down.
Obadiah Erasmus Tucker got hot under the collar, too. The idea of any lower classman cutting such capers! As president of the Student Government League he felt called upon to declare himself against all stunts and hazing. Obadiah was a Senior now and he’d never gotten over the humiliation of having to wear a green cap his Freshman year.
I wish you could have seen Obadiah. He was the personification of dignity plus. No wonder they elected him president of the United Classes of Lillard. He never did anything improper. He was a polished example of law and order. And how he loved to enforce regulations! Obadiah looked upon “his truly” as the exalted head of a school court for the promotion of inter-class peace. The Seniors held the balance of power in this funny government which Obadiah had helped to form, because the Seniors were supposed to be the most experienced. The other classes were represented according to their place in the scheme of things. Real important decisions had to have the endorsement of the faculty but we got a lot of fun out of thinking that we governed ourselves anyway.
I guess a person has to have dignity to be looked up to ... or else they must be tall. Obadiah was both. He was the tallest fellow in school besides holding his head the highest. Eddie Summers was the only one who could come near him for altitude. Obadiah looked like a piece of pulled taffy. Everything about him was long. He had a long face, a long nose, a long neck, long arms and longer legs. Maybe that’s why it was so hard for him to unbend ... lots of longitude but hardly any latitude. His face was so long that he couldn’t laugh with it. Nothing ever seemed to strike him funny. I’ll bet you couldn’t have tickled him if you’d teased the bottoms of his feet with a straw. And if you laughed at anything yourself he acted like you’d violated half the constitution which called for a respectful attitude at all times.
Honest, Obadiah had us thinking he was a Swiss cheese and we didn’t amount to anything but the holes. He was very important and superior. I guess now it was because he wore double-lensed, shell-rimmed glasses and his hair always stuck up straight on his head. The glasses used to use his nose as a toboggan slide and he was always taking a long finger and shoving them back up where they belonged. He had just about as much trouble with his pants. Every time he sat down he pulled up about a yard of the legs so’s he wouldn’t stretch the creases out of the knees.
But I started to tell you about the Freshies and the sweet little job I was picked to handle. You can imagine how good the Freshies felt at getting their colors up to stay. And you won’t have to twist your imagination out of shape to figure what an eyesore those colors were to us, being the first thing we saw coming to school and the last on going home, as the belfry could be seen several blocks away!