"The boy is thirteen and he has plenty of time to decide what he's going to do with himself. Is that clear?"
"Yes dear."
"Good." She would say as she finished setting the table. "Dinner is ready. Wash your hands boys." And the subject was closed.
But throughout his four years at the best damn high school in the country, Horace found ample opportunity to pressure Scott about how it was the right thing to follow in the family tradition, and work at the docks, like the three generations before him.
The issue was never settled during Scott's rebellious teenage years. The War, demonstrating on the White House lawn, getting gassed at George Washington, writing for the New York Free Press, Scott was even arrested once or twice or three times for peaceful civil disobedience. Scott Mason was seeing the world in a new way. He was rapidly growing up, as did much of the class of 1970.
Scott's grades weren't good enough for scholorships, but adequate to be accepted at several reasonable schools.
"I already paid for his education," screamed Horace upon hearing that Scott chose City College to keep costs down. He would live at home. "He broke every damn thing I ever bought, radios, TV's, washers. He can go to work like a man."
With his mother's blessing and understanding, Scott moved out of the house and in with three roommates who also attended City College, where all New Yorkers can get a free education. Scott played very hard, studied very little and let his left of center politics guide his social life. His engineering professors remarked that he was underutilizing his God-given talents and that he spent more time protesting and objecting that paying attention. It was an unpredictable piece of luck that Scott Mason would never have to make a living as an engineer. He would be able to remain the itinerate tinkerer; designing and building the most inane creations that regularly had little purpose beyond satisfying technical creativity.
"Can we go with it?" Scott asked City Editor Douglas McQuire and John Higgins, the City Times' staff attorney whose job it was to answer just such questions. McQuire and Mason had been asked to join Higgins and publisher Anne Manchester to review the paper's position on running Mason's story. Scott was being lawyered, the relatively impersonal cross examination by a so-called friendly in-house attorney. It was the single biggest pain in the ass of Scott's job, and since he had a knack for finding sensitive sub- jects, he was lawyered fairly frequently. Not that it made him feel any less like being called to the principal's office every time.
Scott's boyish enthusiasm for his work, and his youthful appear- ance allowed some to underestimate his ability. He looked much younger than his years, measuring a slender 6 foot tall and shy of 160 pounds. His longish thin sandy hair and a timeless all about Beach Boy face made him a good catch on his better days- he was back in circulation at almost 40. The round wire rimmed glasses he donned for an extreme case of myopia were a visible stylized reminder of his early rebel days, conveying a sophisti- cated air of radicalism. Basically clean cut, he preferred shav- ing every two or three, or occasionally four days. He blamed his poor shaving habits on his transparent and sensitive skin 'just like Dick Nixon's'.