One Thing Leads to Another...
The Turbulent Youth of Dan McCall
by
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Brightside was a Catholic orphanage. . . Now I was completely on my own, in the midst of other homeless boys, corralled by stern-faced nuns who looked formidable in head-to-foot black costumes with only starched white cowls around their faces. . .
How can an orphanage control a large number of boys 24 hours a day without regimentation? Perhaps there is a way. Brightside hadn’t found it. . . We were lined up in the dormitory in the morning after we were dressed and marched to breakfast in the dining hall, then marched to classrooms. At noon we were marched back to the dining hall for lunch, then back to classrooms, and finally marched to the playing fields and allowed to break ranks to run about free or play ball. Assembled again in our ranks, we were marched to a washroom, then marched to dinner with clean hands. Allowed to read or play checkers or whatever for an hour or so, and we were then marched to the dormitory.
A dreary routine, but merely humdrum. Saturday there was no schooling. It was bath day. This was a ridiculous procedure. One class was ushered into the bathhouse. We entered an undressing room where we removed our shirts, draped them around our waists, removed our pants and underwear, put on bath trunks, then took our shirts and put them with the other clothes in a laundry bin. We would get our next week’s clothes after we bathed. We did not get into bathtubs. In the adjoining room was a cement floor with a raised ridge about a foot or two high around an area of several square yards that was filled with water. We all got in and sat down in this common pool and washed ourselves “by the numbers.” The nun in charge would command, “Wash your faces.” We soaped our washcloths and scrubbed our faces. “Wash your necks.” We did so. “Wash your ears.” Hair, chests, arms, armpits, legs. Then each boy scrubbed the back of his “buddy” (the one he walked beside in the line of march). Then we were told to wash inside our trunks, and, “Don’t play with yourselves.”
Washing completed, we were commanded to stand up. Towels were handed out to each of us. By the numbers we dried our faces, hair, chests, arms, backs, legs and then wrapped the towel around our waists, removed our trunks, and stepped out of the pool. In a dressing room, clean underwear was handed out and when it was put on, the towel was removed on command, not before. The rest of dressing was more haphazard.
Class dismissed. Next class entered on the heels of the preceding class and progressed via the three function rooms before being released cleansed and reclothed. We were then all free to go to the playground.
One Saturday after I had been there for a while, I walked across the playground, which was quite wide, and as the weather was cold, not very many boys were outside, most preferring to be in the game room inside. No one apparently noticed that I kept on walking. Soon in the shelter of some trees I began to run. In short order I was out of the grounds of the orphanage,
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About the Book
When his father’s bankruptcy lands him, at age 9, in an orphanage in Springfield, Massachusetts, Dan McCall escapes to live in a hotel room with his dad, and of necessity to learn independence. He follows his natural curiosity about people into ceaseless adventures – exploring ethnically-mixed city streets, hitchhiking New England roads, hiking the Appalachian Trail, and enrolling in Depression-era summer military programs. Along the way, Dan discovers and nurtures his own deep love of learning; he haunts public libraries, engages teachers and school friends, and rebels against his Irish Catholic heritage. Lacking money for college, he rides the rails across country to harvest crops and falls in with a series of down-and-outers scrambling to make a living. He flirts with communism and socialism, and stays briefly on a farm with intellectuals creating their own institution of learning. Dan is ultimately caught up in World War II, where his experience as a hospital orderly places him in the South Pacific as a medic slated to go ashore in battle. This often-rollicking and always fascinating coming-of-age story, which ends as Dan enters college, is in the category of adventures too amazing to be fiction.
About the Author
Daniel F. McCall was awarded his B.A. in history by Boston University in 1948, then went on to earn the Ph.D. in anthropology at Columbia University in 1956. He began teaching at Boston University in January of 1954 and retired from the African Studies Center there in 1983. Over the years he traveled, did research, and taught in many areas of the world, and is widely recognized for his expertise on West Africa, most particularly Ghana. He is perhaps best known for the classic Africa in Time Perspective.