The Docent hated spring break. That was when high schools everywhere sent their students to DC to see the famous sights. The kids, of course, get bored with the history. So, they wander off to create their own amusement ... leaving people at places like the Smithsonian to clean up the mess.

The current disruption centered on a gaggle of sixteen-year-olds, playing grab-ass while making fun of the exhibits. This was the Smithsonian’s “Americans at War” section, which was why the juvenile horseplay was especially offensive. So, the Docent rose from his comfortable chair and wandered over to settle their immature little asses down.

The current object of teen derision was, admittedly, one of the oddest exhibits in the “Price of Freedom” collection. It was a medium-sized stuffed dog on a plinth sitting in front of a mannequin wearing full World War One combat regalia - including a gas mask and a bayonet-tipped 1903 Springfield. The dog was what had provoked the scorn.

The dog had a brownish tan, slightly brindle coat, a white face with huge, expressive eyes, and an undershot jaw characteristic of bulldog breeds. It would probably have been called a Boston Bull if it were smaller. But this fine boy was bigger, bulkier, and more muscular. Maybe his daddy was a Staffordshire or a Boxer. At any rate ... the plague of high schoolers found the dog hilarious.

There were five members of the group - two girls and three boys. The Docent, who had come up behind them, said kindly, “Do you know why this dog is in the exhibit?”

The group turned and stared at him like sheep ... albeit a bit less intelligently. Then one of the boys said, “He’s there to guard the place, right?” The teens all laughed uproariously. The Docent sighed deeply and shook his head. There’s always one wiseass in the group.

The Docent continued, with a bland smile, “Do any of you know who Audie Murphy is?” Mr. Wiseass said confidently, “Sure ... he’s the voice of Donkey in Shrek.” One of the girls offered, “Wasn’t he in Beverly Hills Cop, too?” The Docent feared for the future of our great Nation.

The Docent said, patiently, “No, that’s EDDIE Murphy. Audie Murphy was the most highly decorated soldier in World War II.

The Wiseass said, “So, what’s your point!? The sign over there says World War I.”

The Docent said, “Like Audie Murphy in World War II. The dog in front of you ... This very dog, taxidermized and with its cremains in the base of the stand, was the most highly decorated animal in World War I. The canine equivalent of Alvin York.”

The sheep remained unmoved. Mr. Wiseass said, puzzled, “Didn’t Alvin York play for the Yankees, or something?”

The Docent took a deep breath. Then he tried again. He said, “After the war, this very same dog was the original mascot of the Georgetown Hoyas. The school’s logo, Jake the Bulldog, pays homage to him.”

The teens didn’t know what to make of that. They had led entitled lives in America’s suburbs. So, they had no point of reference to comprehend the ghastliness that this brave creature had endured alongside his humans. And frankly ... they could have cared less.

However, each of them recognized the Georgetown bulldog in his cap and collar. In fact, most had bought Georgetown t-shirts as souvenirs. Perhaps there was a story there? Hence, Mr. Wiseass, who was clearly the group leader, said, “So, tell us how this mutt ended up in the Smithsonian?”

Historians tell us that the first decade of the Twentieth Century was the Golden Age in America. I suppose you could view it that way, at least when you compare it to the fifty years that followed ... two World Wars and a Great Depression. But the period from 1900 to 1914 wasn’t so great for orphans.

I know that because I WAS one. First, my mother died, and then my old man got killed. Pop was a bar-fighting, whore fucking bully who was drunk more than he was sober. Yet he never missed a day of work at the Bridgeport Steel Mill. However, my dad’s asshole tendencies finally pushed a fellow too far, and the guy shot him dead.

That was on my eighth birthday. Sigh!! Happy birthday to me. Afterward, I was raised by my mom’s sister, who saw me as a “burden placed on her by a vengeful God.” The whole family was intensely religious ... church all day Sunday and a midweek refresher on Wednesday, just to prevent any backsliding. That was the situation I was brought up in.

My adoptive family gave me a home. So, they looked like the epitome of Christian charity. But there’s a difference between selfless devotion to a kid and the egocentric posturing of people trying to make outsiders think they’re good parents. I mean, seriously ... lots of people are raised by folks who can’t sacrifice their own self-interest to unconditionally love their child.

That applied especially to orphans, and I was one of them. I knew that my new parents didn’t give the slightest shit about me ... Hence, “love” was an abstraction. I never felt it, nor experienced it. Growing up without a single iota of kindness wasn’t easy. But it also made me tough and resilient. I learned early on that I could only rely on myself.

But I was an extra mouth to feed. So, I had to get a job. That was just the way it was. Hence, from the age of eight, I hawked the Bridgeport Standard on street corners ... day in and day out, no matter the weather. I was a newsie until I was old enough to get permanent work as a stock runner at the Singer factory, over on Barnum Avenue.

Yes, folks ... that’s the same P.T. Barnum who allegedly said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” He liked the Bridgeport area ... had four houses there. But that’s irrelevant to my story. The point was that I was a taller-than-average thirteen-year-old doing man’s work.

The pay was man’s pay, too, 10 bucks for a fifty-hour week. It meant that I had to quit school. But I would have done that anyhow. Seriously ... as far as I was concerned, being forced to sit behind a desk listening to Mrs. Hepplewhite drone on about the Missouri Compromise was cruel and unusual punishment.

Instead, I had the Bridgeport Public Library, stuffed with books about things I WAS interested in, like history and philosophy. Yep – you heard it right ... philosophy. The ideas that that Plato fella had about the immutable principles of life seemed a lot more reasonable than what my preacher was telling me about morality ... which sounded more like propaganda than religion.

I knew that there had to be a rational middle ground between having no faith and “believe it or else.” I mean really ... I knew the stuff that the guy up there in the pulpit spouted about my best friend Jimmy Muldoon going to Hell because he was an idolatrous Catholic was blatant hogwash. So, I devoured anything that would help me better understand my humble place in the cosmos.

Trying to reason out the substance of life was one important element of that period ... the other thing was sex. Working a ten-hour factory shift did wonders for my physique, and inevitably, one of my older cousins took my cherry. That was on my 18th birthday. Seriously ... the part about being fruitful and multiplying is written right there in the Bible. So, Christian kids are all as randy as bonobos.

Plus, there were lots of low-class slutty women hanging around the saloons that my factory friends slipped me into. A “precocious” eighteen-year-old was like catnip to a bored thirty-year-old housewife. Hence, getting regular trim was just a matter of asking nicely.

Speaking of that ... I finally got tired of giving three-quarters of my salary to my aunt’s family for the privilege of sleeping in an unheated attic room. So, Jimmy, Joe the Polak, and I rented a fisherman’s shack in the East End. The location was a twenty-minute stroll up to the plant by day and a fifteen-minute stumble back from the bars on the Pequannock riverfront at night ... ideal, don’t you think?

Those were pretty good years, even though a war was raging in Europe, which was good for me, because it created a new opportunity. Stockboy didn’t pay much. So, I got a job in early 1915 at the Remington factory, assembling Mosin-Nagant rifles for the Russian Empire. That move doubled my pay and let me move into a single room on Bell Street by the plant.

Then, in the spring of 1917, the government instituted the draft, and most of my generation got swept up by it. I was actually exempt because I worked in a munitions factory. But Nelly Armitage, a girl I was sweet on, convinced me that it was a man’s duty to join up. Then she reinforced the point by spreading her legs for every swinging dick dressed in olive drab.

Jettisoning the woman was no big deal. But she had made a valid point. Girls were drawn to men in uniforms. So, I enlisted in the Connecticut National Guard. Yeah - I know ... a lot of my thinking back then was done by my auxiliary brain. The outfit I joined was the 102nd Connecticut, which had roots dating back to the 1600s and King Philip’s War. How neat was that?

The National Guard was the best fit for my circumstance. I was twenty-four by then, not a kid. So, I wanted to stay close to home. The Guard was under the Governor’s control, which meant all your activities would be in-state rather than being shipped to God-knows-where ... of course, that shows you how much I understood about the geopolitical situation back then.

I was told to report to the Bridgeport armory, where I was introduced to the ancient military custom of “Hurry up and wait.” A week later, I was transported down to Camp Yale, which was located precisely where you might think ... in the shadow of the Yale Bowl in New Haven.

Camp Yale was pitched in the fields off Derby Avenue, right in the middle of that eminent institution’s athletic facilities. They were still pulling in the dispersed companies and billeting the new arrivals in a rapidly increasing array of wall tents. The tent I was assigned housed a squad of enlistees, five-a-side.

The fellows I shared quarters with were a mix of farmers, townies, and one Yalie. That guy was a decent sort, not the usual snot-nosed, boola-boola, preppy asshole. The two of us connected when he found me reading The Republic.

The regiment had been stood down while the brass sorted things out. So there I sat on an empty B-ration box in front of our tent, reading. It must have been a surprise to see a knuckle-dragging factory worker immersed in the analogy of the cave. Hence, I heard a refined voice ask, “I say, Old Boy, is that Plato?”

I looked up, and there was an elegant figure dressed in tailored olive drab, which, in and of itself, stood the man apart. Most of us looked like shapeless wool sacks. I thought he was an officer. So, I jumped to my feet and saluted. He laughed easily and said, “No need to do that. I’m one of your tentmates. Alexander Biddle at your service.”

My only thought was, “Why is a scion of old money sharing a tent with the likes of me?” I knew nothing about the knightly concept of noblesse oblige which was still embedded in the aristocracy of the time. To them, service was an unspoken requirement, and that meant enlistment in the military.

Why Alex wasn’t an officer was beyond me. Maybe he wanted the full lower-class experience, and the Army gave it to him. Nonetheless, I extended my hand and said, “J.R.” My given name was James Robert. I didn’t like either name, so I went by the initials.

We shook hands, and that simple act changed my life. Up until then, I had led the constrained life of a factory worker ... job, booze, and sex. I never thought about how limited my worldview was because the scope of my experience amounted to assembling and testing rifles for ten hours a day, then prowling dingy bars, looking to score with loose women. I mean seriously!! ... Who needs more than that?

Nonetheless, workers’ rights were a major concern for all of us factory rats, and the Tsar of Russia had just been deposed by a bunch of communists. But I never connected what was happening “over there” to my own personal interest.

Instead, I puttered along in my little realm, blissfully ignorant of how wide the world was. And I was no different than the other nine occupants of that tent in that respect, except for Alex. Alex was there because he truly believed in the noble ideal of self-sacrifice and service to others.

Alex was no fool. He was worldly. He had friends in both England and Germany. His family’s money came from shipping, so he knew something about every major port in the world, including the Far East. Plus, he had just graduated from Yale. So, he saw the world through a different lens. And as unlikely as it sounds, this guy was my new pal.

I think I was a novelty to Alex ... a member of the proletariat who was honestly trying to align Plato’s truths with Stoic principles. It made him curious. Add to that ... the fact that I was as adept in sleazy bars as Alex was at navigating lawn parties. It made me useful to him. Since my aristocratic friend was just as horny as I was, and the women in my world were a lot more accommodating.

Thus, my new friend and I spent many evenings cruising the beer joints in the golden triangle between State and Frontage, where I introduced Alex to every species of loose woman. He, in turn, took me to a few lawn parties in East Rock.

Those venues were as alien to me as Snooky’s Tavern was to Alex. But Alex proved to be a true friend, never condescending to his lower-class buddy. It would be hard to say either of us was successful in the other’s social environment. But mixing with my betters opened a world of wealth and privilege I had never known about, and it served as a guidepost for the rest of my life.

Also, I met Evangeline at one of those parties. It was a gorgeous spring day on the sloping lawn of a mansion above the Mill River. The men were in straw hats and Yale Blue blazers. The women were in frilly confections that must have set them back eighty bucks ... the equivalent of two months’ pay for me.

I was wearing my private uniform, which stood out in that group like a dog at a cat show. But it substituted for my lack of appropriate attire. Alex and I had just arrived. We sat at an umbrella table, holding champagne flutes and wishing they were beer.

That was when I heard an angelic voice say, “Who’s this, Biddie?” Nobody in Alex’s social set had an actual first name. It was always a pet name, usually a contraction ... in Alex’s case, his last name was Biddle, so they called him Biddie. At least it wasn’t pronounced, “bidet.”

We both turned. An utterly stunning woman came up from behind and plopped down across from us. She had all the beauty that money buys, perfectly made up, coiffed, dressed, manicured, and pedicured. She had golden skin and a beautiful face. I also noted a trim, athletic figure.