Panama Canal Society

For many years I've blamed the War (W.W.II) for my poor scholastic record in BHS (43) and it came to me like a flash that I may have been wrong all these years. The real culprit was that damn pile driver that addled my brain for the better part of two years. My first three years were in the old bldg. at the foot of the Prado and we hiked over to the college building. for a lot of our classes. It was there the trauma took place, right outside Zip Ziertens Mechanical Drawing Class. For just outside the open windows that horrible monster would be driving pilings down deep into the ground. Since the Balboa townsite is mostly fill, these pilings were needed to support the new BHS as well as had been used when the College was built. We were pounded punchy during the first two years and then it abated in our third year as the building. itself was erected and then we moved in for our Senior year. But alas the damage had been done, and many of us still bobbed to the now silent boom of that machine. But Mr. Esser cut us no slack and we sallied forth to the adult world as damaged goods. Though recovery eventually came we have had to bear the burden of those deplorable grades over the years and borne the jibes of those few that must have been hard of hearing to begin with. I wonder who else remembers that booming cadence as we strove to get educated.

George C.