Author! Author!

I liked school and adjusted easily.  It was a no-nonsense “Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic” curriculum.   Reading came easy to me and writing was no particular problem. I don’t remember my first attempts at arithmetic but it was probably a miserable experience.  Dealing with numbers was my Waterloo from First Grade all the way through my days in Graduate School. But after that first day, I never again dreaded going to school.

My teacher began each school day with us standing alongside our seats facing the flag that hung above the blackboard and saying “The Pledge of Allegiance.”  Then, before sitting down we sang “America,” (Otherwise known as "My Country T'is of Thee) a patriotic song that is all but unknown today: In the second verse of “America,” the words “author of liberty” are sung.  The words are meant to imply that our country is the creator of liberty.

The teacher may have explained “liberty” to us, although I doubt it, but there was never any mention of what the word “author” meant.  Words interested me from the beginning of my school years and as we sang that strange word “author,” I became deeply puzzled.   No one had ever used that word in my presence and I wasn’t sure I was hearing it right.  I knew enough about sentence construction to know that whatever “author” was, it had created “liberty”.  But who or what it was remained a mystery.   No one else in class seemed bothered by that strange word and I was not about to show my ignorance by asking the teacher for an explanation.   I continued to sing it every day and as I sang I speculated.  One of my classmates was named “Arthur.”   I didn’t know anything about him.  I spent many days singing that song while shooting sidelong glances at Arthur, wondering if he might have something to do with “liberty.”  He didn’t look proud or guilty or anything when we sang those words so after a while I concluded he had nothing to do with it.   I don’t remember when I learned the meaning of author.