34
Historic Nantucket
I sat in an office chair during the wee hours and attempted to read required books for college (I was Bard '42). I would gaze at a rotary light switch amazingly high on the wall and wonder what it did. For some reason, I never approached it until a fateful night in late August. Ironically, it was the night of the Firemen's Ball. Almost all of the summer crew attended this affair. It was still the Big Band era, and no other dancing opportunities were regularly available at popular prices for the rank and file. At something like 1 a.m. or later, the crew returned, and I mercilessly reminded them I would be knocking on the doors of their basement rooms about 7 a.m. A couple of the girls, including my future fiancee, even joined me in the office, a rare treat at that quiet hour. One of them pointed to the old light switch and thus reminded me that I had always wondered about it. I went over and gave it a turn. The result: a fire alarm bell rang throughout the hotel. I turned it off immediately while the two girls did an extremely swift vanishing act. For a moment, there was dead silence, and just as I was congratulating myself that no one had heard it, the office switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree. Dealing with all these calls was impossible, so in a matter of minutes, the guests had descended to the lobby. Most were half-dressed, and the women frequently had their hands full of jewelry. I stammered something about a short circuit, which pacified nobody, but finally they all disappeared upstairs again, convinced at least that the hotel was not on fire. The owner was not tickled pink in the morning, but except for a couple of guests, most accepted the incident in good grace. In fact, the next evening, Mrs. Robert Benchley, a guest at that time, asked me if another fire drill was scheduled. Thank goodness for the Benchley humor. There is no special sequel to this event except to report that the next summer, 1942, the war was in progress. I was only able to make a brief visit to the hotel, but I did notice that next to the fateful switch, in big, bold letters, there was now a warning that, for me at least, was just a year too late: "FIRE ALARM."
