Nation: The Leader: Everett Dirkson

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Brothers Ben and Tom dropped out of high school ("We foolishly thought it was more important to smoke corncob pipes and carry dinner buckets," says Ben, who is now a retired warehouse employee) but Ev stayed on. He played center for the Chinks and made the track team and the debating team, but devoted the rest of his time to earnest study. "I was frightened to death to even ask a girl for a date." he says. "I had to walk around the block a couple of times to get up the nerve."

Lump Jaw & Stringhalt. For a while, Dirksen worked at assorted jobs in the corn-refining plant, dutifully turned his $55 a month over to his mother. In 1914 he enrolled at the University of Minnesota, worked nights as an ad taker for the Minneapolis Tribune. One summer he wandered through South Dakota selling farmers a home-remedy book with cures for lump jaw and scabies in cattle, stringhalt in horses.

In 1917 he quit school, joined the Army, shipped to France in May 191,. and was sent to artillery school. Soon 2nd Lieut. Dirksen was manning a tethered balloon 3,500 ft. above the lines, spotting artillery targets and sweating out German fighters. He got out without a scratch, was discharged late in 1919. The fighting he had seen gave him a thorough distaste for war and increased his native "instinct against killing." Says he: "I decided I was going to devote my life to doing something about this insane war business.''

Chinese Love. He had saved some money, but decided against going back to law school in Minnesota. Instead he invested in a newfangled electric washing machine, but that enterprise failed. Finally, Dirksen joined his brothers in a wholesale bakery. Ev helped bake pies, rolls and bread, made the deliveries. He got up each morning at 5:30—and he still does.

But all the while, the poet was bugging the baker boy. Dirksen wrote scores of short stories, all of which were rejected by publishers. He had better luck in collaboration with an old schoolmate named Hubert Ropp. The two produced community plays, most of which boasted Chinese themes. Their triumph was an original composition called Chinese Love which Ropp plotted and Dirksen wrote. Set in San Francisco's Chinatown, filled with teary sentimentality and stilted language, it was a big hit. and the team sold it to a publisher (for $150 apiece). Dirksen directed the Pekin production of the play, which tells of Sing Loo, the unrequited lover, who aches for the blossom of his eye, Pan Toy. The plot: Sing Loo meets Pan Toy, Sing Loo loses Pan Toy. Sing Loo gets Pan Toy. And when he does:

Sing Loo: My Cherry Blossom, look you yonder. The sun rises like a fiery ball to bathe the world in splendor. But one rival has he for splendor, and that is my Pan Toy . . . Know you, my Blossom, what the lover calls his love here in America?

Pan Toy: I yearn to know, august and exalted lover.

Sing Loo: They say "sweetheart" . . . And do you know what the lover expects from his love in that golden moment when they are betrothed?

Pan Toy: I do not know.

Sing Loo: Shall I show you?

Pan Toy: Is it dangerous?