Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Some of his time he spent with the boys from the Academy who returned home one by one after the graduating ceremonies in Annapolis. There were six of them that year. Cal Laning had been assigned to the USS Oklahoma and would be going back east in July to join the ship at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Bob Clark was visiting Kansas City, as well, though Heinlein later said he did not meet and become friends with Clark until they were both stationed on Lexington.8 Laning undoubtedly widened their acquaintance with the jazz clubs on the wrong side of the tracks.9

  Part of the time Heinlein spent catching up with his high school friends. Sammy Roberts was the keeper from that group, a buddy from the ROTC rifle team. Sammy had a lifelong love affair with rifles and was interested in things military, so their relationship wore better than some other high school friendships. Sammy also owned a car, and this could have let them escape out of the stifling city and into the countryside (still hot and even more humid—but not so unbearable).10

  Heinlein also renewed his acquaintance with Elinor Leah Curry.

  Elinor and Robert had met a few times since high school, when she captained the girls’ Negative Debate Team at Westport High, while he captained the corresponding boys’ team at Central. He knew her father slightly, a postmaster on the railway (one of his last jobs before he left for Annapolis had been sorting mail in the same department). Elinor’s mother had died when she was a child. After high school, Elinor had gone to William Jewell College and then Kansas University. In 1927, she went to work for the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company as a clerk, renting a room in a respectable neighborhood on Sixty-eighth Street, in the home of a local businessman.11

  Since high school, they had dated occasionally,12 but there was no suggestion of any special attraction at that time. Now, however, it is possible that the epiphany of Mary Briggs bore on him that he really wanted—needed—to be married. If things had gone as planned, he would have married Alice McBee immediately after graduation, and possibly in the Academy’s chapel with others of his graduating class.

  Heinlein’s sentimental streak got the better of him, and he did a foolish thing. On Friday, June 21, 1929, he took a road trip with Elinor, Cal Laning, and Sammy Roberts to Platte City, about sixty miles northwest of Kansas City, and got married:

  This certifies that Robert Anson Heinlein of Kansas City, State of Missouri, and Elinor Leah Curry of Kansas City, State of Missouri, were united in Holy Matrimony at Platte City on the 21st day of June A.D. 1929, by authority of a License bearing date the 21st day of June A.D. 1929, and issued by the Recorder of Deeds of Platte County, Missouri. Witness my signature.

  Walter M. Mundell, minister, Christian Church.

  Witnesses: S. J. Roberts, Mrs. W. M. Mundell.13

  Sammy Roberts signed the marriage certificate as a witness.14

  They had a brief honeymoon in Elinor’s rented room. Heinlein did not tell his family he had married.15

  Of Elinor Curry, Heinlein’s only remarks were that she had very fair hair—almost albino16—and was “sexually adventurous.”17 In the Roaring Twenties, there was a sexual revolution going on, and her sexual openness must have reminded him tantalizingly of Mary Briggs. Perhaps also he—or both of them—were under the influence of Judge Lindsey’s radical book, Companionate Marriage (1927) (or the film of the book that came out in 1928). Judge Lindsey was the voice of the sexual revolution of the 1920s.

  Robert took over Elinor’s room-rental agreement in his name and made arrangements to have a telephone installed.18 They would have to make plans for more permanent arrangements later. Robert was due to report to Lexington in San Pedro, California, in less than two weeks.

  But problems emerged almost immediately: Elinor didn’t want to take his name19—and there was no question of her quitting her job. She absolutely refused to move to California. It remains an open question why she wanted to get married at all.

  Perhaps naïvely—these are not “differences to be settled”—Heinlein was determined to make this work, even if it had to be by long distance. But even before he left to take up his billet, he was unfashionably shocked that Elinor slept with someone else20 while they were still on their honeymoon: he was “shaken by the fact that she had committed adultery just days after their marriage.”21

  It wasn’t the infidelity that bothered him:22 he knew his Elinor and he knew himself, and if it was anything like a “companionate marriage,” this kind of thing was going to happen, on both sides.23 But his reaction indicates that Heinlein had certain expectations of what marriage should be: he had expected the marriage to mean something special to her, as it did to him. Sexual infidelity should not impair the emotional bond—they should still cleave together as man and wife, support and helpmeet each for the other.

  Heinlein mentioned this matter only once, in a letter to Laning the next year.24 Something Laning had said or done set Elinor off into an astonishing bout of hysteria (Laning had probably mentioned—casually, in the way talking about sex was de rigueur in the twenties, and especially among the flaming youths—“double dating in bed” with Heinlein, a phrase he was later to use in conversation).25 Heinlein was not angry with Laning—except at his insensitivity in setting Elinor off.

  Early in July, Robert left Elinor, and his family, and Kansas City, issues unresolved. Robert didn’t know it at the time, but he was finally leaving home.

  The USS Lexington—nicknamed the Lady Lex—had started out in 1921 as a battle cruiser, but the arms limitation provisions in the Washington Naval Treaty halted construction, and she was redesigned as an aircraft carrier, designated CV-2. When launched in 1925, she was the largest ship then afloat.

  In her early years, the Lady Lex filled a very important role for the Navy: only the second large aircraft carrier ever built, Lexington would pioneer aircraft-carrier methods and techniques (and more important, strategy and tactics) during a period when the Navy was not yet completely convinced of the usefulness of airpower and might prefer to put its money into battleships. Her captain at that time was F. D. Berrien. She was a floating city, with a crew of 3,373 and eighty-one canvas-winged airplanes, including Martin T4M torpedo bombers and Boeing F4B fighters, the last wooden-winged biplane fighters produced by Boeing.

  Lexington had new-minted ensigns stacked up like cordwood because of the relatively large sizes of several recent graduating classes. Aside from Bob Clark, Heinlein found several other classmates also reporting in. In one sense, it is not surprising that so many recent graduates would gravitate toward the new aircraft carriers: they represented the cutting edge of this technology, and the cutting edge is always where the best and the brightest like to start. This best and brightest found himself billeted in a stateroom that had a rack of canisters for fulminate of mercury—an unstable explosive that had to be stored separately from the ammunition.

  Because of the surplus of ensigns, each would get a short rotation in the various departments of the ship, while taking on various administrative tasks. Instruction would continue—more notebooks sketching the ship’s systems in detail. At least it was familiar work. But young naval officers live and die by their quarterly fitness reports—more report cards, but these affect their career in an “up or out” organization.

  On July 13, just a week after reporting to Lexington, Heinlein received a letter from the Academy asking how he wanted the application for the Rhodes Scholarship to read. The nomination could not be submitted until he chose the location he would apply from—Maryland, Missouri, or California. 26 The letter was dated June 24, 1929—just three days after he had gotten married.

  Rhodes Scholars could not be married: they were supposed to spend two years (or possibly three, since the scholarship could be extended) at Oxford University in England. He had put himself out of the running for the first Rhodes Scholarship to be given at the United States Naval Academy.27 His short reply, saying simply that he was no longer eligible “by reason of marriage,” was sent off the same day.

  On August 2, 1929—the v
ery day the application process would have been started—the Superintendent’s secretary penciled “canceled” across the carbon copy of his nomination letter. That closed his file at the Academy and closed a door on his first career ambition. Astronomy would not be possible now. He would have to make his career in the line of the Navy.

  Heinlein immediately applied again for flight training. On July 31, 1929, he took his examination—and washed out again, “because of Defective Visual Acuity. Defective Depth Perception. Low angle of convergence.”28

  Doors were closing for him, right and left.

  Heinlein’s first administrative assignment was to take charge of the ship’s office and act as aide to the ship’s Executive Officer, John H. Hoover. Heinlein shortly learned that Hoover had the habit of dressing down his department heads in front of their juniors—“unpleasant to witness and humiliating to the victim.”29

  But he could be fair. One day, Hoover sent for him and told him that some of the ship’s liberty cards (permissions to be somewhere other than at work at one’s post) had been stolen—and what did he know about it?

  Heinlein felt sick.30 In order to take over managing the ship’s office, Heinlein had to practically memorize the BuNav manual—“the Book”—and had given only cursory attention to the printed forms and other expendable supplies that his Chief Yeoman had told him were stored in an unlocked safe. Chief Schmidt pulled any forms he needed, and bossed four yeomen under him. Heinlein was utterly dependent on the Chief.

  The liberty cards, it turned out, were stored in an unmarked stationery box in the safe, and Heinlein had been caught in the easiest infraction for an incoming officer to make: signing for supplies without inventorying them personally. The problem was compounded by other regulations not followed; yeomen were left unattended in the office—two of them slept in the office.

  Heinlein girded up his mental and moral loins and reported back, taking sole responsibility. Hoover looked at him without expression for an endless moment. “Correct the situation,” he said, and turned his head away. That ended it. Later, Heinlein figured out that Hoover might have dressed him down if he had tried to pin blame on the Chief, but owning up to a mistake was the ideal Navy way—the only way—to handle that kind of situation.31

  Heinlein’s “boot makee-learnee”32 rotations, each about three months, were in gunnery, engineering, and communications. He would be given weekly or biweekly assignments to describe and understand the various operating parts of the ship’s systems. His engineering sketches would be graded by an officer senior to him. Heinlein’s sketchbooks are filled with a mixture of laudatory and exasperated remarks from his supervising officers, including Hoover.

  Heinlein’s rotation in Communications meant that he had to get in some time in the air, which suited him just fine. Most of Lexington’s radio traffic was with the flight squadrons when they were off the deck, and Heinlein used two radio sets, depending on which station he was covering: the pilots had primitive dot-dash equipment using Morse code; the guard planes had regular voice-communication gear and could talk to the ship via the radio compass. Heinlein had to be familiar with both sets of equipment, from both ends. On one occasion in the air, the squadron turned into its homing vector and found only empty water. No sign of the Lex. The radio equipment at the time used the loop antenna, which fixed the position of the signal by turning a coil of antenna wire until the signal was at maximum strength or minimum strength, estimated by ear. That could give two answers, 180 degrees apart. In this case, the vector was definitely “apart.” They got back safely that time.

  Even with all the miscellaneous work, there was time for reading, and Heinlein continued to read all the science fiction he could get his hands on, even though the cost of a pulp magazine—there were no less than three science-fiction pulps on the market now that Hugo Gernsback had launched a series of science-fiction and adventure pulps with “Wonder” in the title—meant a real financial sacrifice, since most of his pay was going to Elinor in Kansas City. The 1930 Census shows “Elinor Heinlein” living with her parents and brother—and reflects that she has no occupation, so Heinlein must have won some of the battles, at least: she had apparently given up her job with the telephone company. Married women were not encouraged to work, as it took a job away from a man who had a family to support.

  Heinlein was at sea on October 29, 1929—Black Tuesday—when the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. Thirty billion dollars in paper assets disappeared—at a time when a nickel bought a piece of pie.33 Nobody yet knew that this wasn’t just another business-cycle adjustment like the Panics of 1893 or 1907.

  As a naval officer, Heinlein would be somewhat insulated from the worst effects of the Depression. He fell into a comfortable shipboard routine and improved his idle hours learning—“somewhat expensively” he said34—that poker is not a game of chance.

  San Pedro is Los Angeles’s port, and the officers had entrée to the social life in Hollywood. Heinlein fell in with a number of stars, staff, and directors at Columbia and was often on the Columbia lot. He recalled knowing Barbara Stanwyck in 1929 and 1930.35 That home port also gave Heinlein greater access to a part of his family he actually enjoyed, his paternal uncle Lawrence Ray Heinlein and Ray’s wife, Kitty.36 Heinlein’s relationship with Ray and Kitty was welcoming and familial, and he sometimes brought shipboard pals along with him on visits. On one of these visits, one of his friends, Ron Steward, sat for Heinlein, who was sculpting in clay.37

  Heinlein became exceptionally close to Ray and Kitty’s son, Ray—Edward Ray Heinlein. They were partners, Ray had said, and shared everything. He died young, a loss Robert never really got over. Decades later, he remembered this time in his life in a letter to his uncle Ray:

  I could have turned a corner and found Ray and Bunny and a pinochle deck and played a few hands while slandering each other, with Kitty tossing in an occasional trimmer-downer remark of her own. You two taught me how to ace up to things then, how to accept what had to be, if not with happiness, then with gallantry.

  I learned some other things from you at that time [Ray’s death], too—what had to be done, those grim inescapable chores, that seemingly endless list of details which must be attended to.38

  Early in December 1929, Lexington received instructions to go to Tacoma, Washington: the city’s power grid was collapsing. Most of Tacoma’s electricity—most of the electricity for western Washington—came from hydroelectric plants, and the preceding winter had been unusually dry. Tacoma’s Lake Cushman was far below its normal level, and the Nisqually River power plants, operating at full capacity, were not able to supply the demand.39Lexington’s four monstrous electric generators could, in theory, supplement the local power sources and put the power grid back on a stable footing. It had never been done before, but it was feasible on paper.

  Lexington came into Commencement Bay on December 16, 1929, and was towed into Tacoma’s Baker Dock, where Seattle City Power had installed transmission facilities. The lines were installed overnight, and the following day Lexington began running one engine at half-power for a month—time enough for everybody to settle in.

  The JO (Junior Officer) Mess clubbed together to rent a house for a month. As adjutant of the Lexington’s landing force—a mixed battalion of Marines and bluejackets—he had duties as Range Officer at Fort Lewis each annual overhaul period. A little early this year, he joined up with the rifle team there and had some shooting matches using rifle, pistols, and small arms of all sorts.

  For Christmas that year, his father sent him a single-volume collection of Rudyard Kipling’s verse. That was touching. Heinlein had been reading and rereading Kipling’s poetry for more than ten years: the stories he had read only once, in 1921, but he came back to the verse over and over; not even Marsh Gurney and the “Mary Gloster” could spoil Kipling for him. The rhythms and verbal patterns were intoxicating: “That collection caused me to become acutely conscious of the sound and shape of every word I wrote.”
40

  At that time, he did his first fiction writing, a 2,540-word mystery set at the U.S. Naval Academy, titled “Weekend Watch,” for a ship’s literary contest, typed on Lexington onionskin stationery. A First Class midshipman Frenching Out accidentally intercepts a spy trying to steal a piece of advanced, classified equipment—a revolutionary new torpedo design that is on campus for secret demonstrations. He foils the attempt, barely surviving the fight that ensues (in which he performs prodigies of heroism and endurance, of course).

  Things look grim for the hero: he may not be permitted to graduate. The Navy fixes it up, however, so that he takes his punishment for Frenching Out and then receives a commendation for valor. This is a very peculiar arrangement that occurs over and over in naval history, and one with which Heinlein was particularly fascinated.

  “Weekend Watch” is very poorly written, barely competent at the most basic narrative functions of prose. It did not win the contest, and the manuscript does not show any indication that he attempted to market it at that time.

  On January 16, 1930, Lexington disconnected from Tacoma’s power grid and lifted anchor. They would be back many times to Bremerton and Tacoma. In fact, they were at Tacoma in March when the Lex was ordered to Guantánamo for fleet exercises—just as the start of the new quarter brought Heinlein to a rotation in navigation. He served as Supernumerary Assistant Navigator—spare part—under Merrill Comstock, a very different officer from John Hoover, though both were equally competent and equally mean. But Comstock was a superb navigator and, like Hoover, “a military, taut son of a bitch.”41 Heinlein learned a lot from him, and did “navigator’s ‘day work’”—maintaining the chart and fixing ship’s position—while standing communication watches.