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The Light Warden WILLARD WILSON E Some time ago we had a practice air raid alert and blackout. The sirens wailed, we again stumbled around in the dark for a few minutes , and malihinis made annoyed remarks. But as the sirens sounded their all-clear call, it occurred to me that here indeed, by the very “practice” nature of the blackout, was symbolized the end of a civic era. The sound of the dove was indeed heard again in the land, and the days of the light warden were numbered. Before he joins the dodo, Tojo, and other vanished relics of a past age, it seems to me something should be said in valedictory of the species—for the light warden was indeed a curious creature. Whenever a person is singled out from the mob of his fellows and handed the truncheon of authority, whether he be merely a Sunday School superintendent or the leader of an impromptu night quartette, there occurs some subtle chemical change in his nature. Most people unconsciously resent the laws that they have helped to impose on society . Therefore, when one finds himself suddenly placed in the position of the enforcer rather than the enforcee, there is a temporary lift of the ego; a sort of “Now, by gosh, I’m on the other end of the stick!” as indeed he is. It is a mood of exaltation that passes rapidly after he comes up against the dull realities of his job, however. Invariably he learns that the life of the ruler—however small the domain—is fraught with minute worries and uncertainties that lesser subjects know not of. Uneasy indeed is the head that wears a crown, even though the crown is merely a tin hat with a block “W” painted on the front. I don’t know how it is in mainland cities, but in Honolulu we wardens were for the most part a gentle race of men, ill suited to the speaking of a firm word or sharp command. A typical warden, I suspect , is one on whom either the finger of time has been laid or one who instinctively shrinks from the more public forms of war exhibitionism. 261 First published August 1945. If he had been bursting with vigor, he would have joined the Businessmens ’ Military Training Corps and gotten himself a uniform, gun, and a series of physically devastating maneuvers that consisted frequently of crawling on his middle-aged belly through the hedges and gardens of Manoa Valley or guarding a sub-station of the waterworks. If he had been thirsting for both a uniform and immediate action, and for some reason was not in the regular service, he would have gotten himself into the Police Auxiliary, which still patrols the night in radio cars and has weird and dangerous adventures in the darkened purlieus of Waikiki and Kakaako. Being the man he is, however, an introvert and fawn-like creature, he seeks an outlet for his patriotic civic interest that will allow him to do a modicum of necessary service while attracting a minimum of public attention. For this sort of person the corps of air-raid wardens, or as they were commonly called in this town “light wardens,” was obviously created. Because of my apparent qualifications for membership, I was asked to join when I moved into a house on Rocky Hill. I could not very well refuse, for I had my evenings comparatively free, did not belong to the BMTC, and had never even remotely considered enrolling in the Police Auxiliary. “We need persons of your type,” I was told.“We need people who can keep their heads!” I was vaguely flattered by the invitation, and to tell the truth rather anticipated the experience of dynamically keeping my head—of calling some neighbor’s attention to the fact that his blackout paint was beginning to scale off a bathroom window, or that there was a beacon crack of light showing on the seaward side of the dining room. That was quite soon after the December 7 blitz, and our blackout was still excessively black.There was not yet any nonsense about allowing lowpower “dim-out” bulbs, blackened on all sides and with a small aperture at the bottom that should be pointed either directly up or directly down, five feet from a window, not closer together than every ten feet, and answer to the provost judge if you’re wrong, God help you! Vague scenes flitted...

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