Summer, 1919
Nov. 3rd, 2007 01:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gone_byebyeWhen the influenza of 1919 rolled over the county of Essex in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, it left unnumbered dead in its wake. That was no surprise; death traveled in the Spanish Lady's train as surely as night followed day. Indeed, it was a leveller the likes of which no-one had ever seen before, outdoing even the Great War in its equity of destruction. For a thing had come to pass during the time of the War, a thing which no-one gave much thought to before, and could not be bothered to pursue after. Of all the counties in the Commonwealth, Essex was the least touched by the Gold Star- and that was because, if one made the effort to search, of the fact that of all the counties in the Commonwealth, Essex sent forth the fewest sons to the War.
Not that the young men of that part of the state were lacking in patriotism. Far from it! No, many a lad went off to volunteer, some of them in the armies of other countries in the days before America would give them the chance. Their young men were as willing to go of their own accord as any other. But that was the thing, you see. They went of their own choosing. The hand of the draft board fell lightly indeed upon the county, young men's numbers scarcely ever being called; and in some towns that hand was not felt at all. Kingsport was one such. Dunwich, another. Innsmouth's queer clannish folk never so much as heard a recruiter's voice, and that was just the way they liked it. And as for Arkham town, well, they'd given volunteers, hadn't they? If the government didn't call on them to send more than they wished to give, they weren't about to object. Keep the lads at the university or by their parents' sides, that was just the way it ought to be.
No one noticed, or rather, if they did, they kept their own counsel. A young scientist of Polish extraction who nonetheless hung his shingle as an engineer in the city of Providence calculated the statistical likelihood of such a thing happening, and found the chances of its being accidental so far beyond the pale as to be effectively impossible; but he only told an old friend and fellow graduate of Miskatonic, and if Ray Stantz of the Orme Library thought there was anything to Laszlo Spengler's calculations, he never did say.
Not that the young men of that part of the state were lacking in patriotism. Far from it! No, many a lad went off to volunteer, some of them in the armies of other countries in the days before America would give them the chance. Their young men were as willing to go of their own accord as any other. But that was the thing, you see. They went of their own choosing. The hand of the draft board fell lightly indeed upon the county, young men's numbers scarcely ever being called; and in some towns that hand was not felt at all. Kingsport was one such. Dunwich, another. Innsmouth's queer clannish folk never so much as heard a recruiter's voice, and that was just the way they liked it. And as for Arkham town, well, they'd given volunteers, hadn't they? If the government didn't call on them to send more than they wished to give, they weren't about to object. Keep the lads at the university or by their parents' sides, that was just the way it ought to be.
No one noticed, or rather, if they did, they kept their own counsel. A young scientist of Polish extraction who nonetheless hung his shingle as an engineer in the city of Providence calculated the statistical likelihood of such a thing happening, and found the chances of its being accidental so far beyond the pale as to be effectively impossible; but he only told an old friend and fellow graduate of Miskatonic, and if Ray Stantz of the Orme Library thought there was anything to Laszlo Spengler's calculations, he never did say.
