Carl vs. The Nazis Ch. 3 Dr. Schmidt

"Carl vs. the Nazis: Ch 2 Lost" 
Professor Schmidt’s News

I didn’t arrive home until about noon. After we arrived at the beach, it was half an hour’s walk to the cottage. Dad didn’t ask me where I had been. If he missed me, it was in the absent-minded way someone might notice he was out of catsup. My father was not a bad man, he just got so focused on his work that the rest of the world faded.
I was born when my dad was in graduate school. My mother was an undergraduate who thought a baby would be a real inconvenience. She later became a director of personnel for a huge company in Oregon and married a computer executive. She’s really into self-improvement. She meditates, does Tai Chi each morning, and belongs to a health club. She’s really attractive and has great clothes and hair. She looks and lives just like a woman in a magazine. She even appeared in a feature magazine article because of her new kitchen. I met her once when I was about six. I have a half-sister and half-brother I never met. Mother sends me cards and photographs of her family, her newest house and her newest cars on Christmas and my birthday.
My father, now Professor Conrad Schmidt, had to raise me by himself. He was also determined to get his doctorate. He took care of me between attending his graduate classes and writing papers. I grew up pretty much unattended, wandering the university campus.
He eventually earned his doctorate, and headed the Department of Philosophy’s Social Research section at Indiana University. Every summer he returned to the resort to write in our tiny cabin in the woods. It had a living room, a small bedroom for him, and a kitchen that had a breakfast bar, since it was too small for a kitchen table. He did all his typing on the back porch if the weather was good. If it was bad, he used the kitchen. I slept in a nearby woodshed, which suited me fine.
This summer he was designing a plan to objectively measure the force of human will. Nietzche and Schopenhauer were Dad’s favorite philosophers. These guys believed that people’s desire and determination were what made people important, not their intelligence, hard work, haircut, clothes or minty fresh breath. Dad liked guys like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and Frank Sinatra because they all liked to do things their way, and make others do their bidding.
Dad himself was so shy and scared he got stuck with every lousy job at school no one else would touch, and people took away his responsibilities whenever they wanted. One week he’s editor of “Philosophical Numeration,” the department publication, because no one else wants to write such a boring thing each week. The next week, someone gets interested in it and takes the magazine away without even asking.
Dad has no backbone. That’s why he comes here to get away from them. I think that’s also why he got stuck with me, and that’s why he never found a wife. He was clinging to his sad academic life like a mussel clinging to a rock while getting battered by waves.
So this summer, Dad was looking for a way to measure people’s strength of will, and prove will is as important as brains.
His plan was to find some sort of form or test to measure will. Then he was going to compare smart strong-willed people with smart weak-willed people to see who was better. He also was looking to compare dumb strong-willed people with dumb lily-livered people.
Dad was typing on the back porch when I came home. He was dressed only in his underwear, black dress shoes and white tube socks. Between his teeth was an unlit pipe. He hates to be disturbed when he works, so I was surprised when, a few minutes after I arrived home, he stopped working and called me over.
“Hey Carl! Good news! I got my sabbatical!”
“Oh that’s great, Dad.”
“Do you know what this means?”
I had no idea. But I hoped it was something nice, like a Hungarian pastry or a new boat.
“We can stay here for a whole year!” shouted Dad. “Apparently, the Dean has a son-in-law who is interested in sociological philosophy and wants to teach my classes. I can get this work done, and you’ll get a year-long vacation!”
“What about school?”
“Oh, you’ll enroll here, I imagine,” he said with a shrug. “But you won’t have to leave Bachland, and all your friends.”
“All my friends are from New York and New Jersey. They’ll leave in a few weeks.”
“Ah, but you’ll get to enjoy the woods and lake, and beautiful nature.”

"Carl vs. The Nazis Ch.4 Damon the Evil"