Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

“Why, then, did I go on sitting in the car? Why didn’t I get out while, say, we were stopped for a red light? There seems to me at least a dozen answers to these questions, and all of them, however dimly, valid enough. I think, though, that I can dispense with them, and just reiterate that the year was 1942, that I was twenty-three, newly drafted, newly advised in the efficacy of keeping close to the herd – and, above all, I felt lonely. One simply jumped into loaded cars, as I see it, and stayed seated in them.”