Chapter 9 Draft Board Nights Summary and Analysis

Thurber leaves Ohio State in June 1918 but cannot enter the Army because of his eyesight. Grandfather is disappointed at being turned down because of age and wants to go to Germany at the head of a division—or even as a private. His younger brother Jake helps watch that he not run off at night to Lancaster, OH, to complain about this to the late General William Tecumseh Sherman. Grandfather is also indignant that Grandmother has learned to steer the electric runabout while he constantly pulls the controls too hard, as he would do while breaking a horse. He practices in Franklin Park with little success. When, one day Grandmother needs the runabout for marketing but finds it missing, it takes a whole day to find Grandfather near the town of Shepard, entangled in...