Introduction
What were high school students thinking about when they returned from winter break at the start of 1964? No doubt, some were preparing for the next school show, or practicing their driving for a road test, or finishing work on the upcoming yearbook. Seniors were thinking about careers, and worrying about finding full-time jobs, or applying to college.
In Hicksville, there also was something else on the minds of its students - and on those of its faculty and school employees. At any time during any school day, two loud, sharp percussive noises from the Public Address system - the sound of an assistant principal's fingernail tapping on a microphone in the Office - might set everyone in the building in motion.
Like automatons in a choreographed sci-fi ballet, students would instantly rise from their seats, gather their things, walk to their hall lockers, and unlock them. From the lockers the students would remove and don their winter coats and footwear, as if it were the end of the day, but they would leave their lockers open for inspection. They then would head to the nearest exits, and proceed out through the cold to designated rendezvous points (e.g., the athletic field, or - in my case - the then "student parking lot" on Division Avenue). As they gathered in these spots, police cars would already be parked at the school's main entrance, and the first of the fire trucks would be arriving.
All of this happened with a certain precision, for it had been done many times - too many times - before. It was the routine response when some unidentified caller left word that a bomb had been planted in the high school.
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