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Volume CCXXXVI, Number 110  January 8, 2006 

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Chapter 1: A Long Way from Trenton

    The gawky young man in the ill-fitting sharkskin suit could hardly contain himself as he strode onto the great green sward of Princeton University. Clutching his cardboard suitcase tied up with string in his arms, he told himself: "Schmulke, this is what you always dreamed of."
  To the other Tiger Cubs, the products of the finest prep schools and country clubs, the bespectacled scholar from tumbledown Trenton, N.J. looked, sounded and acted painfully out-of-place. Little did they know that the dark pasty fellow fingering his rosary beads, a farewell gift from his mentor, Father McGreevy, would someday be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
  His swarthy parents, immigrants from the Old World land of Italy, had worked their fingers to the bone so that their Sammy could go where no member of his family had ever set foot (except to build a stone wall): Princeton University. His mother had packed his favorite lasagna in his suitcase and given him a Genoa salami for the half-hour train ride, which the self-conscious freshman had left on the seat beside him.
   Although of course young Sam Alito was too poor, homely and gauche to be invited to join one of the University's finer eating clubs, he soon formed a small circle of friends, most, like himself, the studious, unathletic offspring of working-class parents who had been born in alien lands but were, to a man, grateful to the America that had granted them liberty.
   He remembered what kindly Fr. McGreevy, his college counselor at St. Francis of Sodom and Gomorrah High School, had told him many a late night at the rectory. The gentle, loving friar told young Alito: "Sam, you have been called to serve Christ at Princeton. Make Him proud.”
   Sam, his mouth [Surely, heart? – Ed.] full, told the caring Fr. McGreevy that Jesus Christ could count on him. Young Alito was a man of his word: you wouldn't catch joining his richer, more socially prominent classmates for riotous weekends in New York City. When a kindly member of the Ivy Club offered Sam Alito a bottle of gin and an evil-smelling hand-rolled cigarette at a party, young Sam Alito said: "No, sir." Sam, turning back to his Spartan room in Rockefeller Hall, didn't even hear his host mutter behind him: "What a dips***."   The scholarship lad from Trenton suspected that his interlocutor would go far, but never guessed that the hard-partying son of Old Nassau would become the Majority Leader of the United States Senate and world-famous video doctor, Bill Frist.
   It was not long thereafter that young Sam Alito recognized how he could pay Princeton back for its many kindnesses to him and others of his humble ilk. He vowed that he would devote himself to the welfare of the rich, the powerful, the well-connected and all the others who made it possible for a poor immigrant's son like him to enter the hallowed halls of Princeton.
   Alito's sedulous work habits, both in the library and in the dining hall where he washed dishes every night to "do his bit" to pay for college, paid off. His professors predicted that the ungainly Trentonian would go far in his quest to advance the interests of the rich and powerful.

   One day during his junior year, young Sam Alito, dining in the basement commons reserved for those too poor or socially inept to join an eating club, was accosted by one of his classmates, an immigrant whose name is lost to history.
   "Look at this, Sam!" he ejaculated, thrusting a copy of the Daily Princetonian into Sam's American Chop Suey, a poor substitute for Ma Alito's garlicky Neapolitan specialties.
   Sam glanced at the headline. He was too aghast to notice that a bit of tomato sauce dripped onto his nylon shirt. Fortunately, it was drip-dry. "Women! At Princeton!" The very idea was unthinkable. What would Fr. McGreevy say?
   The plucky son of Italy bounded to his feet, nearly tripping over his wing-tips. "This is an outrage! This must be stopped at once! There must be enough rich reactionary Princeton alumni out there who will never permit the fairer sex to sully the halls of Princeton with their girlish ways and dangerous hidden recesses, perfect for hiding narcotics!" he speculated. "And I shall find each one of them," he vowed.

Next week: Sam journeys to the hear of the beast — the city of New York — to save his beloved university.