The Panty Raid

By Pamela Morsi

In the fall of 1956 Dorothy Wilbur is a senior on scholarship at state university. Looking toward her future, she's always imagined herself doing scientific research. But in the America of the 1950s, a woman opting for a professional career is seen to be opting out of love, marriage and family.

Hank Brantly is a Korean War veteran going to college on the GI Bill. He's noticed Dorothy, the bonafide dish in his Organic Chemistry class, and he's learned that life is short and a man goes after what he wants. Can an evening of unrepentant underwear thievery lead to romance?
Full of doo wop, poodle skirts and campus hijinks, The Panty Raid is a feel good read with the grainy nostalgia of a previous generation and the love/work seesaw familiar to those of every age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oliver-Heber Books
• Release date: May 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9798201744878

Pamela Morsi

Pamela Morsi is a USA Today, Waldenbooks, and Barnes & Noble bestselling author of romance. She broke into publishing in 1991 with Heaven Sent and has been gracing readers with at least a book a year ever since. Two of her novels, Courting Miss Hattie (1992) and Something Shady (1996), won the Romance Writers of America's RITA Award, the highest honor in romance publishing, and others have been RITA finalists. Ms. Morsi pens heartwarming stories set in Small Town, USA. Her books are famous for their wit, humor, memorable characters, and down-home charm.

Book preview

Chapter One

Abright full moon illuminated the night sky, bathing the campus below her open second-floor window in a sleek silver glow. Dorothy Wilbur, known as Dot to her girlfriends in the dorm, sat cross-legged on the end of her bed. Her dark brown hair was freed of its typical ponytail and the length of it hung loosely down her back. She was wide-awake, her chin in her hands, gazing outside sightless and worrying. That was not something she’d been prone to do in the past. But she was older now, twenty-one candles on her last birthday cake, and the future was headed in her direction at a rapid pace. The decisions she made about it were going to be critical.

It was 1956 and Dot was in fall semester of her last year at State. She had excellent grades and a full scholarship. Tomorrow morning she’d write her first exam in Organic Chemistry class and she was pessimistic. Not about Chemistry. The sciences were more than just her major, they had always been her forte, her passion. It was what she’d been born to do. That’s what she’d always thought.

Until now.

Until Dr. Falk.

Until the evil Dr. Falk.

She liked thinking of him that way. Like a mad genius in a science-fiction movie—evil, diabolical, villainous—he was the devil in a rumpled white lab coat. She suspected that in the anonymity of his office, he rubbed his hands together in eager anticipation of some dark deed and laughed in the maniacal manner preferred by the dastardly deranged doctorate.

Falk was dean of the university’s Department of Science and he was trying to ruin her life.

Miss Wilbur, he’d said that very afternoon in class, looking down at her over the thick lenses of his eyeglasses. Young ladies who enjoy assaying weights and measures, should be coming up with recipes in a kitchen, not taking up valuable laboratory space at the university.

She’d felt her cheeks heat up, both with anger and embarrassment. Every guy in the room was looking at her. And it was all guys in the room.

Is there a problem with my experiment, sir? she’d asked him.

He shook his head. No, Miss Wilbur, he said. It’s very good work, but good work that will come to naught. Five years from now all the men in this room will be out in academia and industry expanding the frontiers of science. You’ll be sitting in some suburban house surrounded by a troop of noisy, babbling children. The only thing you’ll be expanding is the width of your backside.

There was muffled laughter all around the room. She’d wanted to burst into tears and run from the room. That’s what she wanted to do, but that’s what they would expect. She’d managed to maintain her seat and held her chin high with difficulty.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had practice.

Honey, boys like girls who are pretty and sweet, her father had told her. You’ll never catch a husband by being smarter than he is.

Her teachers in high school felt much the same way. So you’re going to college, Mr. Peterson, the principal, had said when she’d asked him to write a letter of recommendation for her. Lots of girls doing that these days. They say they’re looking for a B.A. or a B.Sc., but most are just looking for an MRS.

He’d chuckled at his own little joke. It was all Dot could do not to roll her eyes.

Only her mother was on her side.

Go after what you’re wanting, Dotty, she told her. When I look back on my life, I spend more time regretting the things that I didn’t do than the things that I did. Four years at college was a big ambition for a working-class girl like Dot. Her father was a laborer, spending his days shoveling scrap at a smelter. Her mother took in ironing. She was the oldest of four children and if her parents were going to pay for anyone’s education, an unlikely scenario at best, she knew it would be her baby brother, Tom. Though at age ten, he’d yet to show any inclination toward schoolwork.

But Dot had never given up hope.

When she’d won the Women in Science Foundation Scholarship, she’d thought her troubles were over. But the attitudes she’d found in college were little different from those in her hometown.

Science! her roommate, Trixie, had shrieked. Oh, you’ll meet all the neatest guys in those classes, all the pre-med majors, pre-dentistry, pre-pharmacy. That’s my goal, marrying a doctor.

Marrying was not one of Dot’s goals. It never had been.

Unexpected sounds from beyond her window interrupted her rumination and captured her attention. Curious, she walked over and looked down. There was movement in the bushes and trees on Theta Pond. Lots of movement, and even from this distance she could hear the whispered orders and directions.

A frown creased her brow as she stared in that direction. She couldn’t really see what was happening, but it was as clear as springtime that something was going on. The sororities and fraternities were extremely popular on campus and there were only two main dorms for independents, those who eschewed the Greek life, Silas Baldridge for men and Elizabeth Compton for women. Baldridge and Compton were separated by the park-like paths and secluded benches of Theta Pond. But the Pond was off-limits after midnight and Dot was certain it had to be closer to two in the morning.

The buzz of voices was getting louder and the scurry of activity broader and wider.

‘Trixie, Trixie," she called in a hushed whisper.

There was an unintelligible response from a tangle of bedcovers.

Something’s going on, Dot said. Something’s going on at Theta Pond.

Huh? Trixie poked her sleepy head out just an instant before they heard the battle cry.

Charge!

The call came from the shrubbery around the pond. A minute later the lawn area surrounding the dorm was swarming with people, male people, running, hollering, and they were carrying ladders.

From somewhere within the building she heard a young woman shriek.

Panty raid!

Bedlam broke out among the three hundred residents of Elizabeth Compton. Lights went on everywhere. There was yelling and clamor and chaos. The slumbering dorm was instantly a hive of activity. Every young woman in the building was awake and at her window.

Oh, my gosh! It’s really happening! Trixie exclaimed beside her.

Her roommate, dressed in pink baby-dolls, her blond hair knotted up in bobby-pin curls all over her head, seemed almost as pleased as she was horrified.

Hide your underwear, she advised.

What?

Hide your underwear, Trixie repeated as she hurried to her chest of drawers. They’re coming to steal our panties.

The new innovation in campus hijinks was the rage at colleges and universities everywhere. Young men were forcing their way into female residence halls and sorority houses and stealing undies. These bits of young ladies’ lingerie would then be hoisted on flagpoles to fly like triumphant trophies on the breeze, or worse yet to be used as a decoration for some frat house wall.

When the top of a ladder found its perch upon their sill, Trixie let out