CLASS OF 1899
The Dartmouth public has been anxiously awaiting the authentic returns from the summer golfing endurance tour of the '99 hunters for the Tim Lynch Golfing Trophy. The tour included most of northern New England and southern Canada. Bona fide reporters were ruled off all courses, so that it is only by good luck and much persistence that the world has even an echo of the latest marathon sporting event. The following communication is positively anonymous, but circumstantial evidence points strongly to Tim himself as the one who at last has partly broken silence on what happened in the northern wilds.
"You do not expect me to tell the truth about a golf game that took place last summer, do you? Ask any good golfer about that, and he will tell you that it cannot be done. However, I shall do the best I can, and here it is.
"Rab Abbott, Jim Barney, Hobe, Weary, and I were the players. Judge Donahue and E. Silver were the gallery, with the ladies attending once in a while. We played Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday with Weary carrying off the honors with a score of 90, 92, 89, as well as I can remember. I only know that I beat Rab each day at Grand Mere, and then he trounced me badly in Hanover the following day. Hobe and Jim played with us only once and then decided that Weary, Rab, and I were too good for them, consequently they played the other times by themselves. I think the best scores of Rab and myself were 97, 98, 99, with Rab one or two shots behind me. You must not take these as absolutely the true counts, because a little bird told me after I returned that Weary wondered how I did one hole in five when he was sure that he saw me take at least eight strokes; however, I have somewhere a score card signed by Weary and Rab that my score was correct. Any way, we had a wonderful time at Grand Mere, and no one who went will ever forget it."
Other reports come from stopping places on the way north. For example, Pap Abbott on his way to Quebec stopped off to see Franco French at St. Johnsbury, took tea at one of the old Fairbanks estates, and then was escorted over the famous scale works. Later, Pap ran across Weary Wardle in the lobby of the Chateau Frontenac at Quebec.
Pap Junior is in Texas, making good with the Humble Oil Company in the prospecting line. Jim, the other boy, is connected with Stone, Webster, and Blodgett.
As to other rumors concerning Pap Senior's new devotion to pee-wee golf, his replacing a stolen auto with a whole fleet of new Fords, and so on, your correspondent prefers to wait until more complete data are at hand.
Franco French himself is a good bit stirred by the big forty-million-dollar power project developing about ten miles from St. Johnsbury. Hotels, stores, moving pictures, and miniature golf courses are springing up in every section of the city. Some two thousand engineers and workmen have been spending all their money in the city for some time now.
Big power—whether in mills or on linksappears to be '99's strong point at present. Lute Oakes, president of Winston Brothers, Minneapolis, has recently finished the Diablo Dam on the Skagit River, Washington, in connection with Seattle's water supply. A pamphlet issued on the subject shows Lute on the job in his working togs along with the supervising and constructing engineers. It is the highest dam in the world, is 140 inches thick at the base, and has taken two years to build.
There's a lot more news, but space forbids passing it on this issue. We'll call this the engineers' issue, for certainly some of the fanciest engineering ever undertaken is that in connection with amateur golf scores. And surely no one can deny that the evidence all points to some of the classiest feats on record being performed in the line of touching up the rather vague and abortive golf records that escape from the archives of NinetyNine's Traveling Troupe of Top-the-Ball Artists.
Secretary, 41 West Kirke St., Chevy Chase, Md,
