Not So Long Ago .... Direful Days
MARCH IN HANOVER was a disagreeable month. It still is, although plowed roads and some good sidewalks and movies and a wealth of imported entertainment have reduced the curse. So variable was our weather that Ken Smith may have snapped the picture at the head of this column in October or in April, but it looks and feels like March. It must have been taken as late as '19 or '20 because Leavitt's grocery store has been displaced by Bill Brock's barber shop (do you recall the slogan: "Get your hair cut at Joe Damato's?"), and Frank Davison's "Great White Way" lights have appeared on Main Street. The team doesn't date, because the buggy is a standard type still seen occasionally; Gil Frost claims that the horse is none of his.
On such a day as this the board walks, just laid down at the promise of spring, would be covered over with slush as we stumbled sleepily through the fog to the clangor of the chapel bells and ran the last few yards to beat the fatal double stroke that ended the sixteen tolls. The board walks were never down soon enough and, when finally laid, were always down too soon. They held their ordered rank for a time, then began to slither off to this side and that, to balance in the middle while the ends squidged deep in slime that squirted up at you through the cracks as you stepped on them. Eventually the grass would begin to show green over the steam line that ran to Webster, but it was a long time showing.
Further contemplation of this direful month, which not even Louie Bell and his Outing Club could brighten, brings memories of hour exams in Culver. The chemically minded must have acclimated themselves to that gloomy pile, but it was an unsettling experience for those of us who trotted Hannibal's elephants across the Rhone (with the help of the she-elephants) and over the Alps to avoid Chem and Bug, to preface an hour exam by climbing a hundred or so steep and dirty stairs through choking laboratory fumes to enter the anything but fair pleasance of "O" or "M" Culver.
Another unlovely structure was Hellgate, in which those unfortunate enough to be in the class of 1920 once congregated in a presumptuous attempt to take a freshman picture. It was a mysterious and unlikely dorm, made more so by the wierd and diversified machinations of such inhabitants as Joe Philbin, Doc Noyes, and Benny Mugridge. Sanborn was physically almost as bad as Hellgate, but it housed an athletic aristocracy that gave it class, while it derived its charm from the fact that its stairs were excellently adapted to indoor tobogganing. Reed and Thornton were also havens for the ragged but neatly brushed, and their doors and bannisters suffered many smashings, though nothing to compare with the destruction that took place, for some strange reason, in the three dingy staircases of Middle Fayer.
As a final gloomy reminder of the old, messy College plant stands Wilson Hall which, as the Library, was dark, dusty, and cheerless. Do you remember the slippery steel gratings that served as stack floors, the forlorn "Art Gallery" where reference books and bound periodicals cowered under the bad oils of the stern forefathers of the College, and the shaky tower stairs to the rackety old case full of "Lock" booksor didn't you ever sneak up there?
The Month of March In like a lion, out like a lamb—take your choice.
