Class of 1935
The building across from my window looks like Coney Island in a particularly splendiferous mood. A huge gilt crown is surrounded by red, white, and blue lights, two fetching pictures of OUR KING AND QUEEN are neatly emblazoned on a little shield, GR and ER figure at the sides, and tastefully enclosing the whole—not forgetting the neon light, which casts a baleful message of "King and Harper for CARS"—are red, white, and blue garlands, empire flags in profusion, and ropes of those wonderful inventions made like a book, but which open up to make a colored cylinder of paper honeycomb. No expense has been spared. The concession to decorate the Market Hill has been sublet three times—the result must be fantastic. The famous Cambridge backs are being floodlit, and as a special dispensation the colleges are being left open till eleven o'clock. As for London: the place is a madhouse, fellers. When you have to compete with the Olympic Games, the Spanish War, and the Paris Exposition, ya gotta be good. Miles of coronation seats wander through the maze of Westminster; and if you had looked carefully at the news-reel you might have seen your Secretary gazing longingly at twenty-five pound seats, and querulously at the plumes on a guardsman's helmet—helmet of same being invisible.
To ease the traffic in London and to make Cambridge somewhat quieter for the forthcoming exams, they're having a bus strike. If you are an elderly man, you stand by No. 73 and thumb your way to work. For the Coronation there will be a special subway, non-stop from out of town to the Abbey. It's the Peers Special, for peers only, and various lords and ladies will ballot for the available two hundred seats. Actually, it will be about the only way to move in London on the day. By the way, the fare will be three pence (six cents), and money is required with your application.
Sorry to ramble on this way, but you have no idea of the excitement. After all, it'll be three years or so before Roosevelt is crowned.
I've been hunting for a letter from someone in the government to follow up that last crack, but all I can find is one from "I Was a White Collar Worker inpequonnock Street," alias Phil Hemphill, who is a welcome addition to these columns. He's in Bridgeport, Conn., living with Walt Holmes and Frank Specht. "Asfor myself, lam with the Bay Co.—it's thesurgical dressing end of Parke-Davis. Amin the sales office, barking into a dictaphone most of the time, trying to handlemore sales correspondence than I everknew existed." Frank is still with Firestone, moved from N. Y. about Christmas time to become office manager in Bridgeport. Walter is working for a personal finance company.
Phil includes some flashes: "Herb Van Doom has cut the ties that bind at Bamburger's in Newark and is now working inSan Francisco for the Matson SteamshipCo. He is living with Pug Atherton, whoworks for the same outfit. Bill Chapman isworking for Price Waterhouse, Kingsbury for Haskin Sells, and they are living withCarl Austin (Tuck '36 fro?n Williams) atthe Hotel Margaret in Brooklyn. Sven Karlen was seen at the Pennsylvania notlong ago, tails and all. In town fromSchenectady for the week-end. He is working for G. E."
Jerry Spingarn, after a year of pressagenting, with a rise to "associate editor" and a snappy letter-head, has chucked it all to answer what he calls the "call to the bar," and is now blowing the dust off year books at Columbia Law School.
"If you do not share my profession's attitude toward hearsay evidence, you mightbe interested in a few bits of intelligence. .... Bob Sellmer, for a time was editinga magazine called The Big Town, andghost-writing for Jimmy Walker. Hiswhereabouts at the mometit is unknown,a fact which is causing considerable annoyance to Benchley and the boys at '21,' because they fear he is off in the bushes somewhere sneaking up on them. They feelmuch safer when they know where Bob is." [Was he off thinking up the latest TearBag?]
PONG NOT PING
"Harry Ackerman is very much in the radio department of Young and Rubicam, which is generally considered the best radio department in town, because it has Jack Benny and a lot of other names which mean very little to you or me BobSmith is there too. I met him and BobFerry [that guy again!] in the Y & R reception room. Bob. S. was at that time a Chryslerite—peeved that because of the strike they had forced vacations upon those employees who were not sitting down. The general feeling was that they might just as well have sat around the factory Bill Riegelman, Bernie Jankoff, and PaulLynch are at Columbia Law, and doing exceedingly well Howie Kaiser, who was on his way to being a vice president-in-two-years, gave Macy's the shock of their life when he informed them that he was leaving to join his father's hosiery manufactory, which is called B. V. May, or at least puts out one stocking by that name." [Only one?]
Underlined in red is the following. "Myold room-mate Artie Wertheim, who neveranswers my letters, is first in his class atJeffersoti Medical School, and has beenholding that position for a year and ahalf."
MCEVOY WITH M. G. M.
Biddy Chase rolled five sheets of paper into the machine and managed to cover a few. He is a self-styled "insurance pest" with the State Mutual Life of Worcester. He and Don Shaw, who's assistant buyer for Wachusetts shirts, are "innovating" Leominster, supping weekly on beer and clams. "After working on Shaw for the pasteight months I finally sold him a policy,but only after we had narrowly missed several poles on the way home from a mealof the succulent bivalves. (It was the onlyway I could scare the guy.)" Once in a while Reagan shows up, but "he seems toget in the dog house every time Shaw andI get hold of him," so the result is now that he lays low and calls up ten minutes before he leaves town. "The only other memberof the class I've seen is ambling Ogg atNortheastern, where we are both takingextra courses." McEvoy is on the Coast working for MGM. First, according to the letter received by Reagan, he was with RKO, but had to walk four miles to work and back every day. Finding in due time that he was getting to the studio only in time to start walking back he gave it up. Now OK with shorter walk.
"Saw Dick Halvorsen in November, andhe is writing for Sports Illustrated. If youwill print this item to the effect that I stillthink he is impossible, you will save methe trouble of sending him my greetingsand writing a letter also."
Is the "bibulous individual" known as Willy White still correcting arithmetic papers?
After a lapse the letter closes pensively: "Regan got me in the dog house over thepast forty-eight hours. He must have readmy mind while I was writing this. It wasn'ttoo smart an idea either, because Shawand I are in a Fortnightly Club show calledthe Gay Nineties. I don't think it will goover any too well here, due to the fact thatthis town is just passing through that eraanyway."
Omer Whipple, who determinedly plugged through four years at Dartmouth, has been in the Lenox Hill Hospital all winter having a couple of operations, a long rest, and being fixed up generally. "Right now I am learning to stand withoutcrutches, something I haven't done for thelast 15 years. At the present time my senseof balance is about as steady as that of someof my friends after a Harvard victory, butnot for the same reason." Here has been a tough fight. It's Columbia next year and on with chemistry.
A long and interesting letter from DonHagerman, still at Deerfield, Mass., whose marriage with Ibba Eames has been set for the 26th of June. The presidential nuptials are in a sense a class occasion, and I think with united congratulations might go some more lasting symbol. If Chaney will let me have any class funds I'll see what can be done.
Herb Shuttleworth is finishing up at M. I. T. and starts with the Mohawk Carpet Mills, Inc., in June. Bill Clark reports that he has realized a long standing ambition, for next year he goes from Taft School, where he has spent two enjoyable years, to Exeter where "he lives in thememory of all Exeter men for his prowesson the athletic field, and in the classroom."Bill George is teaching English in some school in Switzerland and studying French at the same time. He is reported to be coming back to the U. S. after this summer to take a post at some eastern college in the department of romance languages. TedSteele, by the way, has just come back from Switzerland after a couple of weeks skiing at Davos, and is now worrying like the rest of us about his "final schools." They call them the "tripos" here, after the Greek name for a three-legged stool on which candidates used to sit when they took their degrees. Halsey Loder is trying to plan a tour of Japan on bicycle or on foot, and is haunting the Jap embassy for permission.
Ted Steele had a letter from GeorgeColton, the Newark thread man, and claims George is going poetic. Just how that is possible in Newark I am not clear, but anyway there it is. There are also some rumors about Bob Kugler and somebody named Hilda. And is Bob Lull still teaching in Poultney, Vt.?
Sandy Brown, M.A., has been awarded a Cramer Fellowship from Dartmouth, and is going to be at M. I. T. in the fall in the quest of a few more alphabetical postscripts. This summer he is going back to his real home, which is in Syria, and which he hasn't seen for six years.
HOMEWARD BOUND
A few Odds Bodkins and the last column of the year is over. Mr. and Mrs. ReynoldsE. Moult on announce the birth of a son, Reynolds Ellsworth Jr., on April 1, 1937. Tom Lane is being married. Mrs. Thomas Clark Chalmers' announcement gives the name as Virginia, and the date as the thirty-first of March, nineteen hundred and thirty-seven. Howie Croninger is also being married, or has been. I have put the letter in a safe place and cannot find it.
This is my last news from this address. The transatlantic dichotomy of '35 information is almost ended, and I hope to keep you all better informed in years to come.
Secretary, Trinity College, Cambridge, England
