Not So Long Ago
'30 UP!
Think back—it's thirteen years. Between Webster and the White Church is prim colonial Choate House, in whose pleasant, overheated rooms we sat around tables for the bull session conferences of the Citizenship course. Behind Choate is the horrific yellow brick pile of Butterfield in which some '30 sections pondered the sweeping vistas of Evolution. To the west, between the bad-dream mansards of Chandler and the yellow painted brick of Crosby is visible the somewhat dingy white frame of Hubbard Hall. Dartmouth Hall's wood floors creak and thunder as classes change. Whenever strictly necessary we clang over the steel floors of Wilson to the cramped twilit library stacks for the books we have to have, fleeing these claustrophobic quarters as quickly as possible. The massive beams of the Commons quiver like a thin reed to the vibrations of the brasses and tympani of our energetic classmates in the balcony in the sepulchral dusk, except when the chorus of our plates, chatter, and soupabsorption dominates. Sometimes the air is filled with hard rolls and butter patties. What later will be known as Tuck Mall is a broad meadow. The postoffice is in the Musgrove Building. Main Street has dull, dirty-brick store fronts and no neon lights.
It would have then been hard to picture the life of Dartmouth revolving around a new center of gravity, majestic Baker Library on the site of Butterfield's yellow pile. Historic White Church has vanished in a searing sudden flame, its grave covered a week afterwards with green grass. Choate House has frivolously come to rest a block north and now houses, of all things, the department of research in physiological optics, lucubrating over the devious ramifications of aniseikonia, a well nigh universal eye defect not then dreamed of. Other houses once surrounding Butterfield have scattered to Hanover's sundry outskirts. Where Alpha Chi Rho once met in secret conclave, a proud new White Church spire rises. On the site of unmourned Chandler, a mall and driveway, and beyond it the landscaped parking area where Hubbard stood, and the tall cemetery pines. The mountain of Baker is flanked by its foothills, sumptuous Sanborn English House near the old White Church site, and Carpenter Art Building on the North Side. From Baker's west entrance, between these two, Tuck Mall stretches out to the new Tuck School group on the right and the new Thayer School on the left, the Norwich hills beyond. The Gile-Streeter-Lord dormitory group follows along the edge of the cemetery beyond Hitchcock, and nearer, across the street, is the Natural Science Building. What thirteen years ago was an excavation is Dick's House now, and beside it the hospital has put out new growths in every direction. Eastward, between the then just complete Davis Field House and the gym is a squash courts building; and across the way, the Woodward-Ripley-Smith dormitory group, with spanking light-green shutters, nestles against the edge of College park. Where the enormity of Culver Hall violated the landscape, sweeps of green lawn. Within the historic brick walls of Dartmouth Hall, unharmed by the fire of 1935, there is indestructible steel and concrete, tile floors, acoustical plaster, bright walls, comfortable chairs, air-conditioning, plumbing, and all. Main Street at night gives off the red glow of neon and its show-windows glisten, here behind the black glass of a modernistic front, there behind the Georgian bay windows of the new, College-built, Lang Building. The Precinct Building, which we saw built, is now balanced on the other side by a nice new postoffice, on the corner of Main and Lebanon streets. Between South Mass and Psi U is Thayer, upper-class dining hall. A half dozen new fraternity houses here and there. And so forth, and so forth.
And over all, the unchanging and unchangeable Dartmouth; whose diamondhard quality was proved again in 1938 when the wreckage of the hurricane was cleared away, and the returning alumnus searched to find the gaps left by the missing elms.
But back again to thirteen years ago, and the wake of the 1926 hurricane which deflated Florida and buffeted your future scribe en route to the North Country. A lush September afternoon—and the bus comes over the hill. Registration and matriculation waiting lines, physical exams, swimming tests, placement tests, scholastic aptitude tests, chairs and mattresses to buy and haul, rugs to beat for sophomores, brow-beatings and monkey business in dormitory halls. Harr Condon arrives and goes under the knife for appendicitis. Smudged with burnt cork, we crush the futile hordes of '29 in the football rush. Delta Alpha, and Norwich is beaten 54-0, and the Field House is dedicated. On the 30th, THE DARTMOUTH is shrouded in black: Dr. Tucker is dead and Dartmouth has lost a great leader unknown to most of us.
October, and Ote Crandall, Jack Hodges, Jack Dobson, Ellie Gilbert and John Marsh make the glee club. Vincent Richards goes pro. With Colucci, Cole, Phinney, Adams, Bragner, Armstrong, Fraser, McDonough, Marsters, Booma and Hamm in the starting lineup, the freshman football team defeats Andover, 16-0. (Touchdowns: Bishop to Marsters, Swarthout; field goal: Rollie Booma. Marsters acting-captain.) One C. W. Hassensiffer (sic) is listed as candidate for freshman track. The Cardinals beat the Yanks in the 7th game. With touchdowns by Booma, Fraser, Marsters, the Vermont frosh are beaten, 20-0. Dud Ferguson breaks crosscountry course record, followed by Parry and Godwin in time trials. Blakey, Dean, Glasgow, Hobbs, Lewis, Marble, Mitchell, Sanders make band for Yale trip, but Yale wins, 14-7. University Afloat is editorialized on, and Marsters, Hamnii Jeremiah star in defeat of Dean Academy 9-0, with field goal by Colucci. Queen Marie at White House. Marsters, Colucci, Cole, Bishop, Adams star in defeat of Harvard freshmen, 27-6. Hodges, Locke-Lewis, Kilbourne, Shaskan, Heimbach, Howe, Nels Blake are pirates in Captain Applejack, houseparty play. Chapel changed from vespers to midmorning. Assassin misses Mussolini by 14 inch—what a miss! Houdini dies.
November: The Occom Council (remember?) initiates "Athletics for the Unskilled," with inter-dorm touch football—a far cry from the blood and sweat shed these October and November afternoons for fraternity, dormitory, class, or publication in eager, eye-gouging competition. George F. Baker announced as donor of new library, in preparation. Theta Delt house dedicated.
Statistics show that of 661 entering Thirtymen, 387 came from high schools, 274 from prep schools; represented 33 states and 9 foreign countries; 310 (47%) had worked on publications; 220 had played football; 157 were former class officers (90 presidents); 22 were valedictorians, 6 salutatorians; 156 were dramatists.
A '30 vox pop protests Vigilance Committee rule against fur coats. The varsity football team, defeated by Yale, Brown, and Harvard, returns from 24-23 defeat by Cornell, and at 1:15 a.m. some of us are in a line stretching down the hill toward White River to welcome the returning team and escort it to a bonfire which some of us built with various and sundry movable combustibles, not excluding a few gates and barn doors ('30 UP!) Max Norton, graduate manager of athletics, denies rumors of "eastern conference" (now smells just as sweet by name of Ivy League). President Hopkins advocates Men of Dartmouth as alma mater song in place of TheDartmouth Song. Nels Blake and Hank Embree make Dear Brutus cast. Sam Adams presides at class smoker, with Heinie Stewart doing xylophone solo and Ev Fox leading songs. With Kisevalter, Dennison, Schmitz, Humbert, Faye, Cohen, Alderman, Schuster, Rockefeller, Stark, and Kip Chase on first string lineup, '30 soccer team closes season, with Tom Dent saying There has never been a classwith as many good soccer players in it asthe class of 1930, singling out Alderman, Rockefeller and Stark for praise. Rog Ela makes varsity debating team. Fundamentalism vs. Evolution is an issue' (Dr. Straton vs. Dr. Hankins). Clark Murray chairman of freshman Carnival party. Dud Day, Bill Christe, and Bill Lucas make Thanksgiving Jacko. Sixty-nine report for freshman basketball. Fran Horn makes DCA Thanksgiving trip to Mohegan Parish, Connecticut, where Sam Occom once held forth. Biggest headline of the fall for announcement of Gile-Streeter-Lord dorms and Natural Science Building. A sneak-thief steals fifty bucks from Dick Parker in South Hall. And winter comes
A. I. D. '30
