"Socrates"

THANKS TO the timely and able pen of Dartmouth Senior, Parker Paul, we are able to lift bodily from The Dartmouth an article that affords some insight into how it feels to ski in top notch competition ... then again, this story starts a chain of memories because it concerns no less than the older son of our own late Harry Wells, so many years Dartmouth's Superintendent of Buildings and a leading architect throughout northern New England . . . Stocky Eddie Wells who was labelled by the N. Y. Times last winter as "latest sensation of the crack Dartmouth College ski team," is a quiet lad who tosses all caution to the winds once he starts those perilous journeys down seemingly perpendicular slopes. How interviewer Paul ever got so many words from Silent Eddie is an enigma.

The quoted story follows:

"Socrates" brightened up a bit as he always does when he has something to say. We had asked him how it felt to be competing on the greatest ski team in America. "Socrates" is Eddie Wells, also known as "Si" for his economy of words. Behind him lies a staggering list of championships, among them the Chilean downhill championship of 1937 and a fourth in the National combined downhill and Slalom last spring. But the diminutive, thrifty-worded varsity skier seems unimpressed by them all. With all his victories he still has his qualms about competitive skiing.

"How does it feel to ski for the Dartmouth Outing Club in a big meet?" is the single question we put to Eddie.

BEACH WAGON NAUSEA

"It feels a lot better just to ski," came the reply. "You leave Hanover in the D. O. C. beach-wagon, or, if you are luckier, in a heated Ford VB. Again, if you are lucky, you get a seat in front where you don't get carsick bumping around until just about ten or fifteen minutes after you would get sick in the back seat. Which makes you feel very happy about your prospects.

"When you finally get to the place where you are going to stay two hours after you have planned, you don't have time before dark to make that practice run you have counted on, and besides you feel too carsick to try it if there is time. The managers have made all the arrangements for food and lodging but somehow everything does not seem to be much like the paradise that the folders have told you about. And then you remember that propaganda course you took.

AVOID THE DANCE

"There is invariably a big party or dance before the meet. You can go to it if you want to, but you don't go because the coach tells you, or you figure it out for yourself, that on the next day you might be able to respond more quickly to trees and things which keep trying to run into you. You might even save a second here or there. And besides you have learned about wax, and you figure that by spending two or three hours putting on a good wax job you may be able to knock off another three or four seconds. Which is, after all, what they send you to the meet for.

"You always have your most fun the day of the meet. The other two thousand skiers have made pot holes all over the trail to make it more thrilling for you and you wish that they would not be so modest about their accomplishments, for you would like to thank them individually. Also, all the eight inches of powder that fell the day before you get there have been very carefully pushed up in piles at the side leaving you a splendid track of glare ice on which to race. This makes the race fast and thrilling to all the competitors. Also the crowd has more fun because people get hurt more often and you have to stop and carry them down the trail to the ambulance. This creates excitement and is generally good. If you are a competitor you lose out on this transportation of the injured, unless you happen to be so fortunate as to be injured yourself. Then you are the center of attraction.

COME EARLY, START LATE

"They tell you to be at the start at ten o'clock so that you will have plenty of time before the race at ten thirty. You come fifteen minutes early so that you will be sure to be on time and you will have a few minutes to rest. They finally start the race at eleven, but you have been very lucky and have drawn number 53 so you have got another 53 minutes in which to rest. You get cold in the meantime but the rest does you good.

"Finally you start down and at every turn you are sure you added an unnecessary second. But that's what makes it fun. You can always go back sometime later and do better. Finally you come to the steepest part. You can take it easy if you want to, but you'll never win that way. So you take it straight and maybe you won't get hurt. The ground tries to pound your legs up into your body as you make the turn.

You MAY WIN

"Finally you get to the finish line, and you stand around for a long time trying to find out how you did. At length the judges come out of the huddle, and you find out that you did not do so well, or if you are lucky they may give you a medal or a trophy to take home with you. This makes you feel pretty good, and you take it home and hang it up in your room. But after a while the effect wears off and you put it in the back of a drawer where you never see it again until your wife gets it out to show to your kids what a great man their father was when he was at Dartmouth."