Ma Smalley: An Institution

Dartmouth Men are Fond of Mary Smalley, Eating Club Proprietress and Notable Citizen of Hanover

DEAR MA:

Several weeks ago the editor wrote measking if I'd do a sketch of Ma Smalleyfor the ALUMNI MAGAZINE. I wrote backthat I'd be only too honored to attemptsuch a portrait and asked him to give mea few facts to go with this piece. So theeditor visited you and discovered incidental byplays concerning your bloodlines, etc., etc., which I tucked into mysuitcase before departing on January IIfor a two weeks' skiing vacation north ofMontreal—in the Laurentians. I firmly intended to give up there.

Well, Ma, the only thing which gave wasa piece of my proud carcass—all of whichnow lies in a shrouded horizontal mass inthe Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal.

cup and cannon balled some 15 yards intoa herd of immobile, ne'gh almost immovable, oildrums. I hit this platoon of drumswith considerable intensity (200 lbs. hittingstonewall at 45 m.p.h.—figure it out foryourself). When I came to I was floundering around like a beached whale, feeblysurmising that I was ready for the bag, boxor whatever it is they crate defunct bodiesaway in.You see, Ma, I was blistering down a hillcalled No. 69, taking the damn thing astight as I could go. The snow was hardpacked—more ice than powder—and hurtling toivards the bottom near the ski towhouse I attempted to swerve to my left.The skis didn't bite. I went head for tin

Two hours later I arrived at the R. V. H.feeling not chipper but nevertheless alive.They X-rayed my noble frame—a Dr. Phillips who studied with your old crony Gordon Bennett and Crawford Hinman atHarvard Med.—took charge and all hefound was a broken collarbone, chewedleft ear and neck and a few sore spots.

So here I am flat on my back thinkingabout you and how much better off I mighthave been if I had gone to Hanover andspent a few hours on Oak Hill and longerones squabbling over old times with youout in the kitchen.

ONE OF MY FINAL peace offerings before graduating in 1937 was a quiet visit to Ma Smalley. It was a hot June noon, three days before graduation, and the object of my affection was rocking contentedly and clucking to herself on her front porch.

"Ma," I said, "I have a present for you." "Oh," she said, "so you've got a present for me. Orchids I suppose?" "Not exactly, Ma," I gurgled disrobingtwo salmon caught at Pierce Pond, Maine. "For your own special self," I said as Ma blossomed with smiles.

And then the good lady led the way into her kitchen and for the next two hours we talked of things Hanover. Ma filled my special milk stein, cut two slabs of cake, with her big torn cat prowling the table tops.

For two years I had taken a majority of my meals at the Smalley Shrine. And always the biggest item on the menu had been Ma herself. Football—Ma doesn't know a goal post from an inning concerning the finer points of the game. But she's the best Dartmouth rooter in town and when the Indian loses it is a harpoon in Ma's expansive side. When we win she's just busting with maternal pride.

During our years the football men were Ma's special headache. Although she never admitted it—she enjoyed having them badgering her for three months a year.

"Football men can be the most spoiled brats in the world—especially at meal time. But by and large the good ones far outnumber the clucks. I love to see men eat, eat big. But I can't stand the persnickety ones." That was Ma's philosophy and lament concerning training table at 5 College Street.

During our span Ma's especial "lovers" as she so honored them were Mutt Ray, Johnny Merrill, Bob McLeod, Johnny Handrahan and myself. Of the lot Johnny —at times the silent one—was the hardest to win over.

"Still waters run deepest" was Ma's evaluation of Johnny. "The rest of you make more noise than a carload of brass cymbals. But Johnny, he thinks so much more than he says. Then, of course, he's a Deke. Psi U's, Alpha Delts, Sigma Chis—they're a dime a barrel. But you take the Dekes- they're a man's fraternity."

For Ma has long been loyal to her Dekes. Chastise their lot and she descends upon you like a huge mothter hen protecting her brood of irascible chicks. With wings flapping scandalously she beats the wind out of her antagonists' sails usually winding down her one-woman anschluss with, "What would a Psi U like yourself know about anything anyhow. Lavender painted toilet seats no less, nothing but toilet seats, in fact, a strange breed of cats I must say!"

And with the tang of victory filling her sheets, she'd set sail for her kitchen, for all the world like a freshly rigged four master churning through a field of porpoises.

THE CLUB'S BEGINNINGS

How then, did Ma get into this mouth filling business—a vocation which has made the tagline, Ma Smalley, synonymous with the best in Dartmouth eateries.

Ma's late husband, Will Smalley, was a technician for the physics department and maestro of the machine shop in Wilder Hall. Will Smalley was never well and Ma's two sons Bee and Richard inherited their father's ailments—spleen and jaundice trouble. Right from the start Ma has more than carried a cross, what with years of discouraging family illness.

During Christmas vacation of the college year 1913-14, she was asked by several students, stalemated in Hanover, if she would feed them during the holidays. Prominent in this group of ten were Sigurd Larmon '14, Alex Tuck '14, and the late Charles (Kid) Claeys '14, Mrs. Smalley agreed to the plan in order to supplant a dwindling family income.

Vacation over, the group remained because they had invested in such a good time and the ten brought others with them. Mrs. Smalley, realizing, she was on the wave of a good thing decided to stick with it. She started tables for girls working in Hanover plus Dartmouth faculty bachelors.

"But," she chuckles, "it wasn't but a few years till the students had crowded the faculty and girls right out."

In 1920 Mrs. Smalley, having been awarded the accolade of "Ma," moved to larger quarters across College Street and at this place she currently handles some 85 student boarders plus 24 student workers.

Ma has long realized that despite herself she couldn't handle the whole show. Back in '19 she started her string of majordomos—"boys with money sense who could keep books and act as floorwalker."

Bill McCarter '19, Director of Athletics, was one of her first along with Kenneth Gilchrist '19, Bill Cunningham '19, Dick Southwick '20, Gordon Bartlett '20 (killed in France in 1918), Orton Hicks '21, Tom Norcross '21. Tom Cleveland '21, Jim Hamilton '22, Bob Elsasser '21, Lyle McKown '35, Josh Davis '27, Jeff Glendinning '28, and Al Marsters '30.

Start hazing her on these names and a flock of others come swarming to her mind —"Why, there was Bob Borwell, Pete Haffenreffer, Chet Bolles, Jack Davis, Bud Petrequin and Hank Bjorkman, all of the class of '25. Then that pair of whales Wally and Cy Aschenbach—biggest team of dishwashers in history. Used to think I was broad till I'd get a load of them. Fill one side of the kitchen, they would."

Everett Baker '24 and his brother Morgan '29, Bill Hatch and Bob Hall '24, Bob MacPhail and Jack McAvoy '28 are a few more of countless names she has pegged for future reference in the sun room of her memories. All the tables, shelf space, and mantle in her living room weren't enough to hold the Xmas cards she received last year.

Ask Ma if her boys have changed since she started administering to their stomachs some 27 years ago.

"Well I think they've grown more studious with time," she says. "Leastwise they discuss classroom work a lot while taking their meals nowadays. Another thing, they blush now when I roll into the midst of an off-color story. Why in the old days they used to rush to me with any new joke or strange happening bumped into while away from school. It got so I could usually go 'em one better on a recount. But no more. However, I don't know whether their current silence is because the boys have changed or in deference to my getting older. Perhaps it's a little of both."

Let it be said in passing that Ma's pungent wit, sense of zest and rollicking good belly laughs were rich in Falstaffian tremors. I suspect that's still the case.

For Ma has seen and felt too much of life to be awed by it. She has cried just as whole-heartedly as she has laughed. But whatever the situation she has always answered the next round swinging from the hips.

Ma impresses me as a delightful transplantation of Chaucer's famed Wife of Bath in a Hanoverian setting. Indeed it's not too much to imagine Chaucer's most fabulous female as an ideal running mate to Dartmouth's most fascinating femme. Slice it as you wish but no one in Dartmouth's maternal history is possessed with the scope of life as seen through Ma's eyes. She remains a succinct apertif of Rabelaisian fantasy with fine undertones of Chaucer's sympathetic best.

For Ma knows life. She knows character and her incredible tongue has an unconscious way of pricking adolescent bubbles of sophistry.

Ma's shrewd sense of character values has long been noted. Once crossed by a worker she's like the original Dartmouth Indian. She forgets like an elephant. When she comes down on a soul, he doesn't forget it. She'll curse, stamp and rant a work shirker to hell's door step and back but if that miserable soul, bailiwicked in jail from White River Junction to Boston, appeals to Ma Smalley to "go my bail," she always comes through with the ready. Many times Ma has answered a 3 A.M. phone call from students with an S.O.S. plea.

Only Dean Neidlinger receives more lurid tales of student woe than Ma. And I suspect over the years in a case-to-case survey she could, in several instances, hold the upper hand.

As long as students continue to laugh and thrive on her food, Ma intends to continue.

"The Smalley Club has always been a lot of fun," says Ma. "As soon as it ceases to be that I intend to retire and roll around town in a rubber tired hack with red wheels. I hope that day is far away."

"We have had a lot of fun," in fact, seems to be the way Ma would sum up her notable Hanover career.

Ma is grateful to the boys who have helped her—many of them having given so generously of their own time and interest to make her job easier.

She adds that she is grateful to the College for the good living she has had in commercializing her kitchen which saved her family financially. Others would say that the College is grateful to Ma Smalley for establishing and maintaining a high standing eating club, always popular with the student body.

Hanover needs Ma Smalley as much as Ma needs Hanover. For she remains a distinct Dartmouth legend—what's more a thoroughly alive legend. Long may she wave.

LEFT: MRS. SMALLEY REPRESSES A LAUGH WHILE POSING WITH HER BROOD. RIGHT: A BACKGROUND OF CHRISTMAS CARDS