With the D.O.C.
DOWNPOUR GIVES WINTER CARNIVAL UNIQUE SEAGOING ATMOSPHERE
IT LOOKED PRETTY BLEAK when the first Carnival special pulled into the Hanover-Norwich station from New York early Friday morning, and the skiers at the top of the Moose Mountain trail talked of rain—even though this was Dartmouth Winter Carnival and it never rains in Hanover in February.
A little later, about the time the special I train from Boston arrived, Captain Charlie McLane zipped down that Moose Moun- tain trail in 1:15.6 for Dartmouth, break- ing Dick Durrance's 1939 Carnival record of 1:16.4. Dartmouth took the lead in the ig4i Carnival meet, and McGill, tradi- tional Canadian rival, was not far behind in second place, followed by the New Hampshire skiers in third.
By the time the last downhill contestant had crossed the finish line it was raining, I and the gray skies promised Dartmouth Carnival little relief.
The Intercollegiate Skating Championship races started on schedule at 2:00, and Johnny Roukema of Colby easily won all the events save the relay in the water on top of the Occom Pond ice. Up on the golf course the langlauf skiers waxed up and started out on the 15-kilometer cross-country course. And at 3:30 a fairly large group of Dartmouth rooters gathered around the finish line to wait for Charlie McLane, for this was his event. They hadn't waited long when word came through that McLane had taken ill and fallen in a faint near Oak Hill and was unable to finish.
Allison Merrill ran the course in 1-15:31 and put New Hampshire on top of the langlauf scoring. But when the first day's results had been tabulated, Dartmouth was still in first place, New Hampshire had pulled itself up to second, and the visiting Royal Norwegian Air Force skiers from Toronto were third.
By the time the torchlight parade had brought 2700 people out to the Outdoor Evening set and 32 drenched Carnival dates had been chosen for the Queen's Court by New Hampshire's Governor Blood, Walter Humphrey '14, and Fred Hawthorne of the Herald Tribune, it was really pouring. But the 2700 spectators stayed and the show started with a halfinch inch of water on the pond. When 80 skiers from the ten Carnival teams came down the hill behind the set into the spotlights, the three judges up in the Golf Club House had selected Miss Joan Walters of Rochester, Minn., as 1941 Carnival Queen.
It rained harder and harder. And the show went on. And everyone doing and watching it felt the same way. Outdoor Evening was a success.
After 2700 people had dried off, the Players did Abe Lincoln in Illinois in Webster with Steve Bradley '39 in the title role, and the Glee Club sang one of its best concerts in the Little Theatre.
Fraternity dancing started around midnight, and the fellows who left their dates at the house at 4:00 were a little happier when they looked up at the sky and saw the stars. It had stopped raining.
Saturday morning the sun rose on a campus that was mud and slush and dirty gray snow. The skiers piled into a couple of trucks and went over to Woodstock for the slalom after an investigation of conditions at Oak Hill had left no other choice. "Suicide Six" didn't have much to offer, but Doug Mann of McGill managed to dodge most of the poles in 1:35.4, followed by Charlie McLane, who had returned to the competition in good shape. Meanwhile, back in Hanover, the Dartmouth and Yale hockey teams were battling to an overtime scoreless tie on the Davis Rink.
Saturday afternoon it got colder and cloudy again, but everyone went out to the Big Jump. It was a good exhibition, and Rodg Simpter did 35.5 meters in topnotch form to put Dartmouth first in the event. And that ended the 1941 Carnival ski meet. No one was sure who would win because the meet was to be scored on a sixeven t basis, including the combined lang-lauf-jumping and the new combined down-hill-slalom.
The final results were posted in Robinson Hall at 7 o'clock Saturday evening. Dartmouth had lost its first Carnival meet since 1935, once again to New Hampshire.
The final standings were: New Hampshire, 564.9; Dartmouth, 559.1; McGill, 546.2; and then the Norwegians, Middlebury, Harvard, Norwich, Wisconsin, and Vermont. The visiting Chileans dropped out.
That left everyone a little disappointed and very tired. All the skiers went over to the Commons for the Competitors' Banquet at 7:30, and most everybody else gathered at the Gym to watch Dartmouth down Princeton in basketball, 55-4.0.
The Players and the Glee Club repeated their performances and the Columbia Broadcasting System finished off the weekend with a 15-minute coast-to-coast broadcast from the Ski Hut.
The old-timers said that Dartmouth had never had a Carnival week-end like that one, but everyone went home Sunday tired and happy.
