The Undergraduate Chair

A Variety of Thoughts on the Sad Passing of The Nugget, Home of the Wisecrack and Source of Dartmouth Folklore

THE PERIOD OF MOURNING which followed the Nugget fire was short, and almost whimsically pathetic. The fact was that there were more jokes than tears, and it seems that this was as it should have been. Undiluted sadness over the loss of the Nugget would have been irreverent to the memory of the little theatre we loved so well. The Nugget's personality was inconsistent with our ever taking its existence or passing without a couple of laughs.

One man, as he picked a steaming brick from the ruins for a memento, said, "I'm almost glad it burned down. I haven't missed a show all semester and I don't know what's going to become of me." It was a very bleak Friday morning. The floor of the auditorium was covered with black wreckage, two walls were caved in, and firemen were still squirting water on the hot spots.

The blaze had been discovered at about four in the morning by Patrolman Archie Thorburn as he paced his lonely beat. He saw a wisp of smoke in Nugget Alley and called the engines, which arrived when the flames burst through the roof in a huge column, followed shortly by the collapse of the roof, and a wall on the Howe Library side of the building. By the time the fire was noticed, the theatre was already beyond saving, and it was still smoking as we walked down after chow, "to see the tortured ruins."