The Undergraduate Chair
Hanover, Looking to Carnival, Experiences Again All The Pleasure and Blasphemy of New England Winter
FIVE YEARS CAN GO BY pretty fast. The individual years seem to drag when occupations are monotonous, uncer- tain or hazardous, but when they are all over and one has time to look back, they seem to have fled by and there is a sharp awareness that you have even less time to pack in all those life-long ambitions which you constantly dream about. And so with these last five years. The war years. It doesn't seem possible, now that College has returned to an almost pre-war norm, that Dean Neidlinger was forced to issue the following statement in The Dartmouth at just about this time in 1945:
There are two important reasons for cancelling the Winter Carnival house parties and social events. First, because the College had to be forced to face squarely the fact that the nation was engaging in an effort to win the war on a scale that required every citizen to give up luxuries and idle pleasures and to devote his time, his energies and his income to constructive purposes. Second, because Carnival was a social event of such proportions that it occupied the minds of Dartmouth students not only for a weekend but for a week preceding and a week following the Carnival. It delayed the whole process of getting started on the second semester program. (Therefore).... students should fit themselves for maximum usefulness in the unnumbered years of war that lie ahead and for the years of reconstruction that must follow.
The war has been fought with all the time, energy and income necessary to win it, and now we can have again our luxuries and pleasures, not the least of which is the famed Dartmouth Carnival.
Yes, winter has once again settled its white mantle on the Hanover plain, with the big weekend and all its accompanying whoop-de-do less than a month away. But the fickle weather of central New Hampshire has done more than its share to keep everyone guessing since the College reopened on January 8. At that time, winter sports enthusiasts, returning from the Christmas holidays, emerged from the crowded coaches in White River Junction with sighs of relief, eager to try Oak Hill, Woodstock, and the new Altow slopes of Norwich. For there was plenty of snow and conditions looked good.
Anything but enthusiastic, however, were many of the married veterans who had gone off with their families for a brief respite from Wigwam and Sachem villages. On their return, evidence was all too abundant that, at even a dollar an hour, hastily installed water pipes would freeze, seams would crack in roofs and there would be plenty of snow-shoveling for the boss. With conditions such as these, New Year's resolutions and pledges such as"I promise to be nice to my wife" or "Whiskey is no longer a part of my life" or "No more swearing" were immediately chucked over towards the nearby Hanover High School or Connecticut River. The hardware stores appreciated a temporary boom in the sale of shovels, crampons and chains, but the State Road Department pressed into service a half-dozen vigilantes to stay the nocturnal pilfering of its highway sandpiles.
In the village itself, two days after Christmas, 21 inches of snow piled up, making driving precarious and walking messy. The Chamber of Commerce put out a call for volunteer shovel-wielders and after a number of trucks had been donated by the Trumbull Company, about fifty Hanoverians, including President Dickey, answered the call. The citizens cleared Main Street in less than four hours.
But soon after classes started, rain came. Then snow. Then rain again, with a freeze and short tempers. Stone entrances to buildings became pitfalls and scenes of varied, sometimes colorful, spasms of vituperation against Eleazar, New England, the Regal Shoe Company, and above all, that process of congealing hydrogen and oxygen atoms which is the cause of ice at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
In spite of all the discomforts, the preparations for Carnival are going ahead at a feverish pace. Headed by Barry Marks '47 and an able committee of assistants, the weekend of February 14-15 promises to be a big one.
The usual theme for the snow-sculpture contest, in which all the fraternities and dormitories compete, and which last year displayed a be-jeeped Indian bouncing along with a beer barrel, entitled "Return of The Native," will be done away with in hopes that a wider range of subject matter will produce more originality for the individual house committees. There will be a central campus figure, however, an abstract, 25-foot high figure, representing a skier schussing a slope. A ski meet with six colleges is planned, along with the revival of Outdoor Evening, at which the celebrated crowning of the Carnival Queen will take place.
Yes, winter has come again to Hanover. The white, frosted breaths in the cold morning air, the clank of automobile chains on the streets, the magnificently clear moonlight nights, hockey games in the rink, the coonskin cap, the red DOC jackets, "22 below at our house," and the sidewalk snowplow. They all add up to a familiar scene that will be recalled nostalgically in years to come. A clean start. Here, in America, reconstruction has been easy.
1947 WINTER CARNIVAL COMMITTEE. The men responsible for Dartmouth's first full-fledged postwar Carnival on February 14-15 include, left to right, front row: James Biggie '47, Prof. Arthur E. Jensen, Barry Marks '47, general chairman, Arthur Wilson '47, and Richard Backus '44. Back row: Roger Brown '45, Eugene Gottesman '49, Alex McPhersori '44, David Kendall '45, Walton Baker '48, Norman McWilliams '44, Burton Elliott '48, and Harlan Brumsted '46.
THE WINNING SNOW SCULPTURE MODEL for Dartmouth's 37th annual Winter Carnival, February 14-15, is displayed by the co-designers, Steve Flemer '50 (left) of Princeton, N J., and Steve Johnson 50 of Schenectady, N. Y. The design for the center-of-campus statue has a modernistic skier speeding downhill.
THIS NUCLEUS OF LETTERMEN, back for another season under Coach Walter Prager, gives the Dartmouth ski team its best hope for a successful 1947 season. Left to right, they are: Sonny Drury 48, Malcolm McLane '46, Captain Phil Puchner '44, Lowell Thomas Jr. '46, and Odd Ramsay '47.
