1942
If my hazy idea of my even hazier file is correct, things are tough this month. I must unfortunately report that I have not had to dig my way out from under a stack of mail each day. Most days I haven't even had to sweep a single postcard off my typewriter.
It's time for another one of my columnar tantrums. I don't, don't, don't, don't, don't have any mail. I can't write a column without any mail. I won't write a column without any mail. I'll turn in my suit, that's what I'll do. They can have my old '42 quill pen back, and what's more they can—here now, this is a family magazine, Farley, a tantrum is all right, but remember the postal regulations.
After punching my typewriter viciously a few times to work off the last fits of the tan trum and getting seriously gashed in the little finger for my pains, I might as well get to the task. Since I am short on manuscript sources, you will be forced to put up with some Farley Fables.
In the past month I have been running on a tight commutation schedule between Burlington and Hanover and I've gotten to know each hairpin curve of that sinuous route. It involves detonating out of here on a Friday midnight and arriving in Norwich (or Hanover) at 2 or 2:30 in the morning, the final figure depending on how steely my nerves are at the time and how much sterno my car can stand.
During one or another of these abbreviated weekends, which end at Sunday around one p.m. so that I can get back to this jute mill in time to work at four, I have seen the various members of the 1942 Hanover clan. (Go ahead and try to parse that last sentence—l dare you.) Innmeister Heald, his girth approaching the proper size to inspire a feeling of warm confidence in his kitchen, is always in evidence, with the hotel hand and glib reassurance always ready. Jane, Davey andStoney, the other members of the burgeoning Heald tribe, were all well and beamish the last time I saw them, which was seven o'clock one Sunday morning. They really must have been beamish, because I was regarding the world through nicotine-stained glasses at that point, having stayed up all Saturday night for reasons I will not divulge.
At some basketball game or other in which the Dartmouths were involved and which I underwent most comfortably lounging in the DCAC offices watching I. "Snuffy" Smith '41 wade through large amounts of currency, I saw Dan and Mrs. Seacord. That is, I saw them after the game was over and I felt safe about coming out of the office. I have a high allergy for basketball, brought on by years of forced attendance at games, and I cannot watch it for long without twitching. The Seacords were fine and were in as good humor as one could expect considering that they had just watched the Dartmouths lose. If I remember the conversation correctly Dan finishes his work as an assistant in physics at Dartmouth this year and indicated that he very likely would move along.
The young Alex Fanelli, about whose work in the Great Issues course I hear high praise every time I'm in Hanover, Betty Fanelli and I engaged in a frenetic session of charades not many weeks ago at which, I am told, several new records for thought communication were set. We were not the only ones, of course, engaged in this clandestine pastime, but we were a small and vociferous segment of the group and it seems in retrospect that we always won. The Fanellis report that son, Christopher, who has had his leg in a cast for many months is about to be relieved of that burden. I can testify from my own observation that Christopher bears up under it very well and is the best two-year-old at stumping around with a cast on his leg I have ever seen.
Also during these brief Hanover holidays of mine I have caught glimpses of Harry andNancy Bond, but regrettably short ones. I haven't seen daughter Katherine for a month or so now, but my scouts tell me she is blossoming into a proud beauty. I intend to go into executive conference with Harry soon, for it has come to my ears that he will be the new editor of those green sheets, the 1942Newsletter. A sounder choice could not have been made, and Fund Fuehrer Ad Winship is to be congratulated on both his perspicacity and his recruiting powers. Harry and I will figure out a way to punish you backward children who don't write, and will also devise a stunning reward for you good ones. Then you'll be sorry—just see if you aren't.
I've probably seen others in Hanover, but my fine reportorial touch does not bring them to hand. Some reports were circulating that the Kendall, Bartlett, Ingersoll combine was operating in Hanover over Winter Carnival weekend, but I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this communique. Speaking of Winter Carnival, I was in Hanover for a short time that weekend, and it impressed me as a singularly sad affair, probably because I am getting old and bitter. Not that the current crop of undergraduates hadn't done as well in the way of preparation as any of our affairs, although the center-of-campus sculpture did strike a curiously cryptic note. Maybe it was the weather which was as lousy as Carnival weather—notoriously bad at best—can get. Or maybe it's because you oughtn't to be on the outside looking in; a nose pressed against the window isn't the same thing as being inside at the party.
There was at least one '42, though, who wasn't on the outside looking in at Carnival. X refer to Hugo Schnabel, currently working at the Tuck Business factory, who, believe it or not, squired the Carnival Queen, a Miss Joan Parr of Montreal, who is, if you will only take the trouble to grab the March issue of this MAGAZINE and look to page 21, a mighty handsome girl.
Since I have already expressed my prejudice against that sport involving long, poorly articulated pieces of mankind, I might as well tell you that Eddie Jeremiah's current crop of malefactors is as handy a bunch at swinging a stick or a fist as any I have seen. If you have been reading Red Merrill's flowing prose each month under the Big Green Teams heading, you will probably have realized that this year's hockey team is engaged in hanging up a creditable record, having lost at this writing to BC, which oversight they avenged at a later date. Whether they are as potent as last year's team is questionable, but they pack a vast amount of distilled vengeance into their play. I have witnessed assorted reckless youths from Princeton, Yale and Harvard try to get more or less in the same rink with Jerry's boys and the results in the majority of cases have been horrible to behold. I previously had thought that these three institutions inculcated some rational processes into their young men, but after watching them rush blindly albeit courageously into the business end of a hockey buzz saw time and time again, I begin to have my doubts about the validity and pragmatic quality of the Ivy League teaching standards.
All right, now you've been exposed to the Farley Fables. You've had to drag your way this far through the lush growths of my matted verbiage. Now, and only now, do you get what little news I have. Maybe that will break your spirits—it has been kown to make strong men whimper like puppies.
From my number one correspondent, JoeLogan; two hastily despatched cards. (That's all you need to do, scrawl off a postal.) One tells of the birth of a 9 pound, 11/2 ounce boy to enlarge the family of Ken and Delia LeSure. The date of this important event was December 13, and the name of the young LeSure, Kenneth Harvey. The second card, a little more indecipherable, but only because a good part of it is in Spanish, is to say that Joe Lopez-Silvero was married recently. I'm not entirely sure about the following due to Logan's crossing out and rewriting but the bride's name approximates Matilde de Juncadella. There follows a bit of Spanish quoted by Logan which, I take it, tells when the marriage took place. Anyway here it is: eljueves diet y ocho de diciembre. The attempts at translation of this in the office here almost split this newspaper's staff into two unhealable factions, some holding out for the 28th of December and some for the 26th. Me, I don't know nuthin'.
Another birth announcement in the mail, this one from Dr. and Mrs. Joe Wilder, heralding the birth of Cathy Nina on February 25, in Philadelphia. The address, in case any of you are wondering where Joe is, is 3535 School House Lane, Philadelphia.
A good, long letter from Bill Miller was occasioned by the birth of William Garett Jr., on Feb. 21, weight, nine pounds, six-and-a-half ounces. Mother, Elise, was reported doing fine, as were Bill Sr. and Jr. Bill also reported a new address, 40 Pickney Road, Red Bank, N. J., where one of his immediate neighbors is IValt Daggett, recently the father of a second son. Up until recently Bill was associated with the Irving Trust Cos. in NYC, but now has shifted to the Commercial Bar, Inc., a commercial law list, he says, though that leaves me right back at zero. The change was a good one, Bill reports, and although he is still in NYC at present, he expects to travel a good deal in the not too distant future. One night a week he crowds himself into his old army uniform and reports to the Division Headquarters of the 50th Armored Division, New Jersey National Guard, where he is a captain on the division quartermaster staff. Bill says he has heard from Bruce and Liz Stephens, who are soon to occupy an apartment in Springfield, Mass., and got a Christmas card from Bert Anger postmarked Prague. Bert is European Claims Manager for the North American Insurance Company with headquarters in Frankfort.
In a letter from one of those elongated characters who used to play my unfavorite game, GordyMcKernan reports modestly on his slightly phenomenal success as a coach for Pinkerton Academy in Derry, N. H., some of which had already filtered through to me previously. Last year Gordy's team won the N. H. Class B state basketball championship, this fall his football team was the only undefeated one in the state, and again this winter he took his team to the Class B tournament in the state. I know they got to the finals and I have the very haziest idea that I heard they won. Evert if they didn't, it's a pretty fair-to-middling country average.
And now the clips. In the New York City Interclub Ski Championship held at Manchester, Vt., Feb. 22, the Dartmouth Outing Club of New York was paced to victory by an old gaffer named Jack Tobin. Tobe's winning time over a controlled downhill course was nearly four seconds better than that of the second place man.
Another snippet says that John Brill has entered a Franklin, N. H., law office as a law clerk after completing his law course at BU. John will take his bar exams in the spring. Visitors at the Inn from Dec. 26 through Jan. 30 included Jim Thompson, Mr. and Mrs.John Hagy, Mr. and Mrs. Addison L. Winship 11, and Frank Bartlett.
SNOWBOUND AGENT: Ad Winship, 1942's new Alumni Fund Agent, gets ready to shove off for a toboggan ride with niece Wendy Crance, center, and daughter, Sally Winship, right.
Secretary,Burlington Free Press Editorial Dept., Burlington, Vt. Treasurer, 710 Linden Ave., Los Altos, Calif. Class Agent, 17 State St., Marblehead, Mass.
