Summer's Lease
WE OBSERVE WITH mingled emotions the approach of a new college term and the close of Hanover's first "quiet summer" since the inter-bellum years of 1919-1941. Prior to that era there was summer school, with co-educational enrollment, courses in Contemporary Literature (Edith Wharton and—sshh—Theodore Dreiser) and Esthetic Dancing in the Bema, picnics on Velvet Rocks, an occasional jaunt to the mountains in a borrowed Franklin or Stutz, and meals in Commons under the cynical eye of Jim Haggerty.
In more recent summers the village has resounded to the tread of marching feet, the clatter of slide rules, and the banging of covers on well filled and satisfied notebooks. First with Navy indoctrinees, who crammed as much as they could of an Annapolis course into eight weeks and did all their shopping and shoe repairing and hair-cutting between 5:30 and 6 p.m. Then with V-12 students, who did much the same thing with slightly more flexible limbs and curricula. And, finally, with exwarriors who were accelerating to finish their college courses and get themselves and their women and young to heck out of South Fayer and Wigwam Circle and safe at last in the wide, wide world.
But that has ended and we have had a season without the roar of student convertibles, which have replaced jalopies in student favor, or the glare of lighted dormitories. The faculty has vegetated in its gardens or at the shore or at other insti- tutions' summer schools. Main Street has closed shop at six o'clock, even on Satur- days, so that the nearest tin of aspirin or emergency loaf or quart of milk in the eve- ning has been at White River or Gill's store in Norwich. The Nugget has oper- ated in an un-air-conditioned Webster Hall with skeleton audiences. Robins have twittered on the Green undisturbed, in early morning hours, by Punjab Fusileers, Dirty Dozens, or other long forgotten so- dalities dedicated to their dispersal. Even the second-year Thayer engineers, having finally determined the area of the campus to their satisfaction, have wandered afar to ply their mysterious trade in Dewey, or Chase, or Elysian fields.
There has been activity of a sort, with many out-of-state license plates to count in front of the Inn and great show of busyness on the golf course and at Storrs Pond, but the weird maneuvering of mo- tor-borne foreigners, like the faint grind- ings of administrative and library machin- ery, has had an unreal and far-away aspect, infringing but little on the general peace of the campus scene. Even the con- struction of a new kitchen for the Inn and complete reassignment of the College PBX telephone numbers have been back- lot or undercover operations that did not hamper contemplation of the beauty and charm of the Village and the slumbering academic giant of the College which could actually be observed,. not merely recol- lected, in tranquility.
The one summer operation of real visi- bility was on the roof of the Ad Building, and that one was pursued so fully in keep- ing with the prevailing tranquility that the scaffolding was finally considered, un- til its very recent disappearance, a perma- ment embellishment of Parkhurst's facade. Two nearby elm trees and a maple quietly bit the dust as the College's tree-keepers protected the species, Nazi fashion, by liquidation at the first sign of weakness or senility, having previously taken the pre- caution of developing an ulmaceous youth corps adjacent.
Now, having revelled for a brief season in the quiet of Hanover, we face its other delight, the activity and bustle of the college year, the more eagerly for the happy respite of the summer past. A re- vised college calendar delays the actual start of classes until October, but the sounds of football operations have been audible since Labor Day; and, notwithstanding the printer's new pledges, it is likely that the Big Green will have discovered what is in store for it in Philadelphia by the time you read this. The football ticket of- fice, newly encased in glass brick, fluores- cently luminous in the former gloom of the Trophy Room and looking for all the world like an extremely high-toned public convenience, is recording ticket applica- tions for the impending season, and the last of the incessant dormitory repairs is being rushed to completion. Moving Day has already passed, or is passing, as the bottle-neck of kitchen plastering in apart- ment A is relieved and a chain reaction starts, allowing family B to vacate its apartment, which in turn allows family C to move, and opens a space for newly ar- rived family D. In former times faculty families stood still in the center of the campus and let the houses move around them, like a Neo-classical drama in which the Unities are strictly observed; but with over-crowding and a minimum of new construction, the end of every summer sees local households in a state of flux, as fam- ilies jockey for slightly larger or warmer or drier accommodations.
The College grows in personnel and plant and purpose, but this last summer has been more like old times, and what more could old-timers ask?
