The Weekender
"Genus Undergraduatus" Emerges in Full CryAnd Brightest Plumage at This Time of the Year
SPRING is here; and all over the land the voice of the turtle is heard. But in New England college towns, there is one call that is louder than that of the turtlethe call of the weekender.
The call of the weekender varies according to his transportational facilities. It may be a deep bass, eight-cyclinder roar, or a piping klaxon sound from the nose of a "cute" old car that the girls at Holyoke have christened Calvin, because it does not choose to run. The call of the weekender may be the metallic zztt noise that's the sound of the zipper closing on the weekend satchel, or it may be more of a mute appeal, in the form of a thumb stretched yearningly in the direction of Green Mountain.
The weekender is the guy who spends Monday through Friday noon acting student-like and omniscient; and then, from Friday noon on, life to him is a mad scramble to put the town-limits sign behind him as he takes off for female points south. Of course this isn't the only type of weekender. The people who enjoy the sport can be roughly divided into two groups: (x) male, and (2) female.
The female weekender is somewhat better off than the male. In the first place, any female, compared to a Dartmouth man, is more accessible. If, however, the barrier of inaccessibility is surmounted, what is the Dartmouth man to do when the "off weekend" question (inevitable) is asked, "What will we do all that time?" There is really only one solution—and that is to do all weekending away from home.
This further subdivides the male weekenders into those (1) with wheels, and (a) without wheels. It is hard to judge which of these groups is the most unfortunate. Being a earless weekender is something of a challenge.
One of the main weapons o£ the earless is the Daily Dartmouth advertisement. As more and more snow melts, and as the weather gets balmier and balmier, the creative geniuses of these bards of the classified column blossom forth. Poetry, plaintive pleas, offers to pay, drive, entertain, or just plain push are crammed into seventeen words (for fifty cents) on page three of the campus daily. These transportational voci clamanti begin in mid-winter with prosaic little announcements such as: "WANTED; ride to Wheaton this Friday. See Lem Southbound, 510 Gile." As January howls into February, and February freezes into March, the ads get more and more plaintive and more and more flowery.
By May the weekend ad ranges from the prosaic six-word request all the way to the poetical, "hang-the-expense" fullblown poem. The cuter the ad, the greater its appeal. For instance, "To Wheaton, to Wheaton to date a fat pig; home again, home again, jiggety-jig, but I can't go unless I get a ride on Friday" may not appeal to the girl in question, but it's a sure attention-getter.
And if worse comes to worse, there s always the B & M. Traveling on the train is practically an admission of failure in the creative writing of ads, unless, of course, the weekender has had the foresight to arrange a schedule that calls for no classes on Thursday and Friday, and he is therefore taking off on earless Wednesday afternoon. Then he is practically forced to take the B 8c M, but escapes the sooty stigma usually attached to those who arrive at Northampton via the "Broken and Maimed."
Clothes are an important factor on any weekend. No car-owner wants to take along a weekend passenger who is going to appear on Friday with a large twosuiter, a zipper bag, three loose pairs of shoes, and a bag-wrapped tuxedo to be hung up inside. And if he is the athletic type, he may appear at the embarkation point with a pair of ice skates, a badminton racket, and a set of darts in addition to his other equipage. The "entertaining, life-of-the-party" type is another unwelcome passenger. He appears on the scene wearing a spacetaking Joe College raccoon coat, a straw hat (which he wears for the first eight miles, takes off for the second eight, and spends the rest of the trip cautioning people not to sit on), a ukelele, a flash camera, and three joke books which he memorizes all the way south.
The inexperienced weekender is easy to spot. He packs to leave, and then, perhaps to ease his conscience, takes along three text-books, so that he can "catch up on the studies in off moments." This is definitely indicative of a warped sense of values, and a lack of experience. In the first place, it is an insult to a girl to appear prepared for a dull weekend, and in the second place, no one has ever invented a weekend containing "spare time.'
The ideal traveler appears in a buttondown oxford shirt which supposedly will stay clean all weekend, a pair of grey flannel trousers, and a gabardine coat. In his bag he can carry a razor, toothbrush, the grey flannel coat to match the trousers he has on, a pair of gabardine trousers to match the coat he has on, and an extra bow tie. There he is, set for almost anything, with two suits, two sport coats, two pairs of slacks, two ties, and he can even carry an extra clean shirt, if he feels the need. The chances are he'll never get to wear all this equipment unless he's a quick-change artist or a changer-for-dinner.
Of course, weekending isn't all pure tun and gaiety. There are hazards and risks to run at any women's college. The biggest risk is the lodging problem. Girls seem to delight in getting together and picking out the mouldiest rooming house possibe, presided over by some sort of psychologically misfitting, Charles Addams landlady. These women insist on complaining about the troubles of their profession as they let you in at 3 a.m. (they always have to wait up), or are the frustrated mother type.
Just as you are tripping down the hall towards the john, towel wrapped gapingly about you (boarding house towels aways seem to be the size of small paper nap-kins), shaving and combing equipment clutched in your hot, little hand, Mother Machree invariably comes sneaking up the stairs in order to explain to you how the radiator works in your room, or why the window at the back has the nasty habit of slamming itself shut on your fingers.
Twin beds are practically unheard-of in New England, and the money-grabbing purveyor of lodging always puts two people into what she laughingly calls a "double bed." This "double bed" is a form of resting place found only in New England boarding houses and slave-labor camps in Siberia. Sleeping in one of these monstrosities is like trying to spend a comfortable night on the headwall at Tuckerman's, if Tuckerman's were paved with cobblestones. These beds always have a high side and a low side, and there is no advantage to sleeping on either. _i : ~ i^„.T
When you are sleeping on the low side, you can't. You spend the night pushing the bedmate back up the hill, or, if he manages to stay there for a while, you lie there awake, feeling like Damocles. If you end up on the high side of the bed, there is nothing for you to do but hang on for dear life to the edge of the mattress. This is all well and good, until your hands go numb and you have to let go, or (mir- acle of miracles!) you doze off, dream of falling from a high building, and wake to find your fellow-sufferer loudly cursing and trying to kick you off of him.
And there is always the problem of the roommate. The landlady seems to have an inborn knack for picking out the most impossible room-sharer for your two- night stand in her chamber of horrors. One of the strangest things about the sleeping arrangement, is that the unfeel- ing boor from Harvard or Brown who is sharing your pallet, always manages to go to sleep first, and keeps you awake with grunts and snorts for hours. It seems that they have courses at Harvard and Brown called "Noisy Sleeping 12."
The roommate isn't the only hazard. Beware the blind date! There are two types of blind dates (and many subtypes). One type is the large, bouncing, blind date who feels your muscles as you step out of the car, and burbles things about "squash before dinner" and "volleyball afterwards." This is the galumphing type to avoid. She always has large muscles bouncing up and down inside her legs like croquet balls, and always knows where to find an extra bicycle for you for that Saturday afternoon pedal up New England hills. There is an inter- esting but little-known fact about New England hills; when you are aboard one of these malfunctioning, moving squirrel- cages, they all go up.
W - J O JL And if you don't draw one of these bellowing, bulging beauties, you are bound to get a simpering aesthetic who wants to explore your soul" and who thinks that "seventeenth-century archi- tecture is the most stimulating thing ever." But enough of this; I'm off to Holyoke for the weekend.
