The Underĝraduate Chair
VIRUS pneumonia visited Hanover just before the Christmas migra- tion. Many a student up in Dick's House was griping for all he was worth so as to make that all-important date of escape, December 18. The epidemic was, in all seriousness, quite large; it rivalled the much talked of great plague of German measles of the spring of '52. As is customary whenever sickness precedes vacation dates there was much wild rumoring that school would be let out early. "Say, Ted, did ya hear about all those guys being in Dick's House? Why, there wasn't six left out of thirty in my Geography class! He had to let us go. - You bet, when Dickey finds they're all filled up down there he'll have to let us go early. It won't bother me much if he does. - It's gonna snow tonightsure."
During the last week before the official close of college many men leave Hanover early to work at, Christmas jobs. It's all very legitimate; they just make arrangements with the local postmaster or whoever the employer may be to write a note explaining to the Dean that they have a job for the holidays. If everything is on the up and up, the Dean excuses the student early in order that he might be on hand for the Christmas rush. From the large number of absences as the final date draws near you could be led to believe that Dartmouth students are an unusually industrious group. Of course, there may be something of a snicker behind the hand involved in the whole business. These games are very, very old indeed.
Over in Richardson they breed a hardy but domestic crew. If one were to see the state of their basement on a Monday afternoon you could believe yourself in the drying room of the Lebanon Steam Laundry. On a trial basis over there the Office of Plant and Operations has installed a washing machine and drier. It is hoped to measure campus sentiment for installing similar laundromats in other dormitories. Personally, I like the idea. Finding a basinfull of soaking socks in the morning rush at the john was always bound to evoke disgust. "Whose are these!" Well this looks like a solution; let's hope so.
Cooperation between the Department of Plant and Operations and the Commission on Campus Life made available three study rooms which are to be open all night. There has long been a cry for "someplace to go after Baker closes." The dorms are noisy or often too far from necessary study material, and this move is one which will provide rookeries for the early morning birds of Hanover. The rooms are affiliated with the departments which would make use of them; they are 218 Silsby, 205 Thornton, and 105 Reed. I imagine if you arrive in town late and would be interested in seeing Dartmouth Life in the .raw, these rooms would be your best bet.
Back to the Books
IF leaving college for a vacation is a joyous time, dear to the heart of every student, returning is conversely just as intensely painful. I don't know where it begins, but there is a gradual awareness. Friends speak of going back to school, and the next thing you know it's upon you. I was sitting upstairs in my room one morning when it caught up with me. Perhaps it was the two books that lay untouched on the bedside table. They had been there since the day I unpacked them. My conscience smarted, recalling the good intentions that had led me to bring them home in the first place. Deep down inside hadn't I known all along that there wasn't a prayer of a chance that I would ever really read them? Then there was another thought along the same line. How about those exams? They were only a few weeks off at the very most.
Sunday night the family was together in the kitchen having a soup and sandwiches supper; we had been to the flicks that afternoon. Mom hinted that it was about time I got packed up to go back to school. I allowed as how there was plenty of time for that, but knew that there wasn't. So Monday morning I began. There were the new ski boots, a Christmas present; they didn't fit into the suitcase. I had to rearrange the whole thing. After I had snorted around in my bureau drawers among the shirts for a while I allowed myself to be artfully decoyed away from the unpleasing packing by a new book, also a Christmas present. The novel was all about the last great days of the Russian Empire, really interesting. Packing to go back to school was pretty dry stuff compared with trying to drown Rasputin under the ice. I didn't have my heart in the packing and spent the rest of the morning up in my room reading the book in a kind of quiet meditative escape. Across the room on the bed lay the open suitcase and piles of shirts and underwear to go into it. When my eye fell upon these unhappy reminders I just lighted up another cigarette and dug defiantly into Czarist Russia.
After lunch Tom Parr and Andy Carey dropped in. They had to leave for Princeton the next morning and had come around to say goodbye. We lay around on the floor in the cellar drinking beer, watching TV and talking about the old days when we had all been to high school together same class and all that rot, you know.
"Whatever happened to Lois Cotton?"
"I think she's married now —to that fellow from Cincinnati. Name's Rawles, I think."
"Oh, yeah, he's the one that went to Yale. Too bad, —he seemed like a nice guy. Well, - I'll have to admit that every now and again you do meet a nice Yalie."
"They're few and far between, let me tell you. Why you ought to see the. crowd that comes up for Carnival."
"When do they have to go back to school?"
"Who cares."
"I dunno!"
At dinner that night Mom hovered over me like the proverbial mother hen. "You better have another piece of that chicken. They don't cook it like that at Thayer."
"They sure don't. But please, please, Mom, don't remind me of that."
My sister allowed as how she would concede the matter of the radio. There had been something of a dispute between us as to which had the greater claim to it. I wanted to bring it back with me to Dartmouth; she had visions of it in her room at Briarcliff. Accepting, I felt sheepish because I remembered several instances over the holidays when I hadn't been exactly fair about letting her share in the use of the car. After supper Dad solemnly questioned me about my marks and about my economy in general.
"Well I'm not quite sure, sir, whether Prof. Stilwell will give me a B or a C,- not many quizzes in that course. Of course, it all depends on the exam, but I'll be up for that." I didn't feel quite as confident as I was trying to sound. Dad seemed satisfied; these days he didn't worry much about my marks. He figured that now it was all up to me. I knew that exams were going to be a grind; I'd never admit that to him though. They'll come out all right, I told myself. Hadn't they always in the past?
I went to bed early that night knowing that it was going to be a long drive back to Hanover the next day. Lying there in bed I kept thinking of the future and couldn't get to sleep. Sure, it had been a wonderful holiday, but what about those exams? Then there was the Army next year, not a very pleasant prospect. That was, of course, provided I could handle the final hurdle, comprehensives. And then supreme over all, what about Helen? Things were getting pretty serious in that respect. What the devil could I offer her at this stage of the game? Nothing. Still I had lots to be thankful for, probably more than I had insight enough to perceive. I just had to sign over thoughts of marriage for the present. Potential with a capital "P," that was what I had, maybe that was about all too. What was I going to do about the situation? Well I could apply myself a little more diligently, take my studies a little more seriously. It sounded like a letter from the Dean. So much so, in fact that I squirmed around in the bed. Whew, it was hot in here. I resolved it, clenched my teeth, I will do better. It's not just for my sake but for Helen's and Mom and Dad's. I was sweating, the pa- jamas were cold, clammy, sticking to my flesh. A glass of water, that was what I wanted. - I didn't sleep well that night.
Jake Crossman, the same fellow that brought me home for the vacation, came around after breakfast to pick me up. We had trouble getting my suitcase into the crowded car, had to unload everything and fit it all in like a puzzle. When we finally were all set to roll, I remembered my skates and started what amounted to a hue and cry all over the house for them. The household was put into a momentary flurry searching the backs of cluttered closets, but it was all to no avail. As we were about to leave I recalled that I left them out at Nelse O'Rourke's pond that day when we had had the hockey game out there. Good old Mom, she promised to mail them up in the inevitable package of things I "forgot." Mom kissed me. I shook hands with Dad, and we climbed into the car promising to drive carefully.
The hours when you're driving back to school are flat hours; they stretch out as long and uninteresting as the New Jersey Turnpike. Each of us had his private thoughts, his private memories, and they are turned over and over in the steady hum of the engine. This was to be my last Christmas Vacation. It was as if I had passed some never to be attained goal. Now that I had been there I wasn't sure it looked like much of a goal at all. No other word but "sad" described it.
Larry and Jake had gone to sleep around Northampton leaving me to drive the last stretch. It was late; the last time I looked at my watch sometime after two. The wind had drifted a sifting snow over the black asphalt. It was a bleak, grey and cheerless night. You couldn't even find a light in the sleeping farmhouses by the road. Jake's head on the seat beside my shoulder lolled like a dead man's. His eyes were shut, his mouth open; I could see his tongue draw in and out over the relaxed lips with each breath. I was alone, the only one awake in this dreary world. The towns passed one by one. I knew their names by heart and wondered what it would be like in twenty years to drive this road again. Here was Putney, Bellows Falls, Windsor, Hartland, White Town and the rest. We went through each of them, little more than ghost towns at that hour of the morning. The store fronts gaped black, and the signs over them swung loosely in the wind. Only a blinker light that hung from a cable over the center of the street seemed to have any life at all. It just kept blinking, - blinking in a rhythm of the almost dead.
We passed the sweep by Wilder Dam and climbed the hill that looks north to town. I caught sight of the white steeple of Baker caught, as it were, in a veil of floodlights from below. It seemed like a big white hitching post at this distance, and as it grew larger and larger, looming before us, I felt like driving right up to it, right into it. We were back in Hanover all right. There would be a winter ahead when the drear cold might stretch out its skeleton hand and touch us, but there would also be times when the cold would
enervate in minute ecstasy. Right now we weren't happy. Who could be in the face of it? I gritted my teeth like a man about to take a strong drink. I knew my eyes would water; I knew I'd choke, but I took the glass and tilted her up, and afterwards, - I was glad.
