The Undergraduate Chair
EARLY in May the College begins to prepare for the fraternity hum contest which terminated this year in the finals on the tenth. Alpha Theta, as usual, took first place. Sigma Alpha Epsilon was second, and Delta Tau Delta third. A mere listing of these results does nothing to tell of the hard work as well as pleasure that goes into the hums. There is something so local, so uniquely Hanover and Dartmouth about the occasion: the crowd of children, students, nurses, Colby gals, canines, professors, and perambulators that circle round the steps of Dartmouth Hall.
Of course, they don't all come just to hear the singing. The senior self-consciously promenades with his newly acquired cane, but royal though he deems himself, he is not above unbending an admiring glance at the town belle where she, equally self-occupied, sits in the circle of her skirts, returns the glance and nervously fondles curls which the wind may have ruffled. Their judgment may seem to be musically quite critical, but actually their minds have flown far without the music. Still, even this aspect tells nothing of the tiresome ten o'clock rehearsal periods that have been going on ever since Spring Vacation.
"Call those guys down from upstairs. - C'mon, - C'mon, let's get going here. Baritones on the right, - Tenors over here. Let's take the marching song first.- LOOK, you guys think this is a joke. (Earnestly) We only got four more rehearsals; (complaining) let's buckle down and cut the talking. All right now, here's your note; - watch me, — on the third beat."
"Say Harry, you mind signing my petition? It's for class treasurer." I looked over a blue-lined sheet of notebook paper with inky signatures down one side. Of course, I didn't mind. In fact, secretly I sort of toyed with the idea of running for an office myself. You know, a fat job, - with no work and a large title. Then too, I mused, I would be taking those two rough courses in Economics next year, and I want to play on the tennis team; that schedule wouldn't leave me much time to do anything else. Still, the next day when I read The Dartmouth and saw where Larry Daniels had been named to head I.F.C., I was sort of jealous. Why, hell, I thought, he's just like me and certainly no brain. If he can do it so can I. Nevertheless, I just couldn't, no, I couldn't see myself asking fellows to sign up on my own nominating petition; that was too embarrassing. It only takes twenty-five names. No, no, I'll do it my senior year, but not this time,
Wet Down came again this May as it has for the past 76 springs. First, we waited anxiously to hear who was to win the Barrett Cup, Dartmouth's highest honor. Lou Turner, blushing, but every inch worthy of the prize, took the cup amid the applause of his classmates. There were other prizes too, providing the thrill of seeing a friend gain the recognition he really deserved, but most of the crowd was nervously waiting for the formation of the double line at the Inn Corner. Perhaps a fellow feels a pang of regret as he slips off his belt for the last time. Here they come though, in clouds of dust and shouts. There lives again an Indian fury in the "thwack" of belts as the flailing arms rise and fall. Old Dartmouth broods upon the hill in the clipped approval of stark white and sharp green. Her men must have the essence of the Indian in them, so the stoic face looks on approvingly with a savage's appreciation of life's bitter tortures and the corresponding courage they require.
Green Key turned out to be one of the finest weekends I can remember. We had three days of Hanover's most matchless, sky-blue spring weather. The weekend theme of "escape" became a reality, for the College literally spilled over into the surrounding hills. The domestic-minded date generally toted a large cardboard box filled with silly goodies selected gigglingly at Al's Red White. Farther in the van, an errant male or two, properly dressed in abbreviated khaki pants (done with the aid of a pair of scissors while two roommates stood by to tie the cord), struggled with eighty pounds of discouragingly cold and unwieldy Ballantine's Ale. Wherever the lucky lodestone fell, or rather wherever the keg grew too heavy for the perspiring men, in that glen the clan collected, opened their packages, and tapped the keg.
Tickle her, tickle her till she gasps for breath, and don't give up either because if you do she'll be back to have her revenge. If there's any water around someone always falls in and goes home wet and disillusioned, the first to leave. But pretty soon the horseplay dies down; we've eaten and gone off for a nap on the sunny hillside. Only three stags are left to hold forth over the waning keg. Their nauseous harmony drifts up to us on the hill, barely audible through the sighing of the wind in some tall white pines. We couldn't care less about them. Here I am with my cheek next to yours, both of us pretending to be asleep.
HEY Harry, come to the window." It was Ned's voice. "C'mon, let's flick out. - It'll be a good one." I leaned out broadly over the sill and peered down into the softening evening shadows to the pavement below where Ned stood. He looked odd from that angle, like half a melon in a bank of ice. Funny, his face should strike me as looking like that. I yelled back.
"Gee, — I wish I could, Ned, but my G.I. project's due tomorrow. - I haven't even started yet. - Can't goof off now, graduation's only a month away."
"Ahhhh, you're all books (derogatorily). Well, there'll be other times." He shrugged and headed down the path.
I lingered fitfully in the window thinking over Ned's last remark. Were there really many more good college times left for a senior in the last weeks of May? I wouldn't see Ned next year, not in the Army; he was still a junior with one more year to go. After all, he certainly was my best friend around here. We had had some wonderful times down at Wellesley or hunting deer up at the Grant, not to mention the daily fun of kicking around the fraternity house together. My mind was running along a groove it had worn smooth in the last few weeks. Here it was, all of a sudden, the end of four years at Dartmouth, - as sheer and uncompromis- ing as any wall I'd ever seen. Sure I hated the thought of leaving, but I also remembered times too when I had cussed the old place.
Somewhere - oh, here they are - I found a crumpled pack of cigarettes in a jacket pocket, then patted over my chest searching the shirt pocket for some matches. I climbed up into the window stretching my legs across the sill. I noticed the sill was dirty as I leaned over and tapped the cigarette on the white painted wood. It wouldn't make any difference - third day for this shirt anyway. The match flared up; I waited for it to die down and that bitter sulphur smoke to drift off. Then I drew in coolly, flicked the dead match out the window, and exhaled slowly a stream of blue smoke that reached out into the growing night toward the dark elms.
On an evening in May when the twilight lingers on the Vermont hills the College is most alive. You go to the flicks or watch a baseball game, wander over to the house, or delude yourself into thinking that you're studying. The mind wanders so easily. Mine was not on that G.I. project; it was fondling the elements of Dartmouth life I had come to love. Here was I in my poet's castle that looked down between the elms and from all around brought evidence of the stir of life. I could hear Charley's phonograph playing a new song from The Girl Friend; a muffled shout came up from the body of the building - something about "306 on the horn!" Feet moved rapidly up the hall. Ruggles and Hubcap were playing cards topside in the room above ours. "0.K., your bid. - I wish you'd wake up. - It drags the game out so." Someone was singing in the bathroom, a book slapped shut, a door slammed hollowly in the corridor, and out back, thud, the fellows were tossing a baseball back and forth. The front door opened and two fellows strolled off toward Baker.
How still the weeping hour before' the sun leaves. There is now a cathedral lighting here where the last shafts are mulled through the young green leaflets; it touches my soul, and I am part of the softening campus. I draw on my cigarette and float between the worlds of light and dark, knowing that for me this moment has crystallized all I have ever lived or felt while here. Yet, the night would like to rob me with its critical finger, to scratch and probe at the coolest warmest place within me. My part is ever the light and life, and if Dartmouth has taught me anything really worth remembering, it is never to let those narrowed saurian eyes of night damp the true perceptive feelings that are my own.
This moment is the epitome of all I feel for this place, and it is this that I shall remember long after the theorems and facts have wandered from me. All the details of color and form have been already stolen by the night, but the inner perceptive place is all the sharper for watching. One last drag on this old cigarette, then I crush the butt against the brick wall and leave the campus dark.
Swearing in Palaeopitus opens the Wet Down program ...
And running the gauntlet brings it to a whacking close.
LOU TURNER '55 (left), football captain andpresident of the DCU, accepts the Barrett Cupvoted to him by the student body.
