The Hanover Scene
One morning last month, while we were sitting around waiting for the reappearance of Halley's Comet, somebody dialed to ask how we would like to drop over to see the baseball team play at Cornell that afternoon. We are a pushover for pastures new and do not necessarily subscribe to the belief that, since one is already here, one need no further rove. On the other hand we could hardly claim that a trip to Ithaca would be a maiden venture. We have often endured that fearsome trek by trains, via New York, Syracuse, Geneva, or the onion country of Canastota Junction; in buses from White River; in variously furbished and priced motor cars; and, if we remember aright, by dog sled.
This, however, was a more enticing offer. If we could present ourself with under forty pounds of luggage at the West Lebanon airport in half an hour, we had a free ride and the promise of an excellent lunch at the Cornell Statler. It didn't take us long to divest ourself of parka and umbrella, and before one could say "Swedelewe-chuhirasa," we were air-borne, snugged in with as congenial a bunch of infielders and outfielders as one could find this side of Brooklyn.
Travel by any conveyance is a commonplace to the modern undergraduate, but we recalled wistfully our first athletic trip when, as a fledgling manager, we had to shepherd a Dartmouth ball team from the Grand Central, through an unfinished subway shuttle and Times Square, to the old River Field at Penn. Most of that team had experienced scant transportation beyond the yard-wide roadway of the Boston, Revere Beach and Lynn, and it was our own initial metropolitan sortie; but we had been briefed on following the green line and on going to Jack's or Bustamente's on the way back through the city, and all ended well.
There's an awful lot of up-state New York, but after a mere 1.79 hours aloft, we were in a bus, bumbling our way to Schoellkopf Field. The Cornell Athletic Association is as high in our affection as it is above Cayuga's waters, and this warmth was undiminished by a cheery lunch at the Hotel School's experimental Statler and a pleasant ride up and down Cornell and around Ithaca. Thence to the baseball diamond, bigger than ours but no shinier, and with nowhere near the number of dogs and babies we can marshal along the thirdbase foul line.
Cornell is confusing to foreigners, with a multitude of buildings in operation and a multitude more arising to the sound of pneumatic hammers and trilling co-eds. The buildings all look alike and have little of the architectural sweep that Dartmouth's compact campus can boast. In Hanover the dullest stranger could scarcely confuse Rollins Chapel with the Ski Hut, but we got into the Armory, the Hockey Rink, and a girls' dormitory before we located Willard Straight.
The ball game started late and persisted interminably. Every batter got a 3-2 pitch and every inning just began to get hot with two down. After several hours of this, we drifted off to Cornell's Student Union, Willard Straight Hall, which contains facilities for everything from barratry to vulcanizing, including an 8:30 supper for the Dartmouth baseball team. Cornell University was established as "an institution where any person can find instruction in any study," and watching the constant flow of undergraduates through Willard Straight's spacious corridors was a little like accompanying Walt Whitman on a guided tour of the United States.
Many of our previous return trips from Ithaca have resembled the retreat from Moscow, but this was springtime, supper had been good, and, despite the fact that it was our pilot's initiation into the intricacies of landing at Lebanon, we were contentedly puffing our narghile in our own living room by eleven p.m. We won the game, 6-5.
