THE UNDERGRADUATE CHAIR
RINGO'S drums and Paul's electric bass thundered out of a window on Mass Row one soggy night last month. It was only Wednesday before Carnival, but you could feel those notes in the pit of your stomach, and, if you were tuned in, you felt like someone had thrown a switch inside you. There was no stopping it. The biggest of all big weekends, the "oldest, coldest, . . ." (well, you know the rest) had begun, though some men didn't find out for two more days.
What can possibly be said about Winter Carnival that hasn't been said a thousand times before? If you've seen one you've seen them all, and everyone knows that Green Key is really a much better time. Yet it is always pointed out that while the East Overshoe Aggies have their spring frolic, only Dartmouth has the original Carnival. What else but legend would make 200 freshmen camp out all night in Webster Hall to assure themselves of tickets? Where else do so many work so hard at having a good time?
It had been a dull term until then. Malcolm X's visit to the campus was the only local splash; day after day the editors of The D searched frantically for headline material. And the weather for skiing had been almost impossible, so Carnival couldn't have come a day too soon to relieve the monotony.
"Call of the Wild" was the theme, to be symbolized by the center-of-campus statue of a wolf with a keg of rum under one arm, baying at the moon. He was called the "Leader of the Pack," after a recent popular song, or LOP for short, and for about ten days his future looked bleak indeed. Work on the monster was proceeding so slowly that the Winter Carnival Council threatened to dynamite him if most of the slushing wasn't finished by Monday before the weekend. The odds were all against him, especially when rain wiped out two days' work. But when it counted, student workers swarmed over the scaffolding as the latest tunes from WDCR roared from the windows of Robinson Hall. LOP was finally completed even to the green "D" on his chest, to reign over the festivities looking for all the world like a giant chianti bottle, which would have served just as well as a symbol.
Richardson Hall won the dormitory competition with "Snowplowed," a dazed skiing monster of undetermined species draped around a tree. The brothers of Tau Epsilon Phi won first place among the houses with "Fantasaurus," another Orientally-inspired idol. "None of us knew how to sculpt," they explained, "so we just started with this horsey-thing and went on hacking away until it looked good."
Other statutes were entitled "Breeder of the Pack" (or BOP), "Call of Nature" and "Candy." The censors cringed. Snow conditions were bad for statue building this year, but people didn't seem to care as much either.
All the tried and proven ingredients were present. Hopkins Center yielded to student demands for a Carnival musical, and Warner Bentley came back to direct a rollicking, colorful Wonderful Town that probably could have sold out for twice as long a run. Dates could be thrilled by the folk songs of lan and Sylvia, and then reduced to glassy-eyed wonderment by the Glee Club and DartmouthUndying. Olympic diving champion Lesley Bush gave an exhibition at the swimming meet with Army, and the hockey team thoroughly trounced Yale. The Jackolantern appeared on schedule with an outstandingly unfunny issue, and Greensleeves a week earlier with an excellent one. The White Church had its pancake breakfast and the Jewish Life Council served bagels-and-lox. Competition is the essence of a free society.
By the time of your fourth Carnival you have learned that the less you try to do, the better time you have. Half of Carnival is Dartmouth showing off: the freshmen sending posters to half-a-dozen girls at home, the sixty dollar weekend. Eventually one outgrows this. The other half is Dartmouth forgetting itself. The times you remember are the moments when you and your girl forgot everyone else around you: driving up to catch the view from Thetford Hill, broiling steaks in the dorm fireplace, or snowshoeing over the golf course as the pine trees sighed in the wind.
You do some things that no one else does. You go swimming, with Spaulding Pool all to yourselves and scarcely a sound from all the bustle around you penetrating its steamy warmth. Or in a moment of madness on the golf course you find yourselves sliding downhill on your backs over the glistening white crust.
What you remember afterward about Carnival is not the posters, statues, bands, or games, but the glimpses and the echoes, the feelings and associations, the anticipation of its coming, and regret at its passing. You remember:
The pattern of the snowflakes in the floodlight, the shouts, the music, as fraternity row turns out Thursday night to build statues . . . the warm piano-laughter of the first dates to arrive.
The fever of preparations, the hum of vacuum cleaners and floor polishers, the clanking as bunks are set up and kegs rolled in . . . the traffic jams just when you've got a bus to meet. . . pandemonium at the railroad station.
The click of pool balls, gradually drowned out as the cocktail party gathers momentum, and, afterward, struggling over the ice to get to your car.
Back at the room, your own soft music, while the distant notes of a hundred parties, great and small, drift in through the open window. On Webster Avenue, the buildings themselves seem to jump and shake.
Saturday morning: the wood-smoke aroma in an off-campus living room just crowded enough, and the smell of pancakes and coffee as the roommates hold a breakfast open-house .. . her blonde halo in the sunlight from the window.
Light-and-shadow on colorful parkas where couples trudge through the woods into the Vale of Tempe . . . nests of hay in the hillside as the jumpers sail by. A solitary sled streaking down the golf course hill, almost invisible under the weight of its hysterical riders.
Jazzy elegance of a piano trio, the pop of corks and crescendo of voices at a champagne party . .. long-lost friends rediscovered.
Pushing your way into the door at midnight, Taj Mahal in full cry, the floor jammed with flailing dancers, wild outfits in the wilder lighting.
In the crowded cloakroom, a once-hopeful couple quietly breaking up.
The ravaged voice of your blues-singer, moaning the last notes over the silent, exhausted crowd as closing time nears.
Sunday morning: opening your eyes but unable to move, sunlight streaming in, a single too-cheery voice first heard outside .. . the conversation, mostly whispers, as you call for your date. Sitting in a daze with the Sunday Times, your body stuffed with cotton .. . Baker's crazy church bells ... the first guitar booming out.
The smell of vanilla ice-cream and bourbon as milk punch is stirred with an old pledge-paddle. Fogcutters flow, the Vi-Kings howl. Trying to forget that the luggage is waiting on the doorstep.
Couples clustering around waiting cars, suddenly alone again.
Deafening silence settling with dusk over the Row. Singing, screaming, bitterly joyous brothers smashing a statue into pitiful ruins. After dinner, sitting around in the wreckage, the talk: "Did you catch Charlie's date? . . . Remember the time Houseparties two years ago when? . . . Reminds me of the one about
That part is called TG2, for Thank God They're Gone. But nobody believes it.
Nancy Thompson of Simsbury, Conn., aSimmons junior, was the Carnival Queen.
