The Undergraduate Chair
CARNIVAL is a state of mind; better still, for most Dartmouth undergraduates, Carnival is simply a date. For a weekend, variously defined as from two to six days' duration, the secular life of monastic rural New Hampshire is miraculously transformed into a vibrant round of social activity and urbane sophistication worthy of a New Haven, a Cambridge, or an Ithaca.
Setting the tone for the weekend was a new and popular event - Punt - a Thursday night songfest and compendium of local talent arranged by the Hopkins Center Advisory Committee and staged in the Top of the Hop. More than 300 early-arriving couples, dispossessed from dorms and fraternities by the sundown social curfew, found refuge and good entertainment including folk singers, banjo players, and the smooth traditional Dartmouth strains of the Injunaires. Anyone with even the slightest illusions of talent or delusions of grandeur could step from the audience into the spotlight, and with its casual and entertaining air Punting is destined to become a regular weekend tradition.
The incentive to statue building was greater this year than ever, with men who logged eight hours toiling over the massive frame of Baron Von der Lust allowed to skip the five-hour wait for Hopkins Center tickets on the Sunday before the big week. The Baron was ready and waiting for photographers early Thursday evening, sat proudly Friday, and melted into a jolly ice pile Saturday when temperatures climbed into the 50's.
He was, however, at the zenith of his glory and prestige Friday night. Illuminated by a green-tinted blaze of light, he sat hunched over, clenching his mug in his right fist, peering, like thousands of others, toward the balcony of Hopkins Center where the Coronation of the Carnival Queen was taking place.
It was a dramatic event, since Dean Thaddeus Seymour was to make his first public appearance since the revitalized campus humor magazine, Jack-o-Lantern, dubbed him Thadman in a cover cartoon parody of the current TV and comic book hero. Coolly and calmly the good Dean responded to the challenge, striding boldly forth, casually tossing a red-plaid scarf rakishly about his neck, and confiding to the crowd, "This looks like a job for Thadman."
He then went through the agonizing ritual of crowning Anne Miller, a senior at Colby Junior College, Queen of the Snows, and bestowing upon her, "on behalf of all Dartmouth men around the girdled earth," a peck of symbolic affection. When Miss Miller responded by pecking back, even the calculating Thadman was somewhat shaken. It was later learned, however, that her dad, a Dartmouth man, had a date who was Carnival Queen back in his undergraduate days, and so everything was above board.
Temperatures understandably rose thereafter, with Bermuda shorts and T-shirts replacing ski pants and turtle-necks. Snow statues disappeared like loose change and frisbees, dependable harbingers of springlike conditions, fluttered on fields that had hosted mighty snow battles only days before. Somebody even reported seeing grass.
Hopkins Center attracted more than the usual amount of attention. There were two fine Glee Club performances and a folk concert, but the piece de resistance was the musical comedy show, "Once Upon a Mattress," whose title alone guaranteed a sellout over Carnival. The first musical comedy directed by a student, Bradford Stein '66, the ambitious, technically exciting performance, like many recent Dartmouth Players' endeavors, was humorous but, unlike others, it was intentionally so.
Carnival is a time for wild gyrations on the fraternity dance floor, skidding down a golf course hill on a silver flying saucer, appreciating the excellence of the Indian ski team, and reevaluating the physical beauty of the snow covered campus. It's a pause to show off your friends and your school, to relax with a good date, or spend a nervous weekend with a blind one.
Carnival helps the economy of the town, enables the B & G men to buff the floors of the library, attracts press notices and photographers from all over the East, exposes the best side of the College to the public, but it is a narrow and misleading side. Girls and good carefree times are a part of Carnival, but not a regular part of campus life. And late Sunday night, or on groggy Monday morning, after the last date has boarded the last bus, few undergraduates would be able to face another glass of beer or another pretty smile. At least not until Friday.
Three years ago about the best appetite appeaser available anywhere in town after 10 p.m. was a peanut butter and bacon on white hawked diligently by the College sandwich men, a hardy breed who criss-crossed the silent campus toting a wicker basketful of Thayer Hall-made cellophane-wrapped sandwiches and a case of orange juice and milk. For the student with a yearning for more substantial (some said edible) fare, there was, on selected nights, Minichiello's for pizza. Otherwise - hunger.
The sandwich man still makes his usual rounds, but a recent wave of gastronomical enterprise has provided the nocturnal knosher with a varied and quite respectable spectrum of eateries at which to satisfy his post-booking, after-theater, pre-sleeping, or late-supper urge.
With Hopkins Center came the Agora, roughly translated as a Thayer snack bar which specializes in grilled cheese and ice cream sodas from eight to eleven, with dispensing machines on duty at all times. Key to the Hop's operations is a dollar bill changer, which works at least three days a week.
Mogan Halgren came to Hanover four years ago, discovered that only Tanzi's remained open as late as 10, noted the fact that students were no longer hitting the sack at sundown, diagnosed the trend to quality TV late shows, and decided that, if Tanzi's was, as rumored, the largest retail beer distributor in the East, there must be room at the tap for competition.
So Moe opened The Big Wheel, a combination delicatessen-pizzeria famous for its antique juke box and the only bagels anywhere in town. A year later The Village Store, an all-purpose grocery with fifteen brands, began to cut into the Tanzi beer monopoly. The keg trade is presently nearly divided between the two.
A third grocery store, Heath's Cash Market, has, after two false starts, re-opened again, opposite The Village Store and next to The Big Wheel on expanding Allen Street. The Cash Market, widely acclaimed for "the largest keg refrigerator in the Upper Valley," sells at so low a price that many students suspect a catch and stay clear. Heath is planning, we understand, to raise prices, then business will boom.
Just last fall The Beefeater, whose profitable trade could be traced to the fact that it was closest to campus and was the only restaurant open on Sunday, pulled up roots and resettled in modern headquarters on Allen Street, doubling its capacity, raising its prices a respectable 10 to 25 cents, and serving the same food with the same service. As a come-on for the high school trade the juke box was restocked and updated.
Filling the void in the old Beefeater location is The Village Green, not to be confused with The Village Store, the Green Lantern or Hal's. In plush red surroundings with bouncy yellow stools and wide simulated-marble formica counters the Green has a bright future. Put together from scratch in two weeks and ready for Carnival, the eatery was packed for three days, and its 11 p.m. closing time provides the community with a more gracious alternative than the Hop.
To add to the culinary profusion now facing famished undergraduates, The Campus Sub, a grinder specialty shop, debuted in early February, sold out of meatballs and the works on a busy Friday and threatens to infringe on the clientele of the well-established Big Wheel, Heath's, Minichiello's and Tanzi's.
As the competition for the student snack dollar quickened in tempo, the compensating capitalistic system swung into action in the form of an old-fashioned price war between The Big Wheel and The Beefeater, each earnestly fighting for the crucial ice cream cone trade. Moe slashed his price to ten cents, under-cutting the 15 cent townwide standard and halving The Village Green sugar cone tariff. In a more radical step, The Big Wheel shaved hamburger prices to a mere thirty cents. "If McDonald's can do it for 15 cents, we can do it for 30," Moe boasted illogically.
The more conservative student eateries - with such fashionable handles as the Hideaway, the Midget, Lou's and Hal's - plus the venerable Hanover Inn Coffee shop remained remarkably calm in the face of the proliferation of late night spots. Lou's did install a new front, and Hal's strengthened its six-bit specials and stocked up on ice-a-fudge, but in the week after Carnival enough hungry students roamed the streets to keep every grill red-hot.
And in the wake of this new wave of restaurant expansion comes word that more students are eating at Thayer Hall than ever before. The present undergraduate just must be hungrier.
Richardson's "Wanderlost" was judgedbest of the dormitory snow statues.
Carnival Queen Anne Miller (c), from Colby Junior College, is the daughter ofEdward W. Miller '40 of Greenwich, Conn., whose Carnival date in 1939 waschosen Queen. In the Queens Court are the four other finalists (l to r) KathyReidiger, Elizabeth Browning, Andrea Sawtelle, and Judy Grimm.
Baron von der Lust, a little the worsefor thawing, looks over the campus.
It was a gay weekend for fraternities.
