All This And Coffee, Too

THE mid-morning coffee break has become a traditional part of the American way of life, and the coffee klatch a recognized social phenomenon. A number of community and College people convene occasionally for coffee at one of Hanover's Main Street establishments, but two groups meet with the regularity of a percolating pot. One gathers at the Hanover Inn and the other assembles at Lou's Restaurant. Both groups have much in common - the coffee drinkers are all male, all retired or about to retire, and they clearly enjoy one another's company and the free-flowing discussions that are an important part of the morning ritual.

But in other ways the two klatches are disparate. The Hanover Inn group is larger, somewhat more formalized, and consists principally of retired business executives who have elected to move to Hanover for their "twilight years." A number of Dartmouth alumni are regulars, and, predictably, the Inn crowd has a pretty conservative outlook, particularly concerning some of the recent trends and developments at Dartmouth. The Lou's klatch consists almost entirely of academics - retired faculty members or administrative officers, with two "townies" for leavening. This group, the liberal wing, operates at a more intellectual level, and spends little, if any, time dwelling on College affairs.

The Hanover Inn coffee group dates back to around 1959, when Lee Ritch, a retired insurance executive, and the late Jim Campion '28 started to assemble every morning with some friends in the coffee shop of the old Inn. The manager of the Inn in those days, Jim McFate, soon added his weight to the group. Then the late Mart Remsen '14 and a few of the Dartmouth coaches - Doggie Julian, Karl Michael '29, Jack Musick, and Will Volz — joined up. Although the group has a distinct Dartmouth tinge to it, Lee Ritch is quick to point out that current membership includes graduates of at least nine different institutions. One unnamed member reports that he is a full-fledged graduate of Brooklyn's P.S. 25.

The designated chancellor of the Inn klatch is John Dinan, Michigan '28, who says that the rules governing the group are few and relatively simple. The main prerequisite of membership is a thick hide, as a generous amount of good-natured ribbing is passed along with the sugar and cream. The member who comes in for the most japes is Ort Hicks '21, vice president emeritus of the College. "We call Ort our professional mourner," one of his colleagues reports. "When he shows up mornings with his dark suit on - his 'funeral clothes' - and says he has to catch a plane for Boston or New York or a bus from White River Junction, the group knows that someone is about to get his full and complete sympathy."

Conversations among the Inn club usually flow in a number of directions, with two or three members at one end of the long table discussing Dartmouth sports, while several in the middle talk politics and a group at the other end speculates on how many new vice presidents Dartmouth may add in the next year. Occasionally a letter, a news clipping, or an editorial will be circulated around the table, and some of the regulars use the hour to discuss business informally.

The coffee klatch at Lou's, because of its smaller size, is a more homogeneous group, and usually the four to s even men in attendance crowd around one booth, with everyone participating in the discussions. This group has come together more recently, starting about 1970 with the present members, although Charlie Wid-mayer '30 and a few others have been having coffee at Lou's for several decades. They have no officers or any rules, and usually spend the last five minutes of each session trying to figure out whose turn it is to leave the tip.

Like its Hanover Inn counterpart, this group also is active and interested in College and community affairs, but the pursuits and avocations follow more intellectual lines. One of the Lou's regulars, Professor Emeritus Clyde Dankert (Economics), who has just retired as president of the Hanover Historical Society, recently handed us these observations:

The matters we discuss exhibit immense variation: television advertising (on some of which strong opinions are held); an old or current play (on this theme the retired head of Hopkins Center invariably throws revealing light); athletics (a member from Main Street is highly informed here); wines (a retired professor of English can speak with no small authority on this subject); educational policy in the grade schools (on which most members hold definite views); the College Grant (about which a photographer member of the group knows a great deal); Hanover from 1903 to 1975 (a member who was a prominent and long-time merchant in Hanover has an inexhaustible store of knowledge on this matter); various literary questions (on which a former editor of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE can utter words of wisdom); the picking of pine cones (a member who once excelled in this difficult occupation can speak from experience here); the Village of Bath and the many prominent persons who came from there (one of the historically minded members has a very large fund of knowledge on this topic).

It's also fair to report that the klatch at Lou's tends to reminisce a bit more than the Hanover Inn group about bygone days, places, and people. According to Dankert, "At times members of the group speak of celebrated persons they have known or met. Thus one member may talk of the time he was seated at the same table in a dining car with Rachmaninoff. Another member is likely to counter with a reference to a first cousin of his who, in 1908 in Australia, was decisively defeated by Jack Johnson for the heavyweight boxing championship of the world. Another member may refer to an eminent professor of English under whom he studied at Harvard. Still another member, the aforementioned merchant, may talk familiarly about Nelson Rockefeller."

Good humor abounds around the table at Lou's. The lowly pun becomes a true art form here, and one man claims proficiency in mimicking people - although the other members protest that all the people he mimics sound alike. Continuing education is very much in evidence here also, with Dankert reporting that "on occasion a member will bring an 'exhibit' to show his colleagues. It may be a small piece of driftwood from the Oregon Coast or a quart jar of apples (visible proof of a different - and questioned - method of canning)."

Coffee klatches clearly are not everyone's cup of tea - just ask some other retired alumni and faculty in the area. But whether the caffeine produces dilettantes or sages, the men who gather at the Inn and Lou's don't thirst for good fellowship.

Down at Lou's (clockwise from top): Dankert, Hurd '21, Widmayer '30, Morse, Tanzi,Lyford, Bouchard, Bentley. Standing proprietarily in the background is Lou himself.

Cliff Jordan, who likes his coffee black,has been observing the Hanover scene for25 years.