1948

It is not always easy to be uplifting or even lifted up on a grey November day when the oaks and birches are solemn sentinels whose brown and yellow gifts have already been brushed into piles and taken away. The pines behind this mottled screen await their white mantle. The wood piles on this thrust of land before the ocean's lap grow steadily at every house save mine. Last year's house was always welcoming. The green Jøtul burned evenly, austerely. Four cords it took to heat my citadel. And heating eased my memory of cost. The retro-fit, two chimneys, and the stove. This year it sits uneasy outside my office door. The chimney and the heat design must wait another year. Enough!

The warmth of '48 will have risen on December 5, with cocktails at 5:30 p.m. and dinner at 6:45 at the Yale Club, Dartmouth's New York City space, in Suite 1610. Depression-watchers will have enjoyed a Chicken and Wine Special at $5.25. To have followed: "Shark Survival, Anglia, and Silver Shoals Discovery - Concepcion," with commentary by Stan Waterman '46 at 8:30 in the lounge. All '48ers, wives, sweethearts, or friends were requested to attend. Who but Lloyd Krumm, our prexy, would have conceived of such a brew. Had I this thing for sharks my 13-year-old Teazer has, I might have been tempted to attend. I will have foregone. Hope the rest of you attended.

Who can't remember Bredenberg of Dartmouth and Eckerd College fame. Poor Dick. From him I quote: "On August 29 I had my gall bladder removed. While still coming out of anaesthesia, the surgeon handed me a container with my gall stones and said, 'Here's your heart attack.' So after five trips to the hospital in the last seven months, I find that only the last one did any good. I'm glad to be rid of both my gall bladder and my heart disease, but somewhat resentful of all the unnecessary incarcerations and restrictions. I am beginning to play tennis again, and it sure feels good. Huldah has been great through it all - even taking over some of my classes. It's great to have a talented wife with compatible professional training." Your scribe expresses all our pleasure at our friend's recovery. Reflection on your experience, Dick, too much reminds us we are getting old.

This is my last small bit of scribbling for old '48. Maine is too far away. I am too much removed from centering to catch the flow of lives and loves and doings of our class. I ate the lobsters this summer at Howard Baker's Harraseeket dock, there entertained our guests, and never even saw my classmate living seven miles from my door. A journalist I ain't.

The year is turning. Christmas calls the finest and tenderest of meanings in our lives. From such earth-springs, from mythic grace reborn, may 1980 be, for each of us now some 32 years down our several river roads away from Hanover's plain, a new year of good will.

Thomas W. Crook '48

10214 del Monte Drive Houston, Tex. 77042