1945

George Barr was kind enough to include with his June issue of the '45 Mail Call a postcard addressed to me so you could send to me your recollections about our freshman year, since that is the theme of this issue. Three of you responded on that subject, for which my thanks.

Dave Kendall: "On the freshman trip, I was totally taken in by Bateese, a French Canadian woodsman spinning stories in broken English. Of course, he was really Ross McKenny. Ross became my mentor and friend.' I regard it as a privilege to have put together a book about Ross, using his own words from his boyhood, his early years in lumber camps, guiding, and trapping, and, finally, coming to Dartmouth."

Irv Graves: "I well remember an evening in Wheeler Hall when a freshman returning from Commons found his furniture stacked against the wall in the third floor corridor. On his door was a note saying his father had failed to pay his dorm charges, and he was thus evicted. However, if he would call 646-2800 and ask for Hoppy the janitor, arrangements would be made for him.

The freshman went downstairs on the verge of tears, only to be passed by Earnest Martin Hopkins bounding up the stairs to meet upperclass pranksters scrambling in all directions. Hoppy helped the freshman carry all the furniture back into his room."

Ned Newdick: "Freshman year—one of the most terrifying, hopeless years of my life. I had been sheltered in a boarding school, plus no family-life summers. I did not know how to relate or how to handle the responsibility of being a man. I ran away to the navy second semester."

My own recollections of the fall of 1941 include the Freshman Trip, when PaulMeegan came around the bend and found me sitting on the ground rubbing my feet. "What's the matter, Moose?" he asked. "Do your feet hurt?" The nickname stuck. I recall Topliff Hall, cooling a "bomber" of beer in one of those big, metal wastebaskets filled with snow, to be shared with Dick Schultze; "heeling" for the Dartmouth Radio Station, a new venture on campus; Doc Pollard's Smut Class in 105 Dartmouth; getting a part in the Players' Night Must Fall, and rushing out into the dorm hall to read the Daily D review: "Charles A. Rowan, Jr., '45, as Inspector Belsize was stiff." And, of course, returning to the dorm from Baker Library on Sunday, December 7, to learn that the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor. Some of it seems like only yesterday.

Don't forget the mini-reunion, October 8-9.

Thought for the month: "There are fewer shoe-repair shops than there used to be for two reasons: 1) a lot of shoes aren't worth fixing; and 2) no one walks very far."

5015 Edinborough Rd., Greensboro, NC 27406