1981

This is for those of you who wish you were in my shoes. You know: the Class-Secretary-Perks high tops, those Chucks that are like a second skin. Perk number one: classmates arrive in town and actually wanna see me.

Fraser Smith, for example. In April he trucks up from Florida to show his wares at the 15 th anniversary Smithsonian Craft Show. (Remember, faithful readers, that Fraser carves wooden quilts. And please don't make me explain: just go back and peruse the columns that you've been faithfully snipping out and saving with those back issues of National Geographic.) Not only does he show, but he also places and wins, making off with an Excellence Award at that august gathering of American artisans. (Check out Eraser's quilts at .)

(And while we're talking WWW stuff, visit a buff Rick Silverman at <http://www. ummed.edu/pub/r/rsilver/index.html.)

Perk number two: classmates, like Fraser, visit and leave me homebrew. Just another kind of art, I guess.

Perk number three: classmates who don't come with beer come with their kids, and I get vicarious father-pleasure for a few hours with them. Also this spring, DougSchwarz and his wife, Beth Marcus, wanted to show their two tykes, Marcus and Julia, the wonders of our nation's capital. Unfortunately, on their first evening in town, the new Newt Gingrich water slide on the Capitol steps—a slippery slope that tumbles over a replica of the Speaker, from ample chin to ample belly—was closed. They had dinner at our place instead.

And, finally, perk number four: even fathers of classmates read this column and put in plugs for their kids. Take Wey Lundquist up in Hanover. He wrote to fill me in on offspring Weyman Lundquist. Son of Wey lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his spouse, Lilly Hamrick, and their two sons, Charlie and Jack. Buying his own business four years ago, Wey runs West Coast Magnetics, a company that makes electrical products for companies in the telecommunications and computer business, and Lilly is a staff attorney for California's court of appeals. Wey also told me that he bikes the hilly Berkeley roads but really misses windsurfing, which he can only do now once a week. Wey mentioned that he keeps in touch with married classmates lan Christoph and Lucy Irwin; lan has his own private practice, specializing in cardiology, and they have three kids—Ella, Owen, and Stuart. And Charlie Huizenga teaches at Berkeley and is doing research in solar energy.

And whatever happened to my metaphor about being in someone else's shoes? Well, how about skates? Bob Gaudet, after nine years coaching the Brown pucksters, is now Dartmouth's men's varsity ice hockey coach. He, his wife, Lynn Hamel Gaudet, and their three kids have no doubt already moved-to the Hanover plain. The earlier, the better, as Bob has much work to do to turn the Dartmouth program around. Stayed tuned.

Doug Harrison, who with his wife, Jama, was in town for a convention, said that he actually reads the books that I suggest in this column and wanted more. Here's my latest, all non-fiction: Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, a chronicle of that once-in-a-lifetime nor'easter that hit New England in the fall of '91 and the boats and people caught in it; Leah Hager Cohen's Glass Paper Beans, a wonderful treatise on things simple; and John Krakauer's Into the Wild and Into Thin Air. The first is the story about a recent college grad who, Thoreau-like, retreats into the wilds of Alaska to live off the land and starves to death in a few months. The second, as you probably know, is Krakauer's take on the debacle and deaths that occurred on Everest two summers ago.

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Steve Kelley '81makes Dartmouth Dartmouth, p. 46