Class Note 1938
Issue
Nov - Dec 2017
I received a wonderful note from Charles Compton from Evanston, Illinois, followed by a truly enjoyable conversation with him. He says, “I was given awards from 30 members of the Civil Air Patrol on my 101st birthday. A new squadron was reinstated by the Compton Squadron (of which I was a commander) with 30 members and cadets in attendance. A congressional gold medal had been given to me last year. I now have four great-granddaughters and my daughter, Ann Compton-Hughes, recently retired as a White House correspondent for ABC. She is now involved with giving speeches and babysitting her granddaughter.”
This “Letter of a Freshman” (circa 1939) references the Dartmouth out-of-doors from the November-December 1938 issue: “I’ve just been through a siege of hour exams. What-a-workout! The trees now are bare of leaves and the weather is damp and cold—everything is sort of gray and hard. I would appreciate it if you could send me an extra blanket—my roommate is a madman on fresh air. The feel of winter is in the air, and so is the talk of it. Talk of snow and ski trails is incessant and weird, plaintive sounds known locally as yodeling float over the campus. The ski squad is seen almost every day running up and down the hills, leaping fences and streams and ploughing through the forests. They don’t seem quite normal.
“I went out running with them one afternoon just to see what the incentive was, and never got so pooped in all my life; I was covered with burrs and tore my pants half off jumping a barbed wire fence. Finally, I got a cramp and had to walk. Some of the others stopped too. We were on top of a sort of ridge they call Velvet Rocks, where a wide serpentine slash had been cut in the woods. It was a ski trail, and when I asked how anyone ever stopped, I was told that one either went in the woods or ‘pulled a fast christie.’ The trail is only 20 feet wide and goes bouncing right down over cliffs, rocks, stump, and logs as though Newton’s law didn’t apply to skiers. However, I guess it does; many of the trees had their shins barked on the uphill side and I could see teeth marks in the trunks of certain sturdy birches. One could do better than be a biter of birches. No, there is something decidedly abnormal in these guys. Love, The Armchair Pessimist.”
—Jean M. Francis, 2205 Boston Road O-139, Wilbraham, MA 01095
This “Letter of a Freshman” (circa 1939) references the Dartmouth out-of-doors from the November-December 1938 issue: “I’ve just been through a siege of hour exams. What-a-workout! The trees now are bare of leaves and the weather is damp and cold—everything is sort of gray and hard. I would appreciate it if you could send me an extra blanket—my roommate is a madman on fresh air. The feel of winter is in the air, and so is the talk of it. Talk of snow and ski trails is incessant and weird, plaintive sounds known locally as yodeling float over the campus. The ski squad is seen almost every day running up and down the hills, leaping fences and streams and ploughing through the forests. They don’t seem quite normal.
“I went out running with them one afternoon just to see what the incentive was, and never got so pooped in all my life; I was covered with burrs and tore my pants half off jumping a barbed wire fence. Finally, I got a cramp and had to walk. Some of the others stopped too. We were on top of a sort of ridge they call Velvet Rocks, where a wide serpentine slash had been cut in the woods. It was a ski trail, and when I asked how anyone ever stopped, I was told that one either went in the woods or ‘pulled a fast christie.’ The trail is only 20 feet wide and goes bouncing right down over cliffs, rocks, stump, and logs as though Newton’s law didn’t apply to skiers. However, I guess it does; many of the trees had their shins barked on the uphill side and I could see teeth marks in the trunks of certain sturdy birches. One could do better than be a biter of birches. No, there is something decidedly abnormal in these guys. Love, The Armchair Pessimist.”
—Jean M. Francis, 2205 Boston Road O-139, Wilbraham, MA 01095