Outlook (May 20, 1958)
Season’s Greetings
This is the time of the year. The University dislikes this time of the year. The electric bill rises, or shall I say, soars as the malingeres attempt to cram a year’s work into a week; Students are wrecking havoc on the dining hall’s budget by coming to breakfast in droves.
Drug stores like this time of the year and order gobs and gobs of various and sundry “wonder drugs” for the poor benighted student who finds that there are just not enough hours in one day. Super markets like this time of the year. They are getting rid of all their off-brand instant, regular, and what-have-you coffees.
Eating and drinking establishments have been eagerly awaiting this time of year with wringing of hands and hoarding of all ingredients necessary to their specialties. There are great numbers of study parties and other (unadvertised) types.
Coeds passing by the men’s dorms in broad daylight have learned by this time either to despise or adore this time of year. It all depends on their frame of mind, and I might add, frame of frame. The response is the same from the gentlemen who have set up beaches facing Knox Road and anywhere else that they face.
Whistles are experimented with, cat-calls are perfected, old and new, banal and original, phrases are coined. This is an old game, the name of which has been lost through the countless eons of time in which it has been played, but whatever the name, the game’s the same. The effect is the only thing that is varied, but even this becomes boring, although to judge from the reactions of the beach-dwellers you would never know it.
Through all this infectious hub-bub, uproar, calamity, and whatever-name-you-have-for-it there are a few who seem immune. There are always a few of these people.. They are the ones who feel that college is a challenge to them. They are rewarded for their diligence by having their name placed in a very inconspicuous place in the office of the dean of their respective college.
By the same token, there are others who have the look of these students, and different only in that they are now seniors and tehy find that they are either failing a subject oor getting a “D” in their major. They metamorphose, and we are surprised to find that we cannot tell these from the perennial “brains.” It is astounding to what lengths man will drive himself in order to obtain that elusive “freedom.”
The average student has a peculiar hatred for this time of the year, and either feels that there is too little or too much time remaining.
In the final analysis, the water looks inviting, convertibles are exciting, fishes are biting. The world is worth joining once again for the few short months that we have to enjoy it, and in a few short (or long) weeks we will be working or playing, ro just plain hit-the-haying (for as long as we can).
Jonathan (son #3) said,
18 January 2007 at 11:58 am
This is the final installment of my father’s columns in the campus paper at the University of Maryland, 1957-1958. I will be going through more of his files, and begin typing up some of his later writings.
It has been interesting for me to note the sometime seemingly sexist language that he used here. It was the late 1950s. I suppose coed and fillies may have been common talk, but they seem rather out of place to my ears.
I don’t apologize for nor defend these words. They were his, in his 20s. My job here is to record them, recount them, preserve them.