Three springs
1910 postcard
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
As the leaves push out, I think of three memorable springs, for me, anyway. The first is the spring of 1966, when we seniors were rapidly heading for graduation at our boarding school at the edge of the lovely Litchfield Hills, in Connecticut. While we faced the pressure of final papers and exams, and saw the Vietnam War looming, all in all, it was a delightful time. One reason is that a nice youngish married couple – the Woods -- with a couple of kids lived in a house down the road. They were friends of one of my classmate’s parents.
A bunch of us, ranging from four people to seven, would often bicycle to their rambling white 19th Century house, in nearby Middlebury, and hang out. On a couple of occasions, they had us to dinner, where illegally (?) they served us wine, and everyone would smoke in their backyard, whose spring lushness and freshness I still recall. Thus, we enjoyed the pleasures of adulthood without its responsibilities. It got better and better as the leaves thickened and we luxuriated in the first hot days. It may have just been the fact that it was a time of transition for us, and so everything seemed intensified, but I can’t remember a more beautiful spring.
Finally, a few days before graduation, which I was slightly dreading because as the head of the student government I had to speak before the commencement multitudes, the Woods gave us a farewell dinner, which I found moving. That was the last time that our group all met together. And, not surprisingly, several of us have been dead for years.
Then there was the spring of 1970, during my senior year at college, when everything was disrupted by partial college closings associated with protests against the war in Vietnam and Cambodia. The proximate cause was the fatal shooting of four anti-war student demonstrators at Kent State University, on May 4. Many colleges, including mine, Dartmouth College, decided (wrongly, in my view) to let everyone take all courses pass/fail and took other measures that turned the final weeks of that academic year into an excuse to have a hypocritically good time. As President Nixon reduced our military in Vietnam, and then the draft was ended, the protests faded, whatever was happening to the Vietnamese.
In any event, the Upper Connecticut Valley was much warmer than average that year and gorgeous. That late spring almost felt like summer camp. Frisbees flying everywhere. I left with only vague ideas of what I’d be doing next.
And now, half a century later, the Class of 2020 has had its in-person commencement postponed to June 2021, as the black swan of COVID-19 flies over. I wonder how many graduates will make it to that one.
The third spring I vividly remember came in 1972, as I was preparing to get my master’s degree at Columbia University, which was then still recuperating from the student unrest of the previous few years. Although graffiti-splattered-New York City was then in decline because of old industries leaving and/or shrinking, corporate headquarters fleeing to Connecticut, crime, labor strikes and municipal mismanagement, “The City’’ to many young people was still the most exciting and alluring place to be in America, and not all that expensive compared to most of the stretch from the ‘80s to the last couple of months, when COVID-19 has driven down housing and other prices.
I remember how easy it seemed to get a job, which I did before commencement, and the bright prospect of adventures to come. I felt, briefly, fancy free, as I strolled through Riverside Park up to Columbia, at 115th Street, from the big apartment at West 88th Street I shared with, numbers depending on the month, three to five people directly or indirectly connected with the movie and TV business. The rather ugly, city-tough, plane trees were unfurling and I smelled the inexplicable scent of wet bread. The city seemed full of promise, and it will again.