Kent School - Kent Yearbook (Kent, CT)

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A N V 5 f ' formers, until the lower formers are put wise, W, ,i g 1 and also the athletic members are very palsy- walsy with the big boys in the sixth form. The only trouble with being a fifth former at all seems T'-E-6,1 6 to be the rule about getting to bed at nine o'clock. No responsibilities, a lifetime of ducking studies, Som NOTE enjoying sports, and getting around the sixth form with the wiles born of three years experience. W'hat fun! Soon the fifth form, living on the second floor of the Auditorium, got to spending the entire night in the room of W'hitely, a scholastic half-breed, who was in and out of the sixth form. Many times poor Hotbread Rod Todd, a legal senior, was forced to fight his way through the crowd into his own room after lights. Among the more delightful joys of fifth form year were Lew Baldwin's miniature study hall in his roomy closet, Harry Jambone I'eckham's window garden, and rose in Brooklyn, and Deeck the Greeck Jones career as mathematician and engineer of deviltry. Earlius W'ilson reached, with Prickett, heights of contraband hoarding never before conceived of in the mind of modern man, and Fodder Snap-it Hodder politicoed up and down the hall. W'allis and W'ierum were still playing Tom Hamil- ton's Football Game, started in second form year. The only furniture in their room besides the beds was the game, two chairs, and a table. Hooper industriously blew up his muscles like balloons. Peake and Atkin gave that debutante tinge to the hallway. Their room was stuffed with racy little trophies. such as mouldering evening slippers, of evenings at hot spots up and down the Atlantic and Jersey coast. W'ell-meaning Brad Locke of the sixth form vainly tried to enforce a modicum of law and order, and occasionally cracked down on such as Blouse futler and Fingers W'ard, the constant purveyors of ersatz foodstuffs that needed only hot water in a child's teapot. and a match, to bring them to a succulent boil. Cutler had used his ingenuity to get himself a seven foot bed big enough for a whole regiment, and he with Peake was the only possessor of such gorgeous apparatus in the school. Ogden, the virtuoso, who taught himself to play a new musical instrument every year, played mournfully on his collapsible flute. Swanson Silvers drifted in and out, interrupted in his silent wander- ings by those who wanted to know how the Arab maids of Algeria compared to the Hollywood ideal. The Dining llall was a mechanized hive of activity. Leaders in Catiline plots were the old-timers, Janboy Harvey. liirdskin Caldwell, and the carefree Ajax Jones. A daily guessing game was carried on. Whoever could guess what was in the sus- piciously bulging sack that resident inspectors LAM David Green and Don Dickson used for an icebox. dangling from the window, won the daily double. C'ollier forsook studies for the gay life. and with others introduced the game of bridge, a scientific K

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Nlwwi Rmn during this period. being a charter member of the Lower Library Late Lights Study Club, and having easy access to the Encyclopedia Britan- nica, from which he copied all assigned work word for word. Bronx Park was wont to put a sixty on these gems, with the remark. Yes, Richardson, they're good, but they're familiar. Spring came slowly, and left the field below the North Dorm covered with large cakes of Honsatonic ice, which were whisked away on work holidays. lt was not long, however, before tennis, crew, and the Naughty Nine were flourishing. Dogmeat Ellis. prefect par excellence, wore out several pair of athletic store gumshoes chasing up itlount Algo, and when he finally nabbed the catch, the dust bowl behind the Library Building was transformed into a lovely scenic park. Soon there came the time of council elections. There was much controversy over whether the intentions of Ajax Jones, the ex-exponent of forced horticulture. were on the up-and-up. It was finally decided that the revolution could wait, and W'allis, Dewey and Howe were re-installed in the rear seats of Study Hall for the last month of the year. We were present at the rainy resignation of Pater, and the advent of Father Chalmers, but. truth to tell, we didn't hear many of the speeches because we were too busy watching the little photographer put flashbulbs in his camera, and count the house. Also, liew Baldwin won the History prize, and created quite a disturbance by skipping the festivities, an unheard of occurrence. As the last game of Nigger Baby ended in front of the dining hall, and Jazer McClain, the class of 1941's top buglist, played taps to the incoming sixth form, we packed our belongings for another summer at home. Greaser Vook disappeared down the State Road toward Litchfield, suburb of Torrington, in a cloud of dust, and we were once more separated. to loll to our heart's content, and watch the progress of Hitler into Bussia in the late summer. The summer of I9-t-1 was spent in sunny surroundings. None of the brothers did anything but loaf. to the best of our knowledge. W'ar was a far-away quantity which could never reach the shores of the good old t'.S.A., no matter what fluff-guff W'hite- ley, or the Honorable Vere, or Richardson, or llavenshaw-the English-said about You Ameddicans will be in ere long, you know. W'ith September came fifth form year. We returned leisurely, in no hurry, watched with disdain while the lower formers scurried about, and settled into rooms in the Dining Hall and the Auditorium. There has been a lot of talk made as to how the fifth form looks forward to the sixth form, and down upon the lower forms. This is only half true. The fifth form looks down on A Iior ciARTERS both the sixth form and the lower forms. It con- lincarn tinually, in the first two or three days of the term. has its bigger brothers sirred by the lower 5 Q

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Q H game played in an atmosphere far removed from the old-time gambling fests which we held of yore. Bame Harris was constantly being mis- taken for a second former, except when in class. e WHOSE GIRL IS THAT? Bergamini, the pre-historic, lay like the Vardiff giant on his bed, in the corner room of the Dining Hall, and talked learnedly of the different smells and noises of milk cans at five o'clock in the morning, and airplane engines, and cameras. Bevo Hasbrouck was, after four years, still explaining Einstein. lYilliam Harrison Took was still taking pains to be completely fog-bound in Latin Class, sending llr. Humphreys into convulsions of rhetoric. Frereo Blair was none other than Frereo. Figgis was constantly tormenting Humphreys, with new and more awful nicknames springing from his fertile brain every week. Figgis himself had acquired a couple of nicknames that caused him to snarl like a trapped animal whenever they were mentioned. ltlonkey Dickson was developing poise, most of the time. Benny Balsam, charter member. and connoisseur of the nether-world, was so absorbed in his New York contacts and loud ties that he had almost forgotten us. Bridgeman, red-headed, and always draped in a natty pin- stripe, was the sports-loving roommate of Howe. Brandy Brandreth, he of the sus- piciously heavy pack-basket, he who knew the local Coca Cola dealer well enough to get reductions on the price per case, roomed with Buckingham, angular cultivator of the Tennessee walking horse. Scudder Boyd was still in business, except that now it was fine furs instead of trunks. Boyd had formed a syndicate, with S. Boyd as president and treasurer, and various lower form hangers-on, including the fabulous Smoky Stone, as skinners of skunks. Boyd was, with the exception of Cliff Loomis, the most acute mail-order businessman in the school, and occasionally received letters to the general effect that the writer had been in business twenty years, and had never been called no liar by no young whipper-snapper yet. This never plussedfif that be the opposite of non- plussedfour Scud, who made substantial profits every quarter. Now, as we leave the specihc, and turn on into the general, let us consider for a moment the case of Ajax Jones. Oh, Ajax, how regally did he wear his crown of ver- satile corruption. Lewis has vouched for the beauty of the sob stories he wrote when he should have been listening to words of wisdom. Ajax himself proposed to a high official a mass fight between the fifth and sixth forms. for the avowed purpose of unifyiing the fifth form. When his room was raided, and practically the entire wains- coting stripped off in search of secret panels, Ajax was not angry: he merely said ruefully, Well, if .lock they'd only asked me the combination, they wonldn't have had to rip up the floor, too. During that crisp autumn of 1941, the di- Lacs