Michigan State University - Red Cedar Log Yearbook (East Lansing, MI)

Page 13 text:

A Efii WEREN ' T MANY WEEKS IN THE WINTER term of your year but there was enough time to allow Paul Banyan ' s beard to grow for the annual Foresters ' Shindig. AAU held its national meet and the Spartans took first place on their own ground. The campus, you ' ll remember, was white as cake icing. Coeds trotted hurriedly from class to class bundled up in powder blue ski suits. They looked impractical and attractive, their faces fresh and red. You got into spirited snowball fights in front of South Campbell. You felt like a twelve year old skipping school. At night, if the moon was full and you were leaving the library for home, campus land- marks were as distinct as turn-of-the-century silhou- ettes, only crystal bright and blue. You knocked the snow from your boots, undressed, hopped into bed, and looked out of the window until you fell asleep. Winter at State gave you the chance to be an individual star in your own right. Equipment was no trouble if you could bum a pair of skates from your roommate, and the ice when it did come, was free of charge. If you could forsake the exhilarating activity out- of-doors, the concert and lecture stage presented the best. The Minneapolis Symphony, Licia Albanese, and Vladimir Horowitz brought you to the Audito- rium. Jussi Bjoerling brought you to your feet. The eloquent lectures of Max Eastman and Lowell Thomas brought you to your senses. Theta Alpha Phi produced the sell-out play Dark of the Moon. Burl Ives sang about Venezuela and Aunt Rhody, the real articles of American balladry. Gene Krupa played his danceable rhythms for two nights of J-Hop festivities, and played them As You Like It. The extra-late permission was hard to believe. Breakfast in the wee hours found Lansing restaurants in a turmoil of tuxedos and formals. It was the big event of Winter ' 49.

Page 15 text:

PRING QUARTER BEGAN AS A CLIMATIC HANGOVER from a rough winter. Snow was dirty, disappointing, and melting. Travel was almost amphibious. On your way to south campus you paused on the bridge to watch a swollen Red Cedar engulf the bandshell and canoe shelter. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow bothered the impervious ducks. You weren ' t aware, until you stopped to look, that a young and vital season was here to stay awhile. Everyone talked about it. Four years you watched Spring brighten up everything on campus including yourself, and every year it was new to you. Profs struggled in vain to keep your thoughts from wander- ing out of second floor Berkey Hall to the little babushka-and-saddle-shoe freshman bound for the grill. When the lecture was over, you looked down on your notes to find one comprehensible sentence and twenty or more meaningless doodles. There were long periods when you would stretch out beneath the trees to read, rest, eat strawberry ice cream cones, or talk with your girl. You liked to be outside because everything smelled good and clean, because all about you asserted the world a better place than it had ever been. From that day on, you beat a path to the river. The hard-nosed business world didn ' t exist. You were young. Dancing at the Mardi Gras was often something of a problem. Either you couldn ' t see out of your costume, or move your arm, or sit down. There were plenty of laughs and the big attendance proved most of you thought it well worth the effort. A regular year of school was just about wrapped up in class books and machine scored tests. There was a feeling that ran high in every living group at State, during the closing days of Spring quarter. It was time for celebration, time for Water Carnival! For weeks every sort of float was conceived and fe- verishly worked on. You watched nearly two score of them towed down the river beneath the spotlights. They were aesthetically pleasing, earthy, humorous, the best and near-best. One thing certain, they were the result of many hands, many minds. They were an expression of joy that the lonely, long travail was ended. Spring quarter left amid the glitter of paint and pageantry, in a celebration which was exclusively part of State ' s traditions.