At the Movies

Reading Laura’s recounting of Linda Horsey in her bed reminds me of our hiking trip to Mt. Katahdin -- when we finally set up camp in a lean to, it snowed and we were frozen, so we wound up sharing sleeping bags to stay warm until the teacher with us (I do not recall who it was) woke up and realized we were literally sleeping, or at least shivering, together. He had up all pack up and move in the middle of the night to a hut, where we had bunk beds to sleep in, and reasonable warmth from the fireplace. The next day we hiked down the mountain in the snow, wearing sneakers of course, to the bus – how we managed to do it without any of us breaking our ankles, or at least spraining them I do not know as I recall it was VERY slippery. I got quite sick, with a high fever, and curled up in a sleeping bag on the bus and went we finally returned to campus, I think I stayed in bed for a week recovering from whatever I had. However, what I certainly do recall was our innocence and not thinking there was anything wrong with sharing a sleeping bag when we were freezing.

Does anybody recall the movies at Prescott when the girls had to sit on one side of the auditorium and the boys on the other? We were allowed to be walked to the bus but heaven forbid you could hug or kiss – Don Price would be there and literally kick you if you tried to kiss your boyfriend. We used to drive him crazy by wrapping our arms around ourselves as if we were being hugged and when he came over, unwrap ourselves and look innocent.

Another nice memory for me was our hiking trip to Cadillac Mountain. I still have a photo of me standing on a rock at the top with Susie Tucker in front of me pretending to push me off the mountain. One of my sneakers in that photo is quite black as I managed step into a very dirty hole on our way up, but we had fun!

As for snow, we used to jump out of the second story window in Redington that was over the kitchen window so that Mrs. Newcomb could see us falling into the snow banks – she was very patient and a saint to not get really angry about our antics. Of course the Newcombs were not as sanguine about one of my pranks, which was to set a manual alarm clock (the wind up kind with the bells on the top) into the laundry chute and have it go off at around 3 AM making a very loud racket. The laundry chute was large enough that after we threw our clothes down we could follow with our bodies and get to the basement a lot faster than taking the stairs J. I am not sure which angel was looking over me that I did not get thrown out of Hinckley for all the things I did but somehow managed to remain and graduate.

Seeing the names of people joining the group has brought back a lot of memories for me, and the fun we had. Times were different back then and we were really innocents in the world.