Mice in the Freezer, Owls on the Porch: The Lives of Naturalists Frederick and Francis Hamerstrom

3 Self-Discovery and Love

But I do not yet know with sufficient clearness what I am, though assured that I am. —Rene Descartes Two young men boarded the Boston & Maine Railroad’s Montreal Express from the station in Winchester, Massachusetts, in September 1927. The slight one, Thad Smith1 carried a suitcase and a tennis racquet and within the day was to become the roommate of the tall, handsome , and raven-haired one—Frederick Hamerstrom. Both of them were graduates of the high school in their pleasant small town; Thad Smith’s mother was delighted to further her son’s connection with that “lovely family.” At White River Junction an old bus awaited them; it took them to Hanover, New Hampshire, and Dartmouth College. Dartmouth’s 1927–28 costs were $860, plus books and incidentals .2 Hammy hastened to find a job—as waiter, soda clerk, and cigarette salesman for forty cents an hour at “The Wigwam” coffee shop.3 The next year he was kitchen help at the Atkins Eating Club until it failed. Thereafter he solicited new accounts and collected laundry for Brown’s Laundry. “Not particularly pleasant work,” he noted dryly. Odd jobs brought fifty cents an hour. Such earnings, he claimed, paid 29 percent of his Dartmouth expenses.4 Hammy and Thad shared a second floor suite in Fayerweather Hall, a small three-floor dormitory with thirty rooms. Amenities included a late-night break as the resounding call, “Toast Sides!” brought residents pell-mell downstairs to a vendor in an old truck fitted with a lantern and charcoal grill. Toast with jam or peanut butter, and coffee, tea, or soda cost twenty-five cents. 34 3 Self-Discovery and Love Thad soon pledged Theta Delta Chi fraternity. Self-sufficient Hammy preferred to roam the banks of the Connecticut River, noting the alders above the Ledyard canoe club, exploring the bluff near where Blood Brook comes in and determining that the fishing there was not worthwhile. His life was routine: “I have classes in the morning , and rec in the afternoon for an hour and a half, and then work in the evening. In between times I have to study, and when thats done I have only a little while to sleep.”5 Letters home repeatedly reassured his parents of his welfare and of the value of his pursuits. Roles seemed reversed—the student heartening the parents. Was he trying to convince a parent, or himself, that he was doing the right thing? He must have expressed some doubts to Clarence Darrow, whose visit in May 1928 was memorable: “Uncle Clarence and Cousin Paul say to come back next year, and also to finish. Uncle Clarence said I was doing damn well (he said damn!) and that I might as well go thru with it. So I guess the money I can’t make needn’t cause Dad any worry or expense. Its certainly giving me a break—he must think I’m doing well enough to deserve it, or he would’nt offer it.”6 Darrow might have offered a loan, although Fran insisted that Hammy got no help from him.7 Hammy may simply have been countering a parental opinion that employment was more practical than college. Thad Smith heard nothing of financial difficulties “until the crash made things hard for everyone.” Withal, it seems likely that Dartmouth expenses were a burden for Mr. Hamerstrom Sr. Darrow’s son by his first wife, Paul, an alumnus of Dartmouth, and his daughter-in-law accompanied him on the May visit. Hammy had mixed reactions and reported that Darrow “called on the president Saturday morning and Bill [a friend] and I were allowed to sit in before the hallowed presence—an unusual event!” Still, the freshman could not resist a little condescension: “Typically mid-Western, are’nt they?” Hammy invited an awed Thad to dinner with Darrow at home. Thad never forgot it: the most famous attorney in the country after the 1925 Scopes trial dazzled him. “I can, even to this day, picture him sitting at the dinner table with that black cigarette in the center of his mouth.” “He always smokes black cigarettes,” Hammy told his roommate, Self-Discovery and Love 35 “and he always holds them like that, right smack dab at the middle of his lips. He never puts on airs. Dad says that his office in Chicago is just a small, ordinary one.” Mr. Hamerstrom Sr...