Spring Tempers Activities, Fashions

This is the second of two articles by CRIMSON staff members on things to do and what to wear as the spring season envelops Cambridge.

They were off and running on a fast track at Wellesley this morning, as Waban seniors officially pushed the 1952 outdoor season into high gear. Rumor has it that a long-shot filly coasted in over the tried and proven mudders in the Hoop Downs classic, but the name and odds of the winner have not yet come in over local wires.

And with this event, the season called Spring is officially ushered in, with its Things to Do, Places to Go, and Books to Forget. For the enterprising young observer or participant the site today is Wellesley; the gaming grounds of tomorrow will be the entire eastern coast. It is Open Season.

Wellesley, in fact, is the scene of no small number of fertility rites in honor of the coming of the prime equinox. A week from Saturday brings the colorful and symbolic Tree Day exercises when the young firm saplings are planted in the shadow of the Tower and beside the Lake.

But the sap ran highest in Waban natives early this morning, in the traditional battle for the class's first husband, foremost in the thoughts of every maiden filly entered. Every year just before the hoop classic word leaks out that groups of maidens have put their heads together to set up a fix, in which some girls will block while one girl rolls through to victory.

But when the barriers go down, the best laid plans of mice and women go awry. With the chips and a husband on the tables, it is kill or be killed.

Time to Run

Spring, indeed, is the season for running and chasing, and for both the outdoor-inclined and those merely forced out by the weather events get racier as the day grow longer. There are races for pennants, races for cups on the river, races for Olympic berths among strong-legged athletes. Then there is the Race Track.

Suffolk Downs edged out Wellesley by several furlongs in competition for an early opening. As a Get Rich Quick scheme a man can get about as far by an investment in Ukrainian Uranium as by attempting to thwart the thoroughbreds, but, for those who like theirs in moderation, the track is there in East Boston, the pigs are at the post, and the money . . . well, write the folks that you're studying for provisionals, and include a list of the Harvard Foreign Policy Library "which is requited reading." Seldom fails.

World War II ended in 1945 and the ranks of veterans are depleted, but there still remain a number of Harvard men who like to go out with girls. If such is your case, and if your folks have answered the above letter with an aplication for a library card, there are less expensive Courses of Action open to the enterprising. In brief, you can always buy a muzzle and copy of the rule book for the girl, and head for the Beantown ball park bleachers.

Now it has come to light in recent years that the citizens of Boston support two alleged baseball associations known respectively (in order of prowess) as the Battling Bosox and the National League Baseball Club of Boston.

At this writing, Mr. Theodore Williams of the former aggregation is no longer entertaining the crowd with his genetic gestures from left field, but the Sox have put on a sufficiently phenomenal early season performance to lead the American League, or Junior Circuit as those people who write sports stories are wont to call it. The surprising Brownies from St. Louis are in town today through Saturday, closely followed by the Tribe from Cleveland.

Boston has always been an American League town because of the colorful Red Sox, and it is a bit of a shock to oldtime fans to find persons named Piersall, Lepcio, and Throneberry performing in place of the Doerrs, Peskys, Williamses, and Goodmans of former days, but a team can not do too much better than first place. To get to Fenway Park, you Rapidly Transit to Park Street, go upstairs, and take a Streetcar Named Watertown to Kenmore Square.

Way to Go

To get to Braves Field, where the National League representatives perpetrate, you go the same way but get off three stops further. This is known as going from the sublime to the ridiculous. But here, at least, you can see the Giants in action a week from Saturday.

Outdoor observation on the local scene also hits an all-year high in this season. For about a buck, or an H.A.A. coupon, you can drag the fortunate fe- male to Soldiers Field and watch baseball college style. Then in the last of the fifth, when the score is 32 to 7, you can leave, pick up a case of beer, and join the cheering thousands along the river banks who wonder "which crew is Harvard's?"

Finally, for the lone wolf, there are always the countless local links, proving grounds for the development of a four-letter functional vocabulary.

So today it's Wellesley, kiddies. Tomorrow the World