Couples have very little stuff to move for their first real home after marriage. That was certainly true for us when we transferred from the one-bedroom apartment of a graduate student at Cornell to a two-bedroom duplex of a postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth Med. We thought that two trips in our new microbus might accomplish the move. We had traded in our gray VW bug in the spring of 1961 for an expanded VW caterpillar which was pale green and yellow. There was plenty of space, once the middle seat had been removed, certainly enough for a few pieces of furniture and boxes of clothes and stuffed toys Debbie had already begun to accumulate. We looked forward to a shared duplex in Hanover that would be available in June, with the ending of the academic year, when junior faculty would be moving on to the next stages of their own careers.
Technically, the position of a postdoctoral fellow was not a real faculty position; those started with an appointment as an Instructor. We were entitled, however, to rent a partially furnished duplex at the Rivercrest apartments on Lyme Road. The complex housed, primarily, beginning faculty and fellows, at a very reasonable cost. The units were located only a few miles from the medical school, well within walking distance if required. Karen did not drive at the time and so the likelihood was that I, myself, would commute to the lab each day.
Since none of the apartments would be available until turnover time in June, we would need to store our limited belongings somewhere in Hanover. Dr. Lafayette Noda, chairman of the Biochemistry department at Dartmouth Med, kindly offered the use of his barn on his farm in the village of Enfield, near Hanover. He had a wonderful house built in the 1700s, where he and his wife, Mayme, lived with their children. I was envious. It would be a dream to reside in a restored dwelling, dating back to colonial times. We gratefully left our first load of stuff with him.
However, we should have arrived on our final journey to his farm one day earlier than we did. The night before our second arrival in June, his dog had chased a skunk into the barn. The black and white critter stood his ground; his presence would last for the first month of our life in New Hampshire.
We were able to transfer our boxes to our new duplex, where their contents remained inside only at night. Every morning, we hauled much of our clothing and stuffed materials, our daughter’s toys, out to the yard. There they sat in the bright, warm sun of a summer’s day in New England. Each evening, they were carried back into the apartment, the door of which was kept open most of the time. We never did find out what our new neighbors thought about our actions. We did not ask. Ultimately, sunlight did its job and we were able to reacquire most of our clothing and Debbie’s toys. Fortunately, there is little rain in the Connecticut valley in June.
The duplex held the mandatory two families. Fortunately for our sharing family, the units were not side-by-side but joined back-to-back. Our front doors were not close; neither were the other units located at Rivercrest. We never really did get to know any of the young families living near us. Perhaps, our odorous entrance did have an effect. The man living behind us was a junior member of the ROTC faculty. He was addicted to cleanliness and order. Several times a week, especially during the winter, he would remove all of the chrome-work from his car and scour away the dirt and, in particular, the road salt that had collected there, and required his deepest attention.
Our only neighborly interaction in the complex was the result of Pokey, a small beagle we had acquired for Debbie shortly after moving to Hanover. Pokey coveted anything left in the yards of our neighbors. Karen had the daily task of returning items to their owners. We never felt completely welcomed into the Hanover community during our first year. Fortunately, it didn’t last. The following spring, we moved into town.