[Karen] The day started from our motel in Gettysburg,PA.by the pool with coffee, bagel, cream cheese (at least for me) and blue skies. I tried to map out a route that would take us more or less on a direct route toward Poughkeepsie on country roads. Unfortunately, it seemed to be yard sales posing as rare antique sales were set up in every small town on the road. Every house on the route had their tables out with more kitsch than you would ever care to see posing as 'antiques'. It must have also been "Celebrate and honor your Fire Department Day" which is a good thing, but every fire truck in PA, NJ and NY was sitting by the roadside of every small town we drove through - all shined up and looking their prettiest whether shiny red, yellow or lime green, The slow progress we were making drove Kalon crazy. In some towns, it took us 10 minutes to go one block! We finally pulled into Poughkeepsie about 4:30 and after checking into our hotel, drove over to Vassar College where I had spent many hours of my two scholarship funded years in non-academic pursuits: cheap (price not content) movies at the Juliet Theater perched right at the corner of campus with tickets on sale for about $1 and changing movies every 2 or 3 days. Or if I wasn't going to the movies I was 'in the stacks' at the library reading old, old novels. Also, cutting classes! It was no wonder I lost my scholarship. Here I am standing in front of my Freshman dorm which was the Main building of the college. The senior class was all in this building along with some lucky freshmen. Matthew Vassar was a wealthy brewer in the area and he decided to champion education for Young Ladies. This was the original building housing the whole college. I lived on the fourth floor on the right hand side toward the back of the building and made life long friends: My roommate Peggy (Margaret Leuten) Wasserstrom from Cleveland, OH; Karen Metcalf from Reading, Mass; Anne ( Luning) Studholme from Chicago, Ill area all of whom we will visit on this trip.
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| Outside Main |
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| Looking back toward the entrance to the college |
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| Main |
The two years I spent at Vassar, though pretty unproductive academically were very happy years. Jt was hard to come back and live at home and not be able to come and go as I pleased. Nor was UCLA quite the same in terms of watching over their students and coddling them. My math teacher (Miss Winifred Asprey) at Vassar probably was the one who first introduced me to computers as a good friend of hers was the famous Grace Hopper of IBM which had its original headquarters just down the Hudson River from Vassar. A few years after I moved home, Vassar had a computer center funded by IBM.
I loved Cushing - the architecture seemed like something I would find in Olde England which appealed to my romantic literary side The door behind me on the left would have been one I used many times to get to my room on the third floor. Poor Kalon had to listen to me gush on and on.
[Kalon] During the morning drive I was accompanied by two self-sure ladies, both a bit headstrong. Karen thought that since it wasn't a long day we could enjoy getting off the main roads. I made the mistake of entering our destination for Ms Kia ("Know-It-All" - our onboard computer navigator). So pretty soon Ms Kia was telling me to take "the next right" while Karen was saying "no way - keep to the left". And of course as soon as I ignored a direction, Kia was quickly advising me to "take any legal U-turn" and Karen was saying (with increasing emphasis) "not happening!". While Kia outwardly retained her professional attitude, I think we eventually overwhelmed her (she was surely thinking who are these idiots who are disregarding MY directions) and she went uncharacteristically silent for quite some time. Anyway, the moral to the story is that you can have a fine trip with Karen navigating just as you can have a fine trip with Kia navigating, but DON'T empower both of them to navigate at the same time.
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