While today’s Ephs are said to exist in the Purple Bubble during their Williamstown years, they nevertheless live their undergraduate lives in the era of telecommunications miracles and global interconnectedness. In contrast, although we of the Class of 1968 thought we were living in an era of space age technology, the communications tools personally available to us were quite basic and limited. Students came to college usually equipped only with a radio, and perhaps a stereo phonograph (or, in some cases, a reel-to-reel tape recorder).
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The Red Balloon — The Williams College Literary Magazine
Read our interview with Red Balloon editor Scott Fields below. Before you do that, and to sort of set the stage, you might like to read our deceased classmate Bill Smith’s generous and sensitive review of a poetry night at the babbel featuring some Red Balloon poets. Bill’s review appeared in the May 2, 1967 edition […]
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A Night to Forget
When I contracted for a round-trip ride to/from Poughkeepsie with a fellow student driver (who was not from our class, and who shall remain nameless), I did not contemplate that it might culminate in a near-death experience. No, it wasn’t the date at Vassar, but the ride back in the depths of winter. The first […]
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What? No Ephraim?
Surprise! More than one fifth of our class possesses one of just four different names (and their variants)! This is based on a scan of The Eph Williams Handbook (aka the “look book”, as it was known at the area women’s colleges) for the Class of 1968. The breakdown: At least 25 of us are, […]
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Check It Out!
As soon as we set foot on campus, we received sound advice from the Williamstown National Bank, located on Spring Street. Its advertisement in the Eph Williams Handbook read: “To the Class of 1968: WHY NOT OPEN A CHECKING ACCOUNT NOW?” The advantages were listed: “1. No danger of stolen cash 2. Establishment of credit […]
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Bon Appétit!
Bon Appetit! Macrobiotic? Vegan? Gluten free? Forget it. The foodservice during our undergraduate days was basic, to say the least. In fact, even politically incorrect: pork often appeared on Fridays, just in time to offend two major religions. And what exactly was the composition of “mystery meat”? (Inquiring young minds always wanted to know.) However, […]
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Did We Attend College on the Mohawk Trail?
Either Williamstown is actually located on that part of Route 2 known as the Mohawk Trail, built for pioneering motorists in the early twentieth century, or it isn’t. On the resolution of this question hangs the bragging rights of us and all other Ephs to be sons/daughters of the Mohawk Trail, nor not. Did we […]
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