Winter at EWC

As the winter quarter started, I encountered several courses I had little or no background in.  They were Speech Fundamentals and General Psychology.  I also had a second English Composition course.  These three made up my tough core of classes.  The Industrial Arts classes were enjoyable and I let Mr. Collins know I would have to withdraw from choir, because of the conflicts with basketball.  He understood and wished me well.  All basketball players signed up for basketball as a one credit Physical Education class taught by Red Reese.  I worked hard and at the end of the quarter I received two C’s and a B in the tough trio.  To my surprise the B grade came in General Psychology.  The rest of my grades were A’s.  I still have the horse head book ends I made in Industrial Arts 145.  I gave them to Mom and after her death they came back to me.  I was having the time of my life in the Industrial Arts classes.  Looking ahead I could see classes in the schedule that I had difficulty wait for.  It was fun taking the class with my friend, Tom Plant, as he was creative, and we would get into great discussions about our projects. 

Tom had been asked to join Epsilon Pi Tau, an Industrial Arts honorary.  The purpose of EPT was to keep members abreast of latest developments in methods and machinery through field trips to the industrial areas of  Spokane. This seemed like an important group to become a part of if I planned to teach industrial Arts.  Tom said I would be asked to join after I had taken more classes.  Tom would graduate in 1954, so he was ahead of me with most of his course work. 

We had a big snow that transformed the campus into a winter wonder land.  In this picture the street shown runs past the front of Sutton Hall.  The building seen through the trees, on the right past the parking lot, is the Industrial Arts building.  It was close and convenient to my dorm.  It was an old building and crowded.  Soon after I graduated they built a new, larger facility by the field house.

When it snowed, there were some royal snowball fights.  It was usually one dorm against another.  I thought I had ruined my throwing arm during one fight.  It lasted late into the night.  Of course there were snow men and snow girls constructed around the campus.  Some girl creations were quite curvaceous.

I learned by observation to never leave your dorm window open in snowball season.  The fellows of Sutton Hall had no reservation about filling a room with snowballs and everyone tried their aim at an open window.  Fortunately my room was on the side of the building with only an alley running below, so there was little traffic there.

*Taken from "Which Road Should I Follow?, Volume 1, Growing up in the country", an autobiography by Edwin K. Hill.