Faculty Recount Summers Past

Author: Rachael Jennings

Throughout a seemingly endless winter sandwiched by a painfully shorter warmer season, Middlebury students spend hours upon hours working on schoolwork, attending classes and creating some fun in the utopian Vermont mountains. But come May, everyone is off for a trip with the family, a job at a summer camp, a backpacking trip, waitressing, a research position,, summer classes and countless other summer activities. When the College's professors (who also endure the winter and the work of the academic year) pack up for the break, they also find some of their own adventure …

After demonstrating in front of the White House against the war in Vietnam on New Year's Eve, few of Nancy O'Connor's friends suspected that she would take up a job for "the man." O'Connor is now the Chair of the French Department at the College, but when she was 18, she interned for the Defense Department in Washington, D.C. at Buzzard's Point. Though she recalls the job as "not particularly funny, nor interesting, nor crazy," it was her first. To kill time, O'Connor read thousands of pages - The Grapes of Wrath and Magic Mountain, among other literature - and wrote lengthy letters to her friends. "They didn't give me much to do," commented O'Connor. The downsides? Waking up at 6 a.m. to catch the bus for the long ride and having to admit to her friends that she was working for the government.

One of Assistant Professor of Education Jonathan Miller-Lane's most memorable summer job experiences was digging ditches for a construction company. Spending a year between high school and college in Yemen where his parents were stationed, he joined a group of workers from Eritrea that had come to Yemen for employment with the aim of sending its wages home to its families living across the Red Sea. As one of few American teenagers, he was able to overcome his inexperience and unfamiliarity and ultimately learn a lot in his position. Though Miller-Lane had practice at splitting firewood when he was young, nothing prepared him for the quickly blistering hands and eight-hour shifts under oppressively dry, hot air. "The heat was a little more intense than in New England," said Miller-Lane. Yet what he remembers most is the "absolute tyranny" of the supervisor, who would fire workers on a whim, and the fear of these workers who could be sent home so abruptly. "At any moment the unpredictable thug who was in charge could transform their lives for the worst," said Miller-Lane. Even with this fear, there was a silent solidarity among the workers and Miller-Lane remembered feeling very connected to the other men as they walked - shovels over their shoulders - toward the dump truck that took them home.

Julia Alvarez, writer-in-residence, spent the summer after her junior year at Middlebury working at the snack bar in the barn at Bread Loaf. Given that she had not asserted herself as a writer yet, she figured that she should experience the next best thing - "hanging out around writers and people who loved writing" during the School of English and the Writer's Conference. What she remembers was not an unusual job experience, but an unusual experience for a somewhat pedestrian job. Amid the routine of making shakes and creative snacks - such as the "Angel on Horseback," which was a hotdog with a wedge of melted cheese in the middle - a strange looking man appeared in the Barn. He requested simply a glass of water. After a few refills, Alvarez's busy co-worker told the stranger that there was a faucet nearby and he could help himself, but Alvarez filled a few more glasses. That night he followed her to her room, insisting that she was his soul mate and asking her to look up at the stars and watch how he could "make them move around." She was scared but pretended to listen, thinking that he would hitchhike out of her life. He disappeared for weeks but always found his way back into the picture - even years later, when Alvarez taught in five different states. "I always thought, phew, that's over," said Alvarez. "But then he'd come back again, follow me around, saying that without each other, we were both doomed." Finally, Alvarez filed a restraining order against the stranger. Though startling, Alvarez noted, "that summer gave me a story to tell like no other job ever has, and for a writer I guess that counts for a lot."

With a father from France and a mother from India, Director of Health and Wellness Educationi Jyoti Daniere's life has always revolved around food. When she was sixteen, she and her older sister Amrita decided to open a crepe stand in their quaint Vermont hometown. Underneath the staircase of a small antique shop they positioned a homey roadside stand and began their dream of owning a restaurant. Equipped with fine-tuned recipes, flour, eggs, fruit, chicken and the "start-up capital" their supportive father provided, Daniere and her sister were ready for an exciting summer. What the summer brought instead was hours in the heat with the inability to go swimming with friends, sisterly bickering and an insignificant amount of spending money. When her sister was ready to head off for college in the fall, the girls abandoned their restaurant ambitions. Sometimes, when the pair is searching for a good place to eat, they claim that they should leave their jobs and open a French-Indian fusion place. "All we need to think about is that hot, lonely and busy summer many years ago," said Daniere, "and we sigh and sit back down at our desks."