Spending eight hours a day in an information booth may seem like a boring way to spend the summer.
But then, appearances can be deceiving.
"We joke that this is the best job in town," said Jay Evans '49, who has worked in the information booth for the past five summers. "You meet so many fascinating people."
The Dartmouth College and Town of Hanover Information Booth is located on the edge of the Green across the street from Reed Hall. It mysteriously appears every spring after graduation and sits quietly until Sept. 14, Evans said.
The College owns the hut but runs it in conjunction with the Hanover Chamber of Commerce, Evans said.
The hut is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 5.
Three College alumni work in the information booth regularly &emdash; Evans, Everett Wood '39 and Ed Tuck '50.
Bob Graham '40, author of The Dartmouth Story, a book that traces the history of the College, fills in for three regulars, as does Evans' wife, Fran.
In addition to working in the booth, all four men remain involved in the College and alumni activities, Evans and Tuck said.
Watching Evans work one afternoon provides a glimpse of the difficult job these four men have. Every visitor expects the information booth attendant to be friendly.
That is not always the easiest task, but Evans manages to make it look simple.
Dressed in an off-blue shirt and dark blue shorts, Evans goes out of his way to offer visitors all sorts of information about Hanover and the College.
"You can have a smile professionally or you can smile because you enjoy the give and take of people," Evans explained. "The latter is my smile."
Both Evans and Tuck said that visitors are usually polite.
"It's pretty darn rare to find people who are snippy," Evans said.
"But sometimes they ask dumb questions and you have to give them a snippy answer," he said with a smile.
Tuck, who has worked in the booth for four years, said many people who visit the booth are looking for the Admissions Office.
"About ten percent of the people ask where the Admissions Office is," Tuck said.
"The big difference is whether the prospective [student] comes out of the car or whether the parent gets out of the car. Sometimes it is obvious the kid isn't interested because he is being led around by the nose by his parents for a number of college visits."
Evans said he can always tell who is on their way to the Admissions Office.
"They always get out of the car on a dead run," he said. "They're coming from Brooklyn, it's 2:12 and they have a 2:15 appointment."
Evans, a former assistant director of admissions for the College, said he can tell instantly which kids he would accept if he could choose.
"I'm always more impressed with the students who get out of the car themselves instead of their parents," he said. "That shows more initiative and that they are ready to break away from their parents."
Tuck said he has invented a system to track the number of visitors the information booth has each day and what the people inquire about.
The "Tuck system" is a code of four items that apply to each inquiry.
Questions are categorized as admissions, other Dartmouth inquiries, local information and state or regional information.
The first two weeks of August is the booth's busiest time of year, Tuck said.
"We have an average of seventy-five to eighty inquiries [every day] during the week this time of year," Tuck said. "On the weekend, we have about 120 inquiries.
Both Tuck and Evans said their favorite part of the job is the interesting people they meet.
"I enjoy meeting a diversity of people," Tuck said. "They are literally from all over Europe, Asia, the Pacific Rim and Australia."
Evans said he finds the English people particularly friendly.
"Thornton Hall, Dartmouth Hall and Wentworth are all named after English governors," he said. "The English love that. They go bananas over that. They feel right at home."
Evans described some funny experiences he has had working in the booth.
"I had one incredible experience a few weeks ago," he said. "I had one family from Moorstown, Tennessee pull up and ask me a question. Then the very next car was from Moorstown as well. There are 20,000 people in the town, but neither party knew the other. For some reason, their paths crossed at this point."
Evans said he rarely sees students, but when he does it is usually a memorable experience.
"One girl a few years ago I still remember," he said. "It was her sophomore summer and she asked me where Baker Library was!"
Tuck said his funniest experience involved a language barrier.
"The hardest question I had to answer was in Chinese," he said. "Mr. Wood and I were approached by a Chinese man who couldn't speak any English. We were asked to find bus transportation to somewhere in Vermont. It involved getting down to personal guidance even though we couldn't speak the language."
The booth is stored in a sewage plant during the winter months, Evans said.
