Nails, Not Tradition, Cement Commencement Site in Yard

"This is a funny business. It takes us three weeks to build it, they use it for three hours, and we tear it down in three days."

George McTernan, carpenter to the University for eight years, looked at the structure in front of Memorial Church--and spat--but not forcefully--on the ground.

One of the nine carpenters, who with four laborers, have just finished the major part of the work connected with the two Commencement platforms in the Yard, McTernan confesses that he sometime wonders what it all adds up to. Tradition, he allowed, is all right but "there must be close to two thousand board feet of lumber in that damned thing."

"She's nearly done now, though. We thought we'd never get started this year what with all the rain." The only emotional uplift McTernan gets out of serving 311 years of tradition, according to his own account, is wondering what famous person will be up front on Com- mencement Day.

Last year he put his money on MacArthur, but felt that Eisenhower, Nimitz Arnold, and Vandegrift were suitable substitutes. Playing the law of averages. George's money is again riding with "Mac" to be honored by the University.

I'd build this thing again if we had another show like that." George said he watched the four war leaders get their degrees from a comfortable vantage point in Sover Hall, and was much impressed by the smoothness with which things went off."

"They had thirteen thousand people out front watching. They nearly went crazy when Eisenhower and the rest walked in."

"Why, they flashed those bulbs right in his face." George reserved particular scorn for one woman almost with a camera who forced her way up on the plat form before relining to her proper niche.

"Pigeons," snarled George as two birds lit ten feet in front of him. "Them damn pigeons will have this platform all messed up in no time." He spat, forcefully, on the new grass.