Free The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving Page B

no maintenance since that man, whatever his name was, retired.”
    “He didn’t retire, he died ,” Father said. Father was often exasperated with his father, now that Iowa Bob was getting older.
    In 1950 Frank was ten, Franny was nine, I was eight, and Lilly was four; Egg had just been born, and in his ignorance was spared our dread that we would one day be expected to attend the much accused Dairy School. Father was sure that by the time Franny was old enough, they would be admitting girls.
    “Not out of anything resembling a progressive instinct,” he claimed, “but purely to avoid bankruptcy.”
    He was right, of course. By 1952 the Dairy School’s academic standards were in question; its admissions were steadily falling, and its admission standards were even further in question. And when the admissions continued to go down, the tuition went up, which turned away even more students, which meant some faculty had to be let go—and others, the ones with principles and other means, resigned.
    The 1953 football team went 1-9 for the season; Coach Bob thought that the school couldn’t wait for him to retire so that they could drop football altogether—it was too costly, and the alumni, who had once supported it (and the entire athletic program), were too ashamed to come back and see the games anymore.
    “It’s the damn uniforms,” Iowa Bob said, and Father rolled his eyes and tried to look tolerant of Bob’s approaching senility. Father had learned of senility from Earl. But Coach Bob, to be fair, had a point about the uniforms.
    The colors of the Dairy School, perhaps modeled on a now-vanished breed of cow., were meant to be a deep chocolate brown and a luminous silver. But with the years, and the increasingly synthetic quality of the fabrics, this rich cocoa and silver had become dingy and sad.
    “The color of mud and clouds,” my father said.
    The students at the Dairy School, who played with us kids—when they were not showing Franny their “things”—informed us of the other names for these colors, which were in vogue at the school. There was an older kid named De Meo—Ralph De Meo, one of Iowa Bob’s few stars, and the star sprinter on Father’s winter and spring track teams—who told Frank, Franny, and me what the Dairy School colors really were. “Gray like the pallor of a dead man’s face,” De Meo said. I was ten and scared of him; Franny was eleven, but behaved older with him; Frank was twelve and afraid of everybody.
    “Gray like the pallor of a dead man’s face,” De Meo repeated slowly, for me. “And brown—cow-brown, like manure,” he said. “That’s shit to you, Frank.”
    “I know ,” said Frank.
    “Show it to me again,” Franny said to De Meo; she meant his thing.
    Thus shit and death were the colors of the dying Dairy School. The board of trustees, laboring under this curse—and others, going back to the barnyard history of the school and the less-than-quaint New Hampshire town the school was plopped down in—decided to admit women to the student body.
    That, at least, would raise admissions,
    “That will be the end of football,” said old Coach Bob.
    “The girls will play better football than most of your boys,” Father said.
    “That’s what I mean,” said Iowa Bob.
    “Ralph De Meo plays pretty good,” Franny said.
    “Plays with what pretty good,” I said, and Franny kicked me under the table. Frank sat sullen and larger than any of us, dangerously close to Franny and across from me.
    “De Meo is at least fast,” Father said.
    “De Meo is at least a hitter ,” Coach Bob said.
    “He sure is ,” Frank said; Frank had been hit by Ralph De Meo several times.
    It was Franny who protected me from Ralph. One day when we were watching them paint the yard-line stripes on the football field—just Franny and I; we were hiding from Frank (we were often hiding from Frank)—De Meo came up to us and pushed me into the blocking sled. He was wearing his scrimmage