Hanover NH January 24, 2026
We had an easy first part of the drive: not too much traffic, and no slowdowns at all. We were routed over the GW and then up the Henry Hudson, Sawmill, and Hutcheson to the Merrit / Cross through Connecticut. It was a cold day, but the car did well with weather in the teens. We reached the supercharger at Rocky Hill, CT around noon, and went, not without a bit of trepidation, into the Arch 2 Sports Bar and Grill. It was a real sports bar, with about a dozen tv’s, pinball, pool, you name it. The staff was immediately welcoming, and we got a delicious turkey sandwich to go. $12.95 bought us an enormous sandwich and a mountain of fries.
We had charged enough to make it to Brattleboro with energy to spare. The weather was turning colder, though, and as we drove north form Springfield, the wind started blowing hard against us. At the charger in Brattleboro, the computer told us that we needed 60% to get to West Lebanon, NH: 63 miles away! It was five below zero when we started, and, sure enough, we had only 10% when we arrived at West Leb (as we Greeners call it).
We weren’t sure whether to use the valet parking at the Hanover Inn, but when the valet told us they had chargers in the basement garage, it was a done deal.
The inn has undergone a total renovation, and I have to say they’ve done a beautiful job. The public areas are modern and inviting: the entrance hall is dominated by an enormous granite table fabricated locally.
When they needed to redo the floors, a dozen burly workmen failed to make it budge: it weighs 2800 pounds. An air jack finally did the trick.
The rooms are large and very comfortable now. Ours had something dear to my heart: a picture of President John Kemeny’s car.
Kemeny was a remarkable man. He was a Hungarian Jew whose family fled to America in 1940. He earned his BA and Ph.D. at Princeton, where he was Einstein’s principal mathematical assistant. He was appointed full professor at Dartmouth at the age of 27 and went on to create the BASIC programming language with his colleague Thomas Kurtz. Kemeny was one of the “Martians,” a loosely affiliated of brilliant Hungarian Jews who remade mathematics and science in the United States; the group included Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, and other assorted Nobel laureates. He was above all a beloved president of the college, continuing to teach undergraduate classes and welcoming students into his home.
I have two personal anecdotes about Kemeny. During college I worked as a waiter at the Bull’s Eye, a steak house in Hanover. Kemeny was a frequent guest, as was Jonathan Mirsky, a leftist assistant professor specializing in Chinese history. Whenever Mirsky saw Kemeny, he hailed him as “Comrade Kemeny,” which was either bold or idiotic (Mirsky was denied tenure and went on to have a prominent career as a journalist, winning the award as UK journalist of the year for his coverage of Tienamen Square in the Observer. In spring, 1972, after Nixon declared an escalation of the already lost war in Viet Nam, the eastern college student poured out one last time in protest. My buddy Jim Kloppenberg and I organized the lobbying effort in Washington, and went to the President’s office to ask that students not be punished for following their conscience and missing class, tests, and assignments. Kemeny not only agreed, but pulled out his personal checkbook and gave us $500 for student bus fare!
We were going to walk around a bit, but we weren’t dressed for -5 temperatures, i.e. no woolen underwear. So we opted for an early dinner at Molly’s, the big eatery on Main Street. We had no real expectations, but the food was excellent. Sue had a really good burger while I had French Onion soup and an excellent Mac and cheese made with Jasper Hill cheese.
We followed dinner up with a glass of wine at the bar in Pine, the restaurant at the Hanover Inn. We had very cosy seats right in front of the fire.
