Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2008/06/08/goodbye_my_friend_larry.php
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Any institution, in my view, is only as good as its habits. By that standard, Larry James was a first-order Dartmouth institution, if only because his habits were so unvarying. Every day at the Food Court, when Larry was working the register, it was always the same. He would take your inventory, swipe your card, and then, peering back at you through windshield glasses, announce: “Thank you my friend”—pause two beats —“Joseph.” Or, in your case, your proper first name.
That pause allowed Larry to inspect your I.D., and to figure out who you were. He can be forgiven for not always recognizing his friends, given the volume of friends he serviced each day. And though his pause foreclosed from him the achievements of Mitzi, another Food Court cashier, whose speed and efficiency in ringing you up was never less than spectacular, Larry’s slow draw had its charms. For example, he was affable. (Not exactly Mitzi’s forte.)
Larry James died in June, and his preferred honorific—“my friend”—may as well be his epitaph. He was a friend to Dartmouth, and, in his way, a friend to everyone.
It was fitting that Larry managed Food Court, because it is the only genuinely democratic eating place on campus. Each of the others caters to specialized tastes: Collis and Home Plate allow the health- and organically-minded to forage; the Hop has its gifts in line orders and the deep fry; the Pavilion attends to confessional diets; the Lone Pine Tavern is geared toward those who prefer their “fun” kid-untested but mother-approved; and so forth. Everyone is of course free to choose any or none of them. Yet neither do any of them attempt to satisfy everyone. By contrast, Food Court contains multitudes.
Attempting to satisfy everyone generally results in mediocrity, and the food at Food Court, to be honest, was often mediocre. Or rather, it was ordinary, like the food at most other college cafeterias—never haute cuisine, rarely gutter scraps, but a square enough meal. Still, Larry was able to elevate the place above the quality, flavor, or runniness of its fare. He did so, I think, by accenting Food Court’s democratic culture.
His talents were social. Though he had his eccentricities, these made him a character; and above all Larry was a regular guy, and he made you feel, too, like a regular. Note the indefinite article: Drinkers will know instantly what I mean. Though one can regularly patronize most any establishment, and be “a regular customer,” there is just one meaning in being “a regular.” A regular is someone who so prefers a place to drink, and props up the bar with such predictable frequency, that the bartender no longer needs to ask what he’ll be having.
Regulars, virtually fused to their favored spots, confer character (and business) on a bar. In turn, they are treated with a level of familiarity, a mutual fondness and sometimes friendship, unavailable to transient or stop-by drinkers. At the College, students are most often “regulars” in this or that cellar, which, for many reasons, isn’t quite the same thing.
It wasn’t quite the same thing at Food Court, either. Everyone ate there regularly. Larry’s genius was to make everyone feel like a regular.
His other genius, I suppose, was for silly costumes and hats. The nearby photograph was taken in the summer of 2003 during a joint fraternity-sorority “cook off.” Larry had done a kindness in agreeing to adjudicate the winner. That word, kindness, is not chosen lightly. As I remember it, our group had put together a “Hawaiian” menu—meaning, low-grade chicken left soaking in fruit juice, then skewered with pineapples and undercooked. To call the final product “not poisonous” would be charitable.
In fairness, my appreciation of the culinary arts is not particularly sophisticated, and, on the day in question, I had spent most of the afternoon being a regular in my fraternity basement. My palate, and faculties, thus degraded, the pictured altercation followed our team’s last place finish in a five-way contest. I was insisting to Larry, likely somewhat incoherently, that he had badly misjudged the merits of our entry. It became clear that he had not. Later that evening, several, including myself, became violently ill.
At this point, the details don’t much matter. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine any other College administrator, and Larry James was definitely one of those, and one of the most competent besides, who would have put up with the hassle and potential toxicity of the whole event — or, for that matter, with the hassle of running a College cafeteria without becoming a jerk. In the end, his were not only unvarying but the best kind of habits. So thanks, my friend ...Larry.