Wayback Machine
Is there anything good to eat here?
It’s the early nineties. The setting: a college campus in the middle of nowhere Southeastern Ohio.
I enter the dining hall with trepidation. Three times a day I had to come here for sustenance. Mostly just to climb that damn hill to get to all of my classes.
Just like at home, I find the handful of items I deem acceptable to eat and I eat them everyday. No variety, no experimentation. Get in and get out.
I’ve started my slow walk into my vegetarian phase. The mystery meat in the dining hall helps that along.
Breakfast: bowl of Cheerios with banana slices; glass of juice (no coffee or tea drinking happening yet).
Lunch: salad bar; maybe a turkey sandwich; pop (didn’t drink water).
Dinner: hummus; salad bar; pop.
I had a hot air popper, big, plastic bowl, and butter in the mini-fridge in my dorm.
Otherwise, I saved my money for pizza deliveries, visits to Taco Bell uptown, and movie rentals for those popcorn nights.
Almost every week of my college life, my Mom sent a box. The mail room was in the same building as the dining hall so that was the only reason you’d see a spring in my step anywhere near the place.
When my parents helped move into my dorm, I plugged in the little TV I had to pack only to find that there was no reception. Static. That’s all I could get. I was this close to calling the whole thing off and going back home. Years of college without being able to watch television?
To ease my pain and ensure that I stayed in school, my mom and dad taped my favorite shows and shipped them to me. Mom made sure to include treats as well, freshly baked cookies and brownies, cards from her, my aunt, even my cat.
Those boxes meant everything. My new friends loved the cookies and I loved being able to watch Murphy Brown and Seinfeld.
Present Day. The setting: a college campus in New England.
I enter the dining hall with trepidation. Too many lackluster memories of college “dining” keep me from being optimistic.
I’m on my first of five trips to campus as I start a low-residency Master’s program so I’m nervous and excited and having an out-of-body experience. I always assumed I’d go to graduate school and tried several times to make it happen. After awhile it felt like I was pushing a boulder uphill so I accepted that it just wasn’t my path after all.
And all of sudden, this year, the stars aligned.
This time, I’m entering the dining hall as someone with a culinary degree and…let’s face it, some expectations.
I discover eggs and potatoes O’Brien at breakfast. Water, both still and sparkling and lots of it now. Yogurt with fruit and granola.
My old friends the salad bar and hummus are here for lunch and dinner. But there’s also a global option each day so maybe some fried rice, some enchiladas. There’s also a pizza bar but even I can’t do that everyday.
I’m pleasantly surprised for the most part. Check this out. Short ribs, scalloped potatoes, and perfectly cooked green beans.
The biggest issue for me? I’ve become a coffee drinker since my undergrad days. In fact, I’ve become someone with a habit of drinking a short glass of iced coffee each morning to start the day. Only giant carafes and tiny coffee cups are available in the dining hall. I try to fill two cups and let them sit to cool down while I eat my breakfast. Then I get a tall glass, fill it with ice, and pour both cups into it trying to recreate what I now know I require to start my day.
It is a sad substitute.
When I opened my suitcase in my dorm room, I found a card from G.
By the way, I had a dorm room with a private bathroom (twenty-year-old me was in heaven). I had internet and my laptop so I when I returned after a long, long day, I could stream whatever TV shows and movies struck my fancy.
Now that’s what I call progress.
I care about you. Please don’t forget to eat your greens.
Amazing that you still have pictures of the boxes!
Exciting times 😊