During my freshman year I was rather surprised the number of places I went on campus and found that the university’s radio station was playing. I don’t know – I figured most people would not want to listen to awkward-sounding students muddling through their first attempt at being live on the air. It was nice to know that the station had an audience, but it could set you back when you realized just how many people were potentially listening to your sonic booms (i.e. mistakes). I mean, did everyone in Morra County have to listen right now?
I remember being pleasantly surprised that the main cafeteria on campus played our station, too. Café Belvedere was in the basement of the WPA-era Belvedere-Agora Hall, a female-only brick-and-mortar dormitory. Campus historians liked to tell the story that the dorm was built on the site of an old frame building that served as the first campus eatery and that Elizabeth Cady Stanton once spoke there on the matter of women’s suffrage. At this point in their story the campus historians liked to laugh at what they called irony, although if that were a joke it flew over the heads of most audiences. Anyway, once the new dorm was complete the basement became a huge dining hall with meals served to the girls at regularly scheduled times. As the lives of students changed over the decades this practice fell by the wayside and back in the 60s or thereabouts it became the largest of the three campus cafeterias.
Those odd members who made up the Octumvirate usually assembled at the western edge of the building at the opening of a long, subterranean walkway. At the opposite end was the main entrance and where a plump little woman named Katy sat. Her job was to scan the ID cards and permit entrance to the cafeteria which she did perched atop a lofty barstool. A short woman, probably no taller than five feet, Katy was a little scatterbrained and did her best to memorize the names of the students who passed through Café Belvedere. For some reason – one I never sought to correct – my ID card had only my initials and thusly I received a hearty, “Hello, M.C.” every time I entered.
Most of the employees behind the counters were students, though I never saw anyone from my classes; just as gratifying was that I never saw any of the employees walking around on campus. It was from behind the counters and in the kitchen area that I sometimes heard the radio station playing. Weekdays it was often too loud to hear anything, much less the employee in front of you but you could often make out the rambunctious radio noise on the weekends.
The only employees worth remembering were Staci Guard, the overly friendly sandwich counter girl, and Piggy, the rather round fellow that must have drawn the shortest straw daily to always get pizza detail. Staci always tried to “ham” it up with pastrami or tell “cheesy” jokes about the size of pickles, which meant she always had an audience. Piggy was less riveting than Staci and his endless boredom was regularly a ripe target for jabs. Of course, his real name wasn’t Piggy, but Mike Arthur and I named him for the William Golding character based on looks and general disposition.
Morty dubbed the fat, bearded man who wandered around the cafeteria as “Lucky Charms” because he sort of looked like a cereal mascot. We all about lost our lunch during the spring semester when he stepped out of his office dressed up in gaudy green garb for St. Patrick’s Day. Acting like a busybody, Lucky Charms darted behind counters or out among the students eating with neither place suiting him very well. Employees appeared to dread it when he stood over their shoulder (Staci wasn’t as chipper as she normally was), and those of us eating didn’t care to be interrupted with impromptu surveys of cafeteria likes and dislikes. Lucky Charms was later replaced by ABE, the Angry Black Employer.
A couple of years later the radio station had an unsuccessful live remote in the Belvedere-Agora cafeteria. Thankfully I wasn’t there as either a station staff member or as a member of the Octumvirate. By that time the Octumvirate was all but dead anyway.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Suppertime
(The Odds)
The Odds
From the album Nest
1996
an embarrassment of riches
up ahead between the ditches
steady on
pails of blue grass beads and baubles
in the toilets of the supermodels
steady on
watch what you wish for
as someone else pollutes it
some see the rarest bird
and hunt it down and shoot it
let me lose so beautifully
let me lick the dew from the money tree
have the moms of world all care about me
at suppertime
the road to wreckage stretches west
from survival to excess
and beyond
from magic beans and golden eggs
to swollen livers and tired legs
trammel on
the breakfast of failures
is an unexacting list
subtract oppurtunity
you can mix it up with your fists
let me lose so beautifully
let me lick the dew from the money tree
have the moms of world all care about me
at suppertime
let me feel what it's like to have it
let me battle all of your rich man's habits
let me cry down the front of a smoking jacket
after suppertime
let me stand hypnotized by what I'm doing
smell the orchids by the road to ruin
when the heirs are asleep and we think about screwing
after suppertime
