The Dairy Bar

I was sorting the mail at work yesterday when I came across the latest edition of On Campus Magazine. It is a trade publication geared toward the food service industry on college campuses. Why it showed up in our mail bin I have no idea. It was as if fate had destined for it to land in my hands. The second I looked at the cover, my heart skipped a beat and a flood of wonderful memories came rushing back to me.

Right there on the cover was the Dairy Bar at the University of New Hampshire. The building was originally built in 1896 in Lynn, Massachusetts but was moved to its current location in 1912. It served as a train depot until 1958 when passenger service on the line was discontinued. In 1970, the depot was converted into the Dairy Bar and served breakfast, lunch, and of course ice cream year round. It was operated and staffed by the students of the University's food service management program until 2007. It was remodeled and upgraded and reopened in 2008 under management by UNH Dining services. When Amtrak reinstated passenger service on the rail line in 2001, the Durham-Dairy Bar station was added to the schedule with passengers able to purchase tickets from kiosks with the restaurant portion remaining open for business.

But enough of the history lesson. The Dairy Bar is a little more than 100 yards from the building I formerly worked in. It was an everyday fixture in my life for nearly five years. I remember bone chilling, mid winter walks from our doors to the Dairy Bar for a cup of their wonderful Green Mountain Coffee. They made the some of the best breakfast sandwiches I've ever eaten. Fried egg, bacon and cheese on toasted wheat bread with generous helpings of all the ingredients, grease included. The counter would always be buzzing with conversation. In the morning, it was university staff and employees talking about the hockey game last week, the current state of the school's budget, or how much friggin' snow we were gonna get socked with later that day. The trek for coffee was a morning ritual for "D" from the operations department and myself. Sometimes others would tag along, but most times it was just us two habitual coffee drinkers chatting about business, life, and the Red Sox early in the morning. The wait staff who knew us would always double stamp our coffee club cards so our well earned free cups would come a lot sooner and more frequently. I'm sure the "help" we gave to the tip jar didn't hurt either.

The afternoon was dominated by the students, either on their way to class, from class, or just waking up from last night's party in some dorm, frat house, or downtown tavern. The menu consisted of mainly deli sandwiches, all served lovingly in plastic baskets lined with wax paper and garnished with a generous helping of potato chips and a dill pickle spear. The chili was outstanding and the soups were tasty and the ideal way to warm both the body and soul on a chilly autumn afternoon. It was never fancy or necessarily the best dining experience, but it was never meant to be. The great charm of the Dairy Bar was that it was run by the students, from the cooking to the counter service to the limited table service complete with red checkerboard plastic tablecloths. They were getting practical experience in their chosen field, picking up a few bucks along the way, and seemingly having a lot of fun doing it. So sometimes the toast was a little overdone, the eggs a little runny and the french fries a little cold... but that was ok.

But the best time of the year at the Dairy Bar was during the summer. As with most small college towns, the campus becomes deserted in the summer. With the students and faculty gone, university staff and local residents are free to enjoy the peace and tranquility that can be found in such institutes of higher learning. With much of its labor force gone, the Dairy Bar didn't serve breakfast or lunch, but was open for ice cream, shakes, sundaes and floats for limited operating hours. While New England summers are generally mild, they can get extremely hot, humid, muggy, and overall miserable for periods of time. Some of my fondest memories of UNH were the days I'd stop all of the work in the office and treat my fellow co-workers to ice cream. The women would transform right in front of my eyes from grown adults to giddy girls. "I'm getting moose tracks," one would exclaim, while a voice from another office would come, "Well I'm getting sprinkles and a waffle cone." That short walk to counter was so filled with joy. Some of them even seemed to skip the whole way there... although I don't know if that was feigned excitement for my benefit or true exhilaration. We'd eat our ice cream outside, soaking up the warm summer rays that had to last through the next upcoming winter. Those breaks usually only lasted about 30 minutes, but seemed to gloriously go on forever.

One inadvertent magazine dropped on my doorstep took me thousands of miles and several years away to a much better place and time. I was brought back to a time when life was simpler, safer, and saner. One picture on one magazine. A magazine that will never make it to its intended recipient... or maybe somehow I was the intended (if not addressed) recipient.