wash or cream rinse—just a bar of Ivory soap and bottle of Head and Shoulders. The circa 1960 nozzle, created in the days before water conservation, sprayed copious amounts of water all over the place I shaved with an old-fashioned safety razor that would cut you if you let it, so I had to be particularly careful.
“Are you going to dinner, ah, Harry?” I asked hesitantly. I was half afraid that this talking specter from my past would dissolve into dust.
“No, man, I already ate.”
I closed the door quietly and made the 30-second walk to the cafeteria, and entered “Mama Lentz”—as we’d called it in the ‘70s—with my student ID, showing me and my silly mustache, which I was still wearing. Apparently I had gotten so preoccupied with avoiding cuts while shaving with the dangerous “safety” razor that I’d forgotten to cut off the mustache. I reached up and touched it as I showed the ID and my fee statement—which proved I was registered that quarter—to the tired-looking girl who was standing at the turnstile and wearing a white uniform dress with the maroon SIU logo above her right breast.
The menu in front of the steamy cafeteria line announced that it was BLT night. This didn’t look good. I had a hazy memory of Lentz food and it wasn’t positive. Furthermore, I was wedged in a line of hairy, blue-jeaned, surly students who didn’t seem to enjoy the Mama Lentz experience either. I looked down at the serving table and saw pieces of soggy toast with X’s of overcooked bacon lying on top of thin slices of yellow-green tomatoes, which in turn rested on top of leaves of wilted lettuce.
The adjacent tray was piled with flaccid French fries, behind which was another girl sporting wisps of blond hair leaking out of her hairnet. She dumped a pile of fries on my plate.
Oh, God.
The line moaned and groaned until it emptied into the dining area. I stood there for a moment, letting my eyes scan the cafeteria, and saw vaguely familiar people wearing outrageous clothing I hadn’t seen for years. One heavily-bearded kid showed the SIU slump while filling a line of five glasses at the machine. He sported the latest student fashion: a US Army fatigue jacket with Air Force wings pinned to the collar, a Marine Corps sergeant’s stripes sewn jaggedly onto the outside of one pant leg, a little green clenched fist stitched on one sleeve, a peace symbol in the belly button region, and a little American flag sewn onto the butt of his tie-dyed jeans.
I noticed something else that isn’t seen any more in American society: Cigarette smoke rose from cheap tin ashtrays on the tables. The smoke combined with the aromas of food cooking, and even the dishwasher odors smelled comforting, in a distant way, and were surprisingly not unpleasant.
I walked to a round blonde wood table and sat down with my usual grimace, but the grimace was wasted because my back didn’t hurt at all. As I was about to take a timid bite out of my sandwich, I became aware of music trailing away from speakers in the ceiling, followed by a tympani roll and a low voice,
“WIDB Carbondale…is…together!”
Then I heard the student disk jockey.
“Ronald Ramjet on together Six, WIDB. Sunny today, high of 80. Cool tonight, low of 50. Right now, 78 degrees. Now, from out of the past, 1970, Mungo Jerry, ‘In the Summer Time’!”
Ramjet had timed his wrap perfectly over the beginning of the song until the vocal began. “In the Summer Time” was my favorite tune for decades, before the song wore grooves into my mind and I could no longer stand to listen to it. But at this moment, “In the Summer Time” sounded…brand new, as if I had never heard it before. My BLT forgotten, I was aware of nothing around me but the music.
Until I spotted Marta dancing to the beat at the salad bar. She swayed as she plucked mushrooms from the huge bowl and dropped them on her plate. Then, her love beads bouncing, she danced toward my table as Mungo Jerry sang about how you can reach right up and touch the sky, in the summer time. She sat down across from me with a lazy smile.
“Groovin’ to the music, Peter?” The scent of saffron incense that clung to her dress made it nice to live once again in 1971…for a moment.
“Oh God, yes! This is….great!” Everyone else in the cafeteria seemed to be grooving, too. Some choreographer had the students eating their food, drinking their coffee, and smoking their cigarettes in time with the music, and a costume designer had made sure that everyone wore huge collars, super-wide lapels, the paisley-ist paisley, the highest unisex heels, and the shortest dresses. Marta, meanwhile, ran over to another table, picked up some books and a bag, and brought them back. She sat down, pulled out a pair of oversized granny glasses from the blue velvet bag—on which JOHNNIE WALKER was stitched in yellow thread—and picked up a mushroom from her plate. When the song ended, I noticed Marta wasn’t eating the mushroom, but was scrutinizing it with one eye closed, like a jeweler examining a fine diamond.
“Marta?” I reached up to pull my glasses forward on my nose so that I could focus on the mushroom. But I wasn’t wearing glasses, I was wearing contacts; I could feel them in my eyes.
“Yes, dude.” Her open eye glanced up and fixed on my hand, then moved back to the mushroom she was examining. She looked at it, put that mushroom down and picked up another one.
Space cadet.
I looked down at the burnt-bacon-yellow-tomato-wilted-lettuce sandwich, and took a timid nibble, assuming that it was going to taste revolting, even with the mayonnaise I had slathered all over it. Instead, I experienced a big surprise.
“Man, this is the best BLT I’ve ever eaten….ever!” I exclaimed.
By now, Marta was examining her 5th mushroom and gave me a quick smile. I gulped down the sandwich and the fries and looked greedily at Marta’s plate.
“Are you going to eat those mushrooms, or dry them out and smoke them?” I said.
Marta sat up with a jolt. “Man, I never thought of that!” Then her eyes glazed over, and she appeared to have slid into a deeper level of concentration as she mechanically reached for an errant french fry on my tray.
I stood up and went to the serving counter. When I came back, I once again sat down with a grimace, again forgetting that I had nothing to grimace about. Marta’s eye moved away from her current mushroom and focused on me again.
“Got some pain there, dude? Hurt yourself running or something?”
“No…just some arthritis,” I said without thinking.
“You have arthritis?” Now both lazy eyes were on me.
“I used to…I mean, no, well…maybe in the future. I…never mind.”
Marta nodded, but something else was going on behind those hooded eyes.
Returning to the table after my third trip to the serving line, I noticed that she had dissected my french fry, the mushrooms apparently forgotten.
“Why aren’t you eating any of your mushrooms?”
“They’re not for eating, man,” said Marta. She glanced up and closed her mouth with a click.
As I was about to ask another question, her mouth snapped open.
“They all are really round and look the same, but they’re all different, and that’s like the universe. I mean, man, it’s all the same: air, animal, mineral, vegetable. Really,
