Pat's Pizza

Farnsworth's Cafe, better known as Pat's Pizza, is the heart and soul of Orono, Maine. Generations of Orono locals, as well as thousands of students at the University of Maine, have grown up on Pat's popular plain Maine fare.

I was a freshman at the University in 1960-61 when I ate my first Pat's pizza, delivered to the dorm. And I was a senior when I first started drinking legally in Pat's tap room.

But Pat's is about much more than pizza and beer. While the food is good and cheap, it's the atmosphere that people want to experience again and again. The first thing that many of my former Orono students do when they come home is go to Pat's to see who's around. It's the most popular hang-out for everyone of all ages.

As my colleague Thom Ingrahan says, "The breakfast crowd at Pat's is Orono without a university" with all the locals and regulars dishing the dirt, talking about town government, the schools, and so on."

The old wooden booths, the scarred tables, the worn floor tiles, the counter, the tap room, and Pat Farnsworth himself haven't changed much over the past forty years.

Hundreds of Orono students have worked at Pat's waiting on tables, making and delivering pizzas.

During last January's ice storm and several-day power outage, Pat's was the only place in town with power and the restaurant was packed more than usual. The whole world had gone black but Pat's had light with people inside laughing, telling stories, eating pizza and drinking beer. As Thom Ingraham said, "It was like a festival in the middle of a disaster."

Pat's Pizza remains a good-humored and human place where no one rushes the customers. It's a politically incorrect, warm environment where everyone's welcome.

For me, as well as for so many other Maniacs, Pat's is like going home to the Maine where we grew up.

-Sanford Phippen

Portland Magazine

Summerguide 1998

True Love

In silence the heart raves. It utters words

Meaningless, that never had

A meaning. I was ten, skinny, red-headed,

Freckled. In a big black Buick,

Driven by a big grown boy, with a necktie, she sat

In front of the drugstore, sipping something

Through a straw. There is nothing like

Beauty. It stops your heart. It

Thinkens your blood. It stops your breath. It

Makes you feel dirty. You need a hot bath.

I leaned against a telephone pole, and watched.

I thought I would die if she saw me.

How could I exist in the same world with that brightness?

Two years later she smiled at me. She

Named my name. I thought I would wake up dead.

Her Grown brothers walked with the bent-knee

Swagger if horsemen. They were slick-faced.

Told jokes in the barbershop. Did no work.

Their father was what is called a drunkard.

Whatever he was he stayed on the third floor

Of the big white farmhouse under the maple for twenty-five years.

He never came down. They brought everything up to him.

I did not know what a mortgage was.

His wife was a good, Christian woman, and prayed.

When the daughter got married, the old man came down wearing

An old tail coat, the pleated shirt yellowing.

The sons propped him. I saw the wedding. There were

Engraved invitations, it was so fashionable. I thought

I would cry. I lay in bed that night

And wondered if she would cry when something was done to her.

The mortgage was foreclosed. That last word was whispered.
She never came back. The family
Sort of drifted off. Nobody wears shiny boots like that now.




But I know she is beautiful forever, and lives
In a beautiful house, far away.
She called my name once. I didn't even know she knew it.

-Robert Penn Warren

Nobody Sits

Nobody sits like this rock sits.

You rock, rock.

The rock just sits and is.

You show us how to sit here

and that's what we need.

-Albert Markovski (I Heart Huckabees)

Ode to Tomatoes

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
amoung glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It Sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile
happily it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemishpheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, it magnetism
it is the weding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
buble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile,
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.


-Pablo Neruda

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