Sometimes it is difficult to sort out what in your memory is inviolably yours, and what is someone else's. Time can blur the sharpness of once sure experience and cast it into a less bright, even hazy light, where other voices and views mix and mingle. It is within this kind of piebald consciousness that I find my grandmother and the early cafeteria at TCU.

This much is fact--that my maternal grandparents, Frank and Georgia Harris, with their young teenaged daughter, Elizabeth, came to TCU in June of 1921, to set up and manage the first cafeteria-style food service. Up until that time, meals had been served family-style.

The Harrises were given campus quarters in Goode Hall dormitory (now Clark Hall), and two years after their arrival, my grandfather died there. A year after his death, the univeristy administration, having tried several alternatives, turned the management of the cafeteria over to the widow, who remained in that position until her retirement in 1942.

TCU's main cafeteria and adjoining kitchen were, until 1955 when the Brown-Lupton Student Center was built, centrally located in the basement of the Administration Building (now Reed Hall), directly below the old auditorium. Public access to the cafeteria was gained by the same stairs that now descend within the north and south entrances of the building. During the time that my grandmother was in charge, a wide hallway connected the stairways, as the ones on the second, third, and fourth floors do now. Those who were here in the late forties and early fifties will remember this area as the student lounge.

The back entrance to my grandmother's kitchen faced west across the uncut land toward Stadium Drive and could be approached by both pedestrian and vehicle, as Rogers Road extended into the campus from the north, running behind Jarvis Hall, the Ad Building, and Clark and Goode Halls. It was this route that I took on my visits to the cafeteria--walking south from my home on Rogers, crossing Cantey Street, skipping along behind Jarvis to the back of the Ad Building, waving sometimes to Carl Tyler, Mr. Dees, or Mr. Doss, or the black Johnny Greer, all of whom worked to keep the grounds neat and clean. Johnny would always smile, lean on his hoe, and call an "Afternoon, Miss Joanie."

I don't know what occasioned my visits to the cafeteria kitchen--probably bound on an errand from my mother--but I usually came in through the back porch door. The back porch was a large screened-in area that was set up with a training table where the athletes took their meals during the playing season. In inclement weather, canvas awnings let down to keep out the wind and rain. It was here, I'm told, that the legendary Sammy Baugh practiced his throw. I wasn't there, of course, but L. D. "Little Dutch" Meyer vows it's so, that the boys would always clamor for more milk than "Mom" Harris had set out, and Sammy would go get the extra small bottles in their wire baskets and "pass" them down the length of the table to his cohorts, while the tolerant "Mom" shook her head and tried not to smile.

To most of the students my Grandma Georgie was "Mom," the diminutive, red-haired provider of their daily nutritional needs. She loved the students and bore their pleading for extra helpings and "seconds" with good nature, but she could also easily handle the mischievous, rowdy, or surly with clearly expressed thoughts on decorum and demeanor, which left no doubt as to who was in charge.

Grandma Georgie's staff was made up of what we call "minority" now, but at that time, at my age, in my family, there was no such labelling, and I was taught to treat with equal respect the different colors of adults who moved in and out of our lives. As far back as my own memory goes, Victor Martinez was the Chef, although I am told there was a Jim Montgomery before that. Vic had begun working in the cafeteria as a dishwasher, so young, my mother says, that a box was provided for him to stand on the reach the sink where the piles of dishes awaited him in those unmechanized days of handwashing.

Vic, M. C. Duarte, Will G. Story, and Ethan formed the core of the cooking staff. Vic, M. C., and Will G. did most of the main meal preparation, and Ethan was the pastry cook. Even now, after all these years, I can smell and taste and see Ethan's delicacies. There has never been, nor will ever be, a chocolate eclair or cream puff that can approach the ones he made.

I don't recall, and there is noone now to tell me, how I started giving poetry recitations to the kitchen staff. I had been taking "'spression lessons" from my aunt and had learned to recite several poems "by heart." Someone, probably my grandmother, somehow coaxed me out of my usual shyness to say a poem which began: "Guiseppe de Barber, he greata for mash / He gotta de bigga de blacka mustache / Good clothesa, good styla, and planty good cash!"

After that time, whenever I visited, I was lifted up from the cement floor by Vic or Ethan or Will G. onto the spotless counter and prevailed upon to relate in my best Italian accent all of the good things that Guiseppe de Barber "gotta." How they would laugh at the last line when I rolled my eyes and pointed to myself saying, "But notta Carlotta, gotta!", Ethan's great white teeth flashing out of his dark face. We must have presented an amusing scene--the brown-skinned men in their white uniforms with starched aprons and tall chef's hats, listening to a red-headed, freckled-faced child of seven or eight quoting verse from a drainboard perch in a college kitchen.

The public eating area of the cafeteria is less clear to me now than the kitchen, although I know it was every bit as clean. The steam table was set along the west wall adjoining the kitchen, and the line of approach to it was along the south wall, where ground level windows let in an abundance of natural light. A white-painted iron railing defined the waiting and serving lines from the dining area, and one proceeded from south to north, being served by Bessie, or Irma, or one of the other steam table ladies, and ended at the cash register which was attended usually by a student. Wooden tables and chairs, uniform in design, were placed so that groups up to eight could dine together and each had a white tablecloth.

A small anteroom, off the northeast corner of the main dining room and separated from it by French doors, provided the faculty with a more private atmosphere. I ate there sometimes with my parents and listened to the friendly easy banter and laughter of the grownups. Such gatherings, brought back in memory, always seem to include the genial and much-loved "Prexy" Waits, his daughter and son-in-law Mary Beth and Scotty (Gayle) Scott, Miss Sadie Beckham, Mabel Major, Elizabeth Shelburne, and her tiny little mother, Mrs. Cephus Shelburne, the gruff but affable L. A. "Bud" Dunagan, and the Lincolnesque "Mr. Pete" Wright. I was welcomed, warmed, and informed by those good people who gave so generously of their energies and talents to enrich TCU, and whose names now adorn so many of its buildings.

Time alters; with equanimity it obscures, enhances, and all too often, obliterates. Recorded memories can stanch the flow of impersonal time, and whether sharply etched images or fuzzy-edged collages, all are valid, all are mine.

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