 by Dr. Jeffrey Lant Author's program note. We've been having a lot of rain lately here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's the kind of rain that all locals greet with amiable forbearance, saying even to total strangers (especially if they are grumbling), "We need the rain." It makes us feel important when we say it; as if we were trained agronomists advising farmers on the matter of rain, when, where, how much. Of course it also needs to be said that when we hear other people say it, we regard them as conversation impaired, offering up such banality with such seriousness. Ordinarily, weather doesn't interest me very much. Rain or shine inside a penthouse where the shutters in my office are always closed, no exception; looks much the same, as do day and night. Others may not like such a situation, but it suits me and my pursuits perfectly. It's not only where I do my writing but where my daily webcasts and running commentaries take place. The shutters and two fine verde mare marble columns once in a French palace constitute the elegant back drop to subjects discussed which may be anything but. Yesterday, however, the rain lifted and even I, the ultimate urban dweller clueless on the rhythms and rhymes of nature, thought descending from my ideally appointed space capsule was in order. I grabbed the Harvard cap one of my visitors had forgotten and left behind; took an umbrella that another of my visitors had forgotten and left behind. I was ready for an excursion, lunch in Harvard Square was indicated... "The Square", isn't. Irregularly shaped and sprawling Harvard Square is one of the half dozen places on Earth every person of consequence, real or imagined, visits at least once in a lifetime. It is a place of human flotsam and jetsam; of people who come to move up (including future presidents of the Great Republic) and those who are down on their luck, street dwellers who solicit those who feel generous for giving a buck or two, which will probably end up amongst the blood-stained profits of one Mexican drug cartel or another. But Mexico and its hecatombs and legion of hapless victims are too far away to worry about, especially as so many of its leaders were schooled at Harvard, which is just the way it's supposed to be. Down Massachusetts Avenue, the brick sidewalks muddy and wet, passersby smelling like a dog left out in the rain. I am walking to lunch on the sidewalk along Massachusetts Avenue; "Mass Ave" to the cognoscenti who are past masters at making people like you seem unsophisticated, unhallowed, unready for the world Cambridge folk are imagining and inventing this very minute. These multi-degreed paragons are the planet's movers and shakers. They want to be sure you know this about them instantly, so that they may then exhibit the modesty for which they will one day be so renowned despite so many momentous achievements. But this is now... and so they regard modesty solely as a trait for those who have much to be modest about -- that would be you. Labor Day Week-end, 1969. I am in my stride now passing one Harvard-owned property after another. Here the lavish donations of long dead alumni are put to current use, fully rented out generating still more money for The World's Greatest (and already Richest) University. The kinds of shops tell you much about the place and its inhabitants: bank, ice cream parlor, smoke, ice cream parlor, bank, Harvard insignia, ice cream parlor, bank. Get the picture? The Square has more banks and ATMs within a few blocks than many cities as well as untold tons of ice cream. Because Harvard students are the most privileged people on Earth, strident calls for world revolution and sweeping change rarely have much presence either in the Square, or in Harvard Yard, the heart of the place. People who like the status quo are hardly likely urge its destruction. Yet John Reed '10 did so urge. "Red" Reed is buried in the Kremlin's walls. Even that dubious honor needs must go to a Harvard man. We wouldn't want it any other way, even though he was Red; at least that's a shade of crimson. Even the homeless like the situation as it is, idling life away, supported by those who can only imagine having so much free time since they do not, and never will. Thus instead of earnest young people, grim faced and determined (at least until winter arrives to chill their resolution), there are boys with pony tails selling designer ice cream to undergraduates who will one day (and not so distant either) rule the world and reap its benefits. They already regard each day at Harvard as the best years of their lives; Harvard likes it that way. The more they think like that, the bigger their alumni contributions over the many years to come... and so memory and remembrance help Harvard wax richer. I arrive. 1246 Mass. Ave. About 10 minutes from the time I entered the elevator, I am at my destination, a place of importance for two reasons: first, this is my first memory of Harvard; the moment I saw Harvard and the Square for the first time; Labor Day Week-end, 1969. And because I remember everything about that epiphany, I clearly remember Mr. Bartley's. That's where I shall lunch this day... but not because I am nostalgic about food, but because the food is good and, for once, I am really hungry. A hole in the wall, a dive, a joint. Bartley's opened its door (it has but one) in 1960, just 9 years before I arrived in Cambridge to start my graduate work. I cannot tell you how many times I've gone, but dozens seems conservative. What's more, more times than not I order what I always order because I like it: large raspberry lime rickey (to be refilled); Burger Supreme medium well, onion rings, extra dill pickle. If I ate this same meal every day, I might be thought to be in a rut, but going just two or three times in a year to order and devour this specialite' of the house makes me a connoisseur; I insist on the description. Uncomfortable, packed like sardines, chairs too low. Let me be plain with you; if you are not willing to overlook its inconvenient aspects, if you insist on every amenity, then you will never be happy at Bartley's which in an astonishingly small space packs in an astonishing number of chairs, booths, human and machine food cookers, waitpersons, the raspberry lime rickeys that I crave and can nowadays get nowhere else -- and the lunch counter. Bit by bit you see just how much is going on in this compact space. The walls are covered with clever sayings, double entendres, pictures of film stars, pictures of politicians, and accolades for its signature "burguhs". You want to get up to see these better but chances are you'd be tripping over a few people to do so; unless you come right at opening there is no chance you'll get to do this. You'll have to return. After over 40 years I still have not seen it all. The first time a waiter screams "Burguh Supreme" at the cook, you'll be startled, but pretty soon you're screaming your comments and conversation at the top of your voice, like you've been coming for decades, and here the sheer proximity of other hungry humans, from Kansas, Greece, or Timbuktu works its singular magic. Forced to be close to them, you make your choice, a choice with universal implications. Either you decide to ignore your very near neighbor, or you talk to them, like our fathers and grandfathers used to talk... up close, personal, direct, often humorous, even hilarious ... but talk... to the astonishment and discontent of the young, who are at first often affronted and monosyllabic when an adult like me offers a comment, an introduction, an opening to the wonder of people meeting each other and actually conversing, not just texting some inane, impersonal drivel. Bartley's works because the food is good and, if you're lucky, you've made a new friend... This is the way America used to be and now so little is, for along the way we have lost the ability to talk with our neighbors about everything, about anything, about nothing in particular. Now we want what Greta Garbo wanted, "to be left alone." And then when we are, we text message wildly in a vain attempt to conjure the kind of relationship text messaging can never supply. So, now a newly minted old age pensioner of 65, I shall keep going to Bartley's, where I shall inform everyone (especially the staff not one of who was then born) how long I've been coming, like old codgers do. I shall ask for help getting into and especially out of the blue plastic chairs which always make me feel older than the hills. I shall greet the only senior on the staff and will politely turn down the offer of a menu. I know what I want. And I shall say something like this to the person sitting across from me, "You look like Ernest Borgnine." "Oh, yeah, didn't he just die?..." I am on my way to acquaintance with all its myriad of possibilities. And while I wait for the best burguh on Earth, I will wonder how much longer Bartley's will last, its price for burguhs being the highest in the Square, each increase a nail in its coffin. However for now I intend in my small way to help keep them alive, a place of good food and the chance to connect with another human or two. And so I have selected as the music for this article, the 1964 tune by the Newbeats "Bread and Butter". It's a peppy little number, completely foolish and inane, about his food and his woman. "She don't cook mashed potatoes/ She don't cook T-bone steaks". No, she secretly gets them at Bartley's... where she also found her new boyfriend, a man who really appreciates "her" cooking! Find the story in any search engine... and enjoy. |
