I had been working for about two months at my ambulance job when I got a phone call from Tom Poole, who was the business manager at Phillips U. He asked me if I could come in and see him, giving no indication of what he wanted. My mind went to ‘I was in trouble for something’. I was in charge of bringing all the entertainment to Phillips in my job on the Student Senate. I suspected that he was going to ask me to stay within budget, which was $25,000 for the year. Bringing talent was always a crap shoot. The budgeted money was from student fees. So, when I brought Lily Tomlin to campus and we packed the house, there was no hit on our budget as the local Enid folks more than paid the bill with admissions. The story of those amazing performers in Enid, America will be the content of another blog.
Back to Tom—“Mark, I want you to consider being the student manager of the Campus Cafe. That thing has run a deficit for ever and I want you to take it in a different direction”. “Tom, I don’t know the first thing about running a restaurant. If I do it you have to let me do it my way”. “Deal, I will show you all you need to do to work with vendors. You just need to bring the daily income over with receipts from vendors. The time sheets are yours to sign and we will write all the checks”. Away I went.
The Campus Cafe was located in a building on the far NW corner of the campus. Talk about “the road to nowhere”. It was in a building called the Coach House, which also housed the pool tables and ping pong, a US Post Office and the campus books store. My plan was to hire all the lively girls I knew, get a pizza oven, and change the music. We put up a barrage of posters inviting folks to the “new look Campus Cafe”— it worked. We were open for breakfast at 7am and stayed open through lunch. We started things like ‘football pools’, credit up to $10. The place was soon booming.
Truthfully, I did not do much except cheerlead, order food, and fill out the staffing schedule. Mind you, I was working three shifts a week at the ambulance service, taking 16 hours of class, and partying like a rock star. It was a fascinating cultural shift. Prior to my “take over” the customers were a bunch of seminary students who loved to spend hours there talking about Emanuel Kant or their ground of being. At this point in my life the idea of going to seminary or ever being a pastor was far, far, far, from my game plan.
Well, the end of the year came and Tom called me to evaluate my performance. “Mark, I am not sure how you did it, but you made a lot of money for the University running that cafe”. “My secret—a lovely staff, a fun environment, a pizza oven that cranked out homemade pizza, and talking to everyone there and thanking them for making it work”.
I had a great Senior year in college. My sister Rita, one of my great employees at the cafe, occasionally reminds me of the “Blizzard of 1971”. Enid got 24 inches of snow. That kind of snow in Oklahoma is thick, wet, and the town came to a stand still. I was at the ambulance service and she called me and asked me to close the cafe. “Rita, lots of these folks have no where else to eat. Get to work”. She did, along with a few others. She got stuck there for two days, and they ran out of food. I am not sure she has ever forgiven me. My answer—“Well, Sis, while you were making hamburgers I was out delivering babies (true) and saving lives (yep) so nananananananah”.
Onward and Upward,
Mark
Lyfting Me Up 