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Wisdom On The Side
Ruth Dickerson H'88, the Snack Bar manager from 1958 until 1991, passed away February 23, at the age of 95. P. Trams Hollingsworth '75 recalls the life lessons she learned from Miss Dee.
It's headline news these days. People went out and bought things they knew they couldn't afford. Then the bills came. Now they're scared. Like they couldn't see that coming?
I'm guessing that these stunned debtors didn't go to Washington College when Miss Dee ran the Snack Bar. It's not that I've never bought something I wanted without knowing how I'd pay for it. It's just that, since I met Miss Dee, I have never been unafraid of the consequences.
When I was in college, no student I knew had a credit card. Our parents had gone into calculated debt to pay tuition, room and board. Some of us got a small allowance. Some of us had part-time jobs. But we all had a Snack Bar tab.
Miss Dee's Snack Bar was in the basement of Hodson Hall. This was where you got coffee as you rushed from an unmade bed to Russian History. If the poet you wanted to get to know was there, this was where you missed your class on Modern Poetry. Miss Dee was really old—maybe over 50. Her daughter Sharon was second-in-command. Sharon's toddling son Philip was in command of everybody's attention. We called him Cheesedog because he had frankfurterbrown skin and mustard-yellow hair. Miss Dee made the multiracial family an ordinary thing for us two generations before we got to vote for Barack Obama. (But that's an aside that will get me, with detours, back to today's headlines.)
We would walk to the Snack Bar counter and Miss Dee would know what we wanted before we asked. A cup of coffee. A cheese egg. A West Hall. She somehow knew what we wanted in more important ways. "That poet (she'd name him and point) has the ketchup for your fries. That tennis player (she'd point and name him) is going to get kicked off the team unless he gets some physics tutoring. You're writing a paper on Women In Love. How's that coming? Here's your cheesesteak. Cash?" She'd smile, walking that wilted-lettucegreen, hand-scribbled receipt toward the register. "Or tab?" Miss Dee would look at me sadly when we both assumed the latter.
At the end of my first semester I had a Snack Bar tab for coffees and French fries that was stunningly significant. It might have been $25. That was a lot of money owed for stuff I had already consumed. By the end of that first semester, my tab was longer than polite conversation. Miss Dee didn't ask about my dour poet or my paper. She'd tell me that my bill was overdue, and she'd ask me if I had plans for paying it. Because I didn't, I'd walk away ashamed.
I'm thinking that the solution to my Snack Bar bill kept me up longer than my final exam in Art History—because I remember Miss Dee more vividly, and with more wonder and respect, than da Vinci or Donatello. In college I had many sleepless nights, but there were only a few of those in which I tried to sleep. Those were the nights haunted by Miss Dee's Snack Bar Tab.
I really can't remember how I paid my tab but I'm sure I did, because later in life I got to know Miss Dee as a real friend, another hard-working woman. She was someone who remembered me, my loves, my struggles as a student, and would tell my stories proudly. I wasn't the only one. She followed the lives of so very many WC students throughout their far-flung futures. She remembered everyone to whom she'd ever served a cheese egg.
I still love the poet and the tennis player with whom I skipped classes to drink coffee at the Snack Bar. And I still remember a lot of what I learned when I made my way through the basement of Hodson Hall to Smith or Dunning halls. But among my great teachers was one who wasn't tenured. Her classroom was the Snack Bar. She taught me that there are consequences. Thanks, Miss Dee, for keeping me out of today's headlines. I will miss you.
P. Trams Hollingsworth '75 was formerly WC's Director of Alumni Affairs. Those who wish to post their memories of Miss Dee online might wish to join "Miss D's WAC Snack Bar Days" on Facebook.