The Jefferson Hall milkman
Karen Shorts Jackson, BSED '69, and Mike Jackson, BSED '68

By Karen Shorts Jackson

The cafeteria in Jefferson Hall is a place for students to get a quick, well-balanced meal. The wide variety of selections and the serve-yourself stations make it an all-you-can-eat paradise. As my husband and I joined our freshman daughter for a Sunday dinner during the fall of 2003, a flood of memories came back to me.

I was back in Jefferson Hall in 1966. I was 18 years old again.

Jeff Hall was the largest girls' dormitory on the East Green. Students from three other dorms joined the Jeff residents there for meals. It was a social mecca. Here I saw my first miniskirt and long, ironed hair on a Jeff resident. Here we girls met the guys from Lincoln and Washington. Freshmen learned how crazy people could act on a Friday evening after drinking at a "tea." Fashions, hairstyles, courtship routines -- all the "other stuff" about going away to college -- revealed themselves here twice every day at lunch and dinner. It was great.

We were so much less inhibited at 18 than we are now. I can still see one of the board jobbers riding the conveyor belt the length of the cafeteria. He went off to Vietnam the next year. Flunked out.

"Mike the Milkman," as we called him, ran the milk machine. It was a tough job. He loaded a fresh carton into the machine when it ran out. For the next 30 minutes he stood there and waited for all the girls to talk to him before getting their milk. (He didn't care about the guys.) What an ego, I thought. I tried to ignore him, but he turned off the milk machine unless I said hi. What a jerk!

My girlfriend tried to take two glasses, but Mike was cleverly watching for that. In desperation, I tried using the other food line, but Mike saw me coming and warned the number checker, who informed me that even-numbered meal tickets went to the right; no exceptions.

I stopped drinking milk, but I missed it, since the only other choices were coffee, tea and water. So, by February I gave up and finally said "hi" to Mike. Three years later I married him.

Now, as Mike and I sat in Jefferson Hall 37 years later with our daughter Katie, we wondered if today’s students have as much fun as we did.

We really couldn't tell from one visit on Parents' Weekend, when students are undoubtedly on their best behavior. We'd have to see them on a weekday afternoon when they rush in between classes for lunch or at dinner on Friday evening after a long week of academics.

We sure hope they do. We'd hate to think they look at Jeff as just a place to get a quick, well-balanced meal.

Most of all, we wonder ... who fills the milk machine now?