Pat Farnsworth still part of UM college experience

ORONO — Not much has changed in the pizza parlor that’s been a popular student hangout in this college town for generations.

The wooden booths and counter stools are a little more worn, but they’re still there. So are the white, metal ceiling and the stainless steel coolers. The orange neon “Farnsworth’s Cafe” sign still hangs in the window, even though most people know the place as “Pat’s.” The pizzas taste the same.

Perhaps the most remarkable fixture in the restaurant is Pat Farnsworth, with his trademark starched white shirt, suspenders and cigar. During the 62 years he’s owned the place that has been part of virtually every University of Maine alumnus’ college experience, he has rarely missed a day of work.

Farnsworth can easily count the exceptions: an occasional hunting or fishing trip, a back operation in the mid-50s, 10 days when he was married in 1937.

“They call it a disease — workaholic,” said Farnsworth, who will be 84 in November. “I can’t set still.”

For much of the year, Farnsworth still works 12 or more hours a day, seven days a week, in his vintage cafe, taking turns making his near-legendary pizzas, circulating amid customers and doing book work in his downstairs office.

During the summer, he cuts back to eight hours, also mostly evenings and nights. That gives him time to put in four or five hours in his beloved vegetable and flower gardens at his lakeside Orono home before he goes to work.

Farnsworth serves meals to university students — along with townspeople — whose fathers and grandfathers also dined on his pizzas and sandwiches and swigged beer in his cozy eatery and tap room.

One of the first things a freshman learns after entering the University of Maine is how to order Pat’s nine-inch pizzas, which are delivered to campus by the score to hungry students.

Farnsworth is amused when university alumni come back and ask if Pat’s still alive. He also gets a kick out of hearing young students who spot him asking, “Is that really him?”

His name has become familiar through the 14 Pat’s Pizza shops that have sprung up across the state. The chain is run by his son Bruce.

But the other, family-oriented Pat’s restaurants do not quite capture the ambience of the original. There, tens of thousands of elbows have rubbed the Formica countertops down to bare wood, padded stools have been worn through, slate footrests at the counters have been beveled by countless customers’ shoes and varnish has been rubbed off the booths’ benches.

“They come back and say it hasn’t changed a bit — it feels just like home,” Farnsworth said of the alumni who return, especially during summers.

“I’ve had people say they came back here from California to say they wanted a pizza,” said Farnsworth, sipping a cup of coffee while reaching for a cigar. “Of course they didn’t. But we’ve packed them and sent them there for them.”

As for the aging decor, Farnsworth has sternly resisted others’ attempts to persuade him to modernize. “I don’t want to change it,” he said flatly. “It’s just like an antique.”

Several years ago, he was talked into having the ornate, metal ceiling covered with more modern tiles. They stayed for a while, but Farnsworth decided to go back to the more homey original.

Extensive renovating seems to have stopped in the late 1930s, when Farnsworth took a shovel and dug out a cellar that is now used for storage and a tap room.

Even though he’s lived in the shadow of the University of Maine virtually all of his life, Farnsworth has always been more comfortable with hard work than cracking college books.

In the 1920s, he dropped plans to attend the Orono school, opting to get an education away from home instead. He drove a Model T Ford to Earlham College in Indiana, but just before enrolling he became homesick and returned to Maine.

He got back in time to enroll at the state university’s Down East branch campus in Machias, but stayed only a year before returning to work in the Orono ice cream parlor where he had worked during his high school years.

Farnsworth bought the place in 1931 with no money down, a promise to make payments on the soda fountain and mortgage, and his first stocks ordered on credit. In 1933, he started selling meals and beer.

It was long known as Farnsworth’s Cafe until competition drew him into the pizza business in 1955.

A local hotel was doing a brisk business selling pizzas to students, but “I thought it’s a fad, it’ll go away,” recalled Farnsworth. Then he noticed his own customers were using his phone to order pizzas — and bringing them back to his cafe to eat them.

“We said we’ll have to put in pizza,” he said. Farnsworth searched for the recipe for the best pizza in the state, and his wife Frances spent 10 days in Angelone’s in Portland getting it right.

“I said if I could sell 50 pizzas a night I’d be happy,” said Farnsworth. “The first night we sold 100.”

In the meantime, Pat calculates, he’s sold “millions” of pizzas — about 250,000 a year from his Orono eatery alone and about 1 million a year from the other restaurants.