Pat’s Pizza warm with memories

There’s a cartoon of Pat Farnsworth on a memento-covered wall by the soda fountain in his legendary Orono restaurant. It shows him in his trademark white shirt and suspenders, the familiar big cigar clenched in his teeth.

Beneath the drawing are the words: “God put me on Earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I’m so far behind I’ll never die.”

But he did, on Thursday, at 93, having accomplished the feeding of generations of pizza-loving University of Maine students and local folks alike.

And the Geritol Group showed up at Pat’s Pizza early the next morning, right on schedule, to perch on the same stools they’ve been perching on for more years than they can remember. The retirees, all from the Orono and Old Town area, meet over coffee every morning at 9 a.m. or so to hash out the problems of the world and talk about family, business, politics, sports the old days.

On Friday morning, the talk was of Pat Farnsworth, a man they knew most of their lives, and of the restaurant that has been an Orono landmark and late-night oasis for 72 years.

“Nothing’s ever changed in here,” says Herb Cowan, an Orono native who retired 16 years ago as vice president of the Doug’s Shop ‘n Save grocery chain. “Pat just didn’t like change. Here, look at this counter.”

Cowan lifts his forearms to reveal two ancient wear marks that go right through the Formica and down to the polished bare wood. There is a matching set of arm marks for each stool along the counter. The slate footrests below are beveled and cracked from seven decades of shoes.

The decorative tin ceiling above the men is original, too, as are the neon signs and the wooden phone booth in the corner. Some of the 9-inch pizza pans stacked near the oven are among the first batch Farnsworth bought when he started making pizzas nearly 50 years ago.

And not even state law could break him of his lifelong cigar habit.

“When they banned smoking in restaurants, Pat still always had a long cigar in his mouth – he just didn’t light it,” says Frances Cyr, who has worked the counter for 43 years.

“People would ask Pat over the years why he didn’t modernize the place a little,” says Deane Anderson, who is 82 and a retired meat cutter for Shop ‘n Save. “But he never would. Never. He wanted it to look the same forever, like an antique, and it has.”

The men all remember slightly different versions of how Farnsworth got into the pizza business. It was before his trucking business, they think, or that hog farm Farnsworth once ran on Bennoch Road.

George Gonyar, the former general manager of WABI-TV, figures the famous pizzas must have come into to the picture in the mid-1950s because they weren’t around when he was one of a mob of teenagers who hung out at the restaurant during World War II.

“I used to live in here then,” Gonyar says, sipping from his mug. “We all did, right in those booths back there.”

The real pizza story eventually emerges from scattered memories: In 1955, a woman at a nearby hotel starting making pizza pies, which quickly became popular with the college kids. Farnsworth figured pizza was just a fad that would pass.

Then he noticed that the students were using his phone to order the woman’s pizzas, and bringing them back to his cafe to eat them.

Farnsworth, the consummate businessman, searched the state for the best pizza recipe he could find, and his wife, Frances, refined her pizza-making skills for 10 days at Angelone’s in Portland. Then the Farnsworth Cafe put pizzas on the menu one night and sold 100 of them. They have since sold millions.

“Pizza made this place, no doubt about it,” Gonyar says.

“But he never ate one, you know,” says Anderson, whose revelation raises eyebrows along the counter. “It’s true. Pat told me he hated pizza.”

The men then went on to recall Farnsworth as a backroom political force in town with opinions that carried weight.

“When they were talking about tearing down this whole block during urban renewal, Pat fought it and won,” Cowan says. “He was always getting information out of people, at the counter or sitting in the booths with them. He pretty much knew everything going on in this town.”

“He ruled the roost around here from behind that counter,” Gonyar says. “He was a behind-the-scenes force. I’d say he was as close as you can get in Orono to being king of the hill. But I’ll tell you, in all my years of coming in here, whether in the booths at night or tying up this counter all morning, Pat always made me feel welcome. Always.”

The friends agree that Farnsworth was an easygoing though serious sort of guy who didn’t joke around with the customers very much. He loved his growing family, his lush gardens, and his sprawling house on the shores of Pushaw Lake.

He was generous, too, and quick to help people with his money and time. And up until he fell down the stairs and hurt his back a couple of years ago, he worked harder than just about anyone around, spending as much as 12 hours a day, seven days a week at his restaurant.

“In my view, Pat didn’t just work here, he lived here,” says Gonyar.

After about an hour or so, the Geritol Group begins to disband its morning gathering. Their coffee tabs are all identical – 25 cents, plus two cents tax.

“Pat set that price in 1965 – it was a dime before that – and he never raised it again,” says Cyr, the waitress. “He wanted things to stay the same. That was him.”