Of Music and Milkshakes
Diana Jih
So what if your pun-intentional specially flavored milkshake arrives 30 minutes after you order it? At least it’s still as rich as ever, thanks to the ice cream’s New English provenance—specifically, to the Jersey cows from Vermont whose resemblance to big buttery scoops of caramel-flavored ice cream helps produce the best artery-clogging shakes on either side of the river. Location: one Lone Pine Tavern but two straws.
Actually, it’s hard to focus on the person sitting across from you, sharing your oh-so-delicious milkshake, because you can’t decide whether you have a bigger crush on Ryan Dieringer or Tica Douglas. Together, they form the campus band The Making of San Bernadino. Though I’ve witnessed Kevin Barnes of Of Montreal professing love and proposing marriage in a wedding dress on stage, for me, Lone Pine will always be for Platonic lovers.
My first (and only half-heard) conversation during Dimensions competed with Queer Karaoke blarings, and consisted of asking where many of the b-side board games came from (who’s ever heard of Fact or Crap?) while foolishly searching for the pieces of many incomplete sets of Truth or Dare Jenga (Dare: Suck a cherry out of another person’s belly-button?). Tonight I’ve resigned myself to the Fact not Crap that those pieces will remain lost forever, along with my order of cheesy fries. Who can forget those easily abandoned games of Monopoly (I recall one epic game that ended with my successful purchase of every railroad and subsequent nationalization of the transportation system in a valiant effort to combat the Capitalist Man and his Parker Brothers), the first triumphant post-21 taste of Guinness served in plastic mugs and purchased on DA$H, or the sound of half-learned lyrics sung non-Karaoke style to my friends’ songs? Hopefully these memories will outlast rivaling reminiscences of the very specific sounds (or rather smells) of frat basements, the slightly defeating first pre-21 taste of Keystone, and the repetition of lyrics and lines detailing how little sleep, how much work, and how hard you raged last night.
Side-liner notes: The making of The Making of San Bernadino
Upon meeting Ryan Dieringer freshman year, he asked me where I was from and then if I knew how to play fiddle. His band, The Powder Kegs, has since required less fiddle—transitioning from bluegrass to a more instrumental/experimental sound—but demands more of his attention. I first heard his band’s stylings at Lone Pine freshmen year. A couple more Powder Kegs shows followed, but, alas, the payments in Bagel Basement gift certificates for Ryan and the band failed to keep them on campus and playing at Lone Pine. His sophomore year away almost extended permanently when he took time off to tour and record an album. After ploughing through the year without the Powder Kegs, and then embarking on my own six-month desertion of Dartmouth in South Africa and Lesotho, I heard rumblings of Ryan’s potential return. I wondered if I’d ever hear his warbling baritone sing a cover to my favorite Jolie Holland song “Old Fashion Morphine” again.
Upon returning to Dartmouth, I learned that had the Powder Kegs’ van not broken down in Hanover that winter, Ryan would never have met Tica Douglas, a ’10 who was living at Panarchy with Ryan’s best friend. It was these perfectly serendipitous circumstances within which The Making of San Bernadino was made.
Tica’s tale followed a similar wanderlust trajectory. Her foreign study extended into Scottish pop stardom and almost kept her and her acoustic guitar from returning promptly to this side of the pond—and to the right side of Ryan’s keyboard. Once again, The Making of San Bernadino almost failed to launch—but it did in the end. I can without a doubt say that when I returned from Africa decidedly terrified of a very familiar place and old faces, the two most comforting aspects of my Dartmouth return were hearing the Powder Kegs’ new sound on my friend’s laptop, and meeting new housemates at Panarchy like Tica. The new sounds and new friends awaiting my return showed me that getting to learn the finally-launched The Making of San Bernadino songs, within the comfort zone of the very familiar Lone Pine Tavern, made my sojourn that much more complete (unlike every box of Truth or Dare Jenga). Finding the unfamiliar within the familiar reminds me on every listen that sometimes the best parts of trips are notes from home.
These past four years, I’ve frequently taken trips with friends into Mink Brook and Pine Park just off campus. The distance is always far enough to serve as a mini journey, which makes me appreciate and desire a return. The trees on fire in the fall, brittle and candy-coated in the winter, and more verdant in the spring than I can stand without sepia shades, provide me with a constant unfamiliar frontier to explore—my backyard for four years.
When people ask me what I did in college, I’ll tell them I went into the woods with my friends and told jokes. If they ask me, Were they funny? I’ll tell them, I laughed. Lone Pine served a side of woods with jokes on campus with kick-ass musical stylings…although, I’m still waiting on those cheesy fries.
