A Maine Institution Stands Pat on Pizza : Food: Farnsworth Cafe has kept college kids in pepperoni for decades. The owner, at 83, is still running the show.

Decades have barely touched Pat’s, the pizza parlor savored by generations of University of Maine graduates who found it vital to their education.

Yes, many elbows have rubbed the Formica counter down to the wood. Countless shoes left grooves in the slate footrests. The varnish is long gone from the wood benches and booths. The white pressed-tin ceiling looks tired.

But the orange neon sign in the window still beams invitingly, “Farnsworth’s Cafe.” The pizzas taste the same.

Perhaps most remarkable among the eatery’s enduring fixtures is Pat Farnsworth himself, the 83-year-old proprietor who in his starched shirt and suspenders still chomps his constant cigar and feeds young people for 62 years now. More, if you count the years he worked in high school.

Visiting alumni notice.

“They come back and say it hasn’t changed a bit--it feels just like home,” Farnsworth said on a typically busy day.

He’s amused when alumni come in and ask if Pat’s still alive.

Alive, and how.

“They call it a disease--workaholic,” said Farnsworth, who turns 84 this month. “I can’t sit still.”

He cites his rare days off: 10 days when he married Frances in 1937, time for back surgery in the 1950s, the odd hunting or fishing trip.

It’s not just a life of pizza. This robust, portly man, slightly shorter than the average, with silvery hair swept back, has owned the biggest pig farm in Maine, a canoe factory, a potato-hauling firm, a construction company and a beer hall.

From his college town cafe, he has spun out a chain of 14 restaurants across the state called Pat’s Pizza. But the heart of this son of a chef belongs in his pizza joint.

Most of the year, Farnsworth can be found here 12 hours a day, or more, seven days a week, circulating with the customers, keeping the books in his downstairs office and, of course, making pizza.

Summers, he cuts back to eight hours, mostly at night.

That allows him daylight hours in his vegetable and flower gardens at his lakeside home in Orono, a town in central Maine of 10,573 inhabitants, double that if you count the students.

Many are fans of Pat’s tangy pizzas that always arrive steaming hot on the coldest winter nights.

Like his pizzas, Farnsworth resists change.

Born in the coastal town of Harrington in 1909, Farnsworth was a toddler when his family moved to Orono.

His daughters, Ann Rosebush, 52, and Pam Savoy, 50, work here full time. It’s also the headquarters of the restaurant chain run by his son, Bruce Farnsworth, 45.

Each of Farnsworth’s dozen grandchildren earned money waiting tables, rolling dough, stirring sauce, grating cheese.

As a young man, Farnsworth wanted a college education. He drove to Earlham College in Indiana in his Model T Ford, but homesickness drew him back to Maine. He attended the state university for a year, but cracking a college text never excited him like the clatter of commerce.

Back in Orono he returned to the ice cream parlor that employed him in high school. It was the Depression, and soon the owner, eager to sell, let Farnsworth have the place for $1,000 plus $50 rent. It was 1931 and Farnsworth was 21.

In two years, he added meals and beer to the menu. Pizza came much later, in 1955, and only because a local hotel had discovered college kids liked the then-novel treat.

“I thought, ‘It’s a fad, it’ll go away,’ ” Farnsworth recalled.

Skepticism evaporated when he saw his own customers using his phone to order pizzas out and bring them back to his cafe. Fad or no fad, it was time to act. “We said, we’ll have to put in pizza.”

Farnsworth sent his wife to Portland’s best pizzeria for 10 days to learn the pizza art.

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

He still makes about 250,000 a year, hooking freshmen on his nine-inch pies.