COLUMN: Gather Ye Rosebuds?

you should seize the day and keep your list of regrets as short as possible. Up above 43rd on Locust, Koch's was always a bit of a hike. There was always more of a wait than I had time to spare, Everything there cost more than I could afford to spend. Every time I did, though, it was worth every inch walked, every minute wasted, and every penny spent. The rolls were fresh. The meat was highest quality and it was packed thick. The sandwiches, once assembled,were worthy of Dagwood Bumstead himself. There's more to the place than sandwiches, too. The milkshakes are the thickest and richest I've ever had anywhere. I hated potato salad until a friend convinced me to try it there. Just like with any great business, there was more to it than just the product. Koch's was closer to the atmosphere I knew back in small-town Vermont than the one I am used to finding here in metropolitan Philadelphia. The Koch brothers, Bob and Lou, were as friendly as human beings come, making the hour-plus spent in line go by more quickly with free cold-cuts and Lou's god-awful puns. What's more, they recognized their customers, and always greeted people they had seen before with a relaxed familiarity that made you feel like you were in the company of friends. When Lou Koch died of a heart attack this past fall, cards came pouring in from all over the city. When Bob reopened the deli a few days later,he personally thanked everyone who sent one. I kept meaning to take my parents there when they came to visit, but I never did. There were many weekends when I could've afforded to do and didn't. I always assumed that thee would be another opportunity. As is always the case with that assumption, eventually I was wrong. So one more piece of the Penn I fell in love with is gone. This is a big one, so it gets to me a bit more than it should. This is hardly the first bit of my Philadelphia that has been lost. When I came here there was a club called the Chestnut Cabaret. It wasn't that fabulous a place save for the fact that on many a boring weekend it would host the sort of show that one normally had to go to the Trocadero to see. I still fondly recall the three hours of a bluegrass band called Allgood spent jamming there in front of a tiny crowd. Tiny crowds were the reason that the Chestnut Cabaret closed its doors. When the doors reopened, it was renamed Fubar, and now it is the sort of asinine dance club where overdressed jarheads get drunk off overpriced, crappy beer and do pelvic thrusts to the time of god-awful techno music. A cozy little place with a cozy little name became twisted and deformed like a thalidomide baby. Judging from my indictment of Fubar, one might guess that I'm the sort who absolutely hated (hates) Murph's. Lousy beer, overcrowding and grime are not the traits which attract me to a bar today. Murph's, however, was my first bar, and, like a first love, it will always hold a special place in my heart. Having been good and well behaved and studious in high school, I hadn't so much as smoked a cigarette when I came to college. My liver lost its virginity at Kappa Alpha and was finished off in the basement of Murphy's Tavern. There was a certain magic to a bar where a baby-faced 17 year-old could approach the door nervously holding out his PennCard in place of an ID, and have the bouncer wave it aside saying, "Quit wasting my time and get the hell in there!" I haven't been there in a long time. Like I said, my taste of atmosphere has changed. I've heard that since they were busted last year, they've started carding on a regular basis. That's a shame. My sympathies are with the incoming freshmen who are as dorky as I was and won't get the chance to have the same huddles in a Rolling Rock soaked booth, the same hook-ups in a dark and grungy corner, the same raucous sing-a-longs to "Piano Man" through a Jaegermeister induced haze. All these made my life that much richer, and it's a shame that those to come won't be able to share in them. I feel the same sympathy for all the Penn students who never had the luxury of walking no further than 38th and Chestnut to see one of their favorite bands. I feel even more sympathy for all those who'll never know the joy of sinking their teeth into a Koch's sandwich and washing it down with a milkshake. Yarislav (the malevolent spirit who lives in my laptop) is glaring at me as if to say, "If you get anywhere near a point, make it!"I'll sum it up with a piece of advice to all those who will be arriving in just over a month. The point is one that everyone has heard a million times, but is still every bit as true on the million and first" CARPE DIEM. Seize the day. If you do something that turns out wrong, you can almost always put it right, get over it, lean from it, or at least deny it. Once you've missed out on something, it's gone. The world waits for no one. It has its own schedule and either you keep up or get left behind. This is the point in your life when things around you begin changing a bit faster. The old will be replaced by the new, and often time the new will never be quite as cozy as the old was. People in your life will come and go a lot faster then they did before. There will be the girl who you never got to say the right words to, the band you never got to see live, the winning streak you never got to cheer on, the bar you never got to stumble home from, the brilliant retiring professor whose class you never took, the relative you never got very close with? It's a long list no matter what. Try to keep it as short as possible. Just before I finished writing this, I was told that I had been misinformed. Koch's isn't closing forever -- just for the rest of the summer. When September comes, get your ass over there and have a sandwich, because you never know?