The Pancake Arch

 

The Pancake arch, under construction

Architectural History II was not the most fun class of the semester. The professor was 78 years old, taught like the cliche monotone professors of 1980’s teen dramas and dressed in tweed like it was London in 1955. He often acted like a cult leader and his students were the underlings; ignoring us most of the time, yet randomly vicious is his pointed critique of our essays, clothing styles or posture. The class was at 8am in a large, slightly too warm and stuffy lecture hall that was built to cure insomnia. The textbooks were approximately the size of wrecking balls and weighed about the same. I have always been fascinated with history, but listening to an ancient man mumble about Palladio or Renzo Piano at around dawn was not exactly enlightening to me. 

As with any college class, there was an inevitable group project, combining three random young adults into a triad of missed deadlines, poor communication and desperate all-nighters just before the due date. We were assigned teammates and told to select a famous architectural feature to research, cite multiple examples of and build a scale model, all to be presented in the form of the dreaded Powerpoint Presentation. It was due in a month.

Four weeks later, staring at a quickly approaching deadline, Zach, John and I were reclining comfortably in your average college kid’s living room, having a safety meeting. Details are hazy, possibly due to the haze in the air from the glass receptacle we were sharing. Someone suggested we build an arch; the most classic of all architectural details. Some else suggested we eat pancakes because staying on topic was difficult. The statement hung in the air and we all locked eyes like they do in the movies. A pancake arch. The best idea ever, if you are a 20 year old college kid with the munchies. 

Off we went to Costco and bought a half dozen bags of Krusteaz Pancake Mix. Then, we had another safety meeting and donned the various coyote and wolf skins that had previously been decorating the living room wall, well, just because. The small kitchen became a laboratory, with griddles on every countertop, a mixing station and a very official looking ladle. Hours passed by in a montage. A time lapse camera captured the pile of pancakes growing steadily, sixteen at a time as we took turns at the stove. By midnight, four hundred pancakes lay steaming on the countertop. 

The largest flat surface we had was the ping pong table; not the most stable of bases. As the camera flashed, pancakes stacked higher and higher, tapering from a base of four wide to single height over three feet. It was precarious to say the least. Around two am, our excitement was wearing off. The whole house reeked of pancakes. But, in a two second moment of triumph, the pancake arch stood upright before tumbling to the floor with a sploosh. 

The next day, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I compiled the pictures into a Powerpoint Presentation. What seemed so hilarious the previous night now seemed like a very dumb idea, but we were committed now. I uploaded the final presentation to the server and we trudged into class. One presentation after another came up on the screen; formatted just as the professor would have liked to see it, full of information but boring as hell. Finally, our turn came. I clicked the slides with a somber look on my face as Zach and John narrated. To our credit, we gave zero warning and kept straight faces the entire time as we discussed the history of the arch and the efficacy of pancakes as building materials. 

The previously comatose class absolutely lost it. I didn’t dare to turn towards the professor as we melodramatically showed the time lapse of the pancake arch. Cheers erupted from the room as the arch stood for a moment, then toppled in the great Ping Pong table earthquake of 2019. It was one of the finest moments of my public speaking career. There was jubilation in the class as the spell of boredom was broken by three unprepared goofballs with the munchies. Even the professor was smirking as we completed our presentation. While we would only manage a B, mostly for having the guts to subvert such a serious assignment, he did let class out fifteen minutes early because it wasn’t fair for anyone to follow such a display. The history class would resume its boredom the following Tuesday, but the Pancake arch will live on in our collective memories as a triumph of the human spirit and dumb college kids. 

Afterwards, we had four hundred pancakes to take care of. After eating them for three days, we lost our luster for Krusteaz. It was years before I could smell them again or contemplate eating pancakes.

The preparation

The Bounty

The Fall

Clean up afterwards