Louis Ward, MC ’12, is the only Yale student who works at Durfee’s. I’ll start with full disclosure: Louis (Lou, Lou Dogg) is a good friend of mine. It wasn’t hard for me to get hold of Louis on a recent rainy day to talk about what it’s like to work at Durfee’s. As we sat down to begin the interview, Louis shared a joke that a friend from home had told him: “White people are born pale, when they’re out in the sun too long they get red, when they’re sick they get yellow, when they’re cold they turn blue—and they call us colored people.” To understand why Louis is the only student who works at Durfee’s, you have to understand where he comes from.

The friend who told him the joke is named Juan. He used to live right down the street from Louis, and they’ve known each other since Louis was seven.

“Back in the day,” Louis said, “we used to chill and play soccer and handball and shit in my backyard.” Juan is in prison now. When I ask Louis what he was locked up for, he said: “As of right now, probably either grand theft auto, or brandishing a weapon, or larceny…It’s kind of, I don’t know, kind of tragic, when you think about it.”

Louis grew up in San Diego, the most southern city of Southern California, or as he likes to call it, “North Mexico.”

“I used to be Mexican, back in the day,” he said, “in the sense that, when I was in elementary and middle school, [I hung out with] nothing but Mexican kids and white kids. I used to run with some hood-ass Mexicans, all of them gangbangers now.”

He began to reminisce about the gangs he knew as a kid—Westside Diablos, Crips, PCH, AKB. Suddenly, though, he became serious: “That’s why I say, if I had stayed at my high school, I would be either in prison or dead right now, running with all those gangbangers…I’d be in the same shit as [Juan].”

Of course, Louis didn’t stay at his high school. In ninth grade, he transferred to High Tech High, a charter school; now he is at Yale, not in prison. Even 2,500 miles from home, he found something familiar in Durfee’s. “I used to post it up in [Durfee’s] all the time…I spent mad hours there in freshman year,” Louis told me. The people who work at Durfee’s, he said, remind him of people from back home. “If I’m spending mad hours there, I might as well get paid for it.” He joked that right now he’s “trying to get back pay” for all the time he spent there.

Louis gets a rare view of fellow Yalies from behind the counter. Customers at Durfee’s run the length and breadth of Yale’s student body—some running from the library to pick up more Red Bull, others stumbling in for snacks after a night out. The drunk ones stand out. “I see tons of wasted kids…It’s funny because I see these kids on Science Hill or something, and I don’t think they recognize me, but I know they were wasted on Thursday night, and came in here and bought two things of Queso Dip and a bag of Cheetos,” he said. If you think Cheetos and Queso Dip sound like strange bedfellows, you’re right. “You wouldn’t believe some of the combinations people buy,” he says.

The one thread that connects all Yalies is Vitamin Water. “I want to do a study,” Louis says, “on how much Vitamin Water people at Yale consume…There are three whole fridges full of Vitamin Water, and it seems like I’m always refilling them.” The one thing Louis has never seen in Durfee’s is a fight, and “I guess that’s a good thing.”

After our interview, I realized that I had met a different Louis from the one I thought I knew. I have been friends with Louis for almost as long as I have been at Yale, and I could never imagine him anywhere but here. Yet it’s hard for me to describe, let alone capture, the consistently lighthearted and upbeat attitude Louis has. Even when talking about some seriously scary stuff from home (which can’t really be published in a campus newspaper), Louis always has a smile and a wise crack on hand.

I guess it speaks to the nature of Yale that someone whom I count among my closest friends and see nearly every day can come from a place, and a life, that I can’t even imagine. Maybe that’s just my New York parochialism talking. But anyway, next time you see Louis (mostly commonly known as Lou Dogg) in Durfee’s, say what’s up.