days of old
Tuffy’s Toasted Roll. Sweet! In case you’re not familiar with Tuffy’s Toasted Roll, you
begin with a quality bun, like a cinnamon twist, slather it with butter, grill it, sprinkle confectioners sugar all over it, and enjoy — until your cardiologist calls. Credit Tuffy Potter with starting this tasty Miami tradition. A native of Green Springs, Ohio, he came to Oxford to attend college. Lack of funds forced him to leave school and take a drugstore job uptown. In 1929, he opened his own place on the ground floor of Tallawanda Apartments on the northwest corner of Tallawanda and High. According to Tuffy’s son, Coe, Class of 1962, a restaurant uptown already offered a sweet roll. Tuffy thought he could improve on it. He sure did. “It sold from the time we opened in the morning until the time we closed at night,” Coe recalls. Some liked to add ice cream to it, others peanut butter. Until 1948, Tuffy’s was the only place on campus, other than the Sangy Man’s truck, where students could buy food. Plus, the campus dining facilities offered more formal, white-tablecloth events. “There wasn’t a student at Miami who didn’t go through Tuffy’s,” said Coe, who bought the sandwich shop when poor health forced his dad to retire. With Miami planning to tear down the building and needing to replace failing equipment, Coe closed it in the mid-’70s. At auction, the used equipment didn’t bring a thing, but the 21 booths sold for lots of money. That’s because the tables were covered in students’ initials dating back to the shop’s start. “People, particularly boys and girls who got married and carved their initials in there together, they’d come back years later and go back to that same booth and find them,” Coe said. Then they’d settle in for another toasted roll at Tuffy’s.
48
miamian magazine
Tuffy Potter and his son, Coe ’62, pose for a final photo before the sandwich shop in Tallawanda closes. With Tuffy’s blessing, Miami has sold his toasted roll ever since. These days, you can purchase one in Armstrong Student Center’s Pulley Diner.
