Strange, Weird People I Have Met

I’ll call him Maurice. He owned a restaurant in Maine, on the seacoast, and he hadn’t changed his menu for years, despite his shrewdness in business, and despite the fact that calling his combo sandwiches “Buicks,” and “Chevy’s” was no longer new or amusing.

I was a short order cook in Maurice’s place. I had graduated from college the year before and didn’t know what to do with myself. I had come to Maine with a girl after college and then the girl left and I still didn’t know what to do with myself.

But I learned quite a bit from Maurice.

First, I learned never to trust wholesalers, either in produce or meats. I came upon this information while I was scooping coleslaw out of a gigantic bucket and dumping it into pans near my supply of lettuce and tomatoes. Maurice was in the back of the kitchen, next to the service entrance door. His voice, always loud, began to rise in volume and sharpness of tone.

“Do you think I don’t know what grade of roast beef I’ve ordered?” Maurice was glaring at a youngish looking man going prematurely bald. “Do you think I am so stupid that I don’t know the difference?” I don’t remember how the wholesaler responded—apparently it didn’t soothe Maurice. He shouted, “I love you like a brother but I will not be screwed! Fair is fair, but I WILL NOT BE SCREWED!”

Over the course of several months, I heard Maurice profess his love and outrage to both produce and meat wholesalers. And he made it clear that no relatives, real or metaphorical, would ever screw him.

Once, I remember him giving me a short but instructive formula regarding overhead costs. It was early morning, before the restaurant opened for the day, and Maurice was checking receipts at the bar. I was wiping down the counter when Maurice suddenly glanced up.

“Fifteen percent,” he snapped.

I smiled at him—in an interested, polite way—and continued to wipe down the bar.

“Listen to me,” he commanded, and his forefinger rose to inspire rapt attention. “Fifteen percent,” he repeated ominously. “That is how much your employees will steal from you. No matter what you do, no matter how alert or cautious you are, they will always steal fifteen percent. You must figure that into your overhead.” He went back to checking his receipts.

Sometimes, when Maurice was in an expansive mood, he would walk unannounced into the kitchen and scream, “Hands!” That was the signal for us to line up, put our hands out, and turn them up and down for Maurice’s inspection. Maurice insisted upon absolute cleanliness from his kitchen staff. If he once found your fingernails dirty, you would be subject to one of his roaring tirades. If it happened twice, you were fired….

At nineteen, Maurice had come to this country from Brittany. He found work as a dishwasher in a restaurant in New York. In typical American success story fashion, the owner of the restaurant, who happened to be a mob boss, took a liking to Maurice, saw his potential as a chef, and sent him to culinary school, where Maurice excelled. Eventually, Maurice starred in his own television cooking show that was broadcast all over the Midwest. Soon, Maurice was patenting his own brand of steaks and pastries and selling them to restaurants all across the country. Maurice became very wealthy. He was no more than forty five, but he had already been retired for years. The restaurant he now owned and operated was something of a “hobby” for him.

Like many immigrants to America who had done well, Maurice was rigidly conservative in his politics. He despised “hippies,” or anyone he perceived as not properly reverential towards America. If your hair was long—or you wore a beard—he immediately placed you in the category of “enemy to the state.” His favorite description of such people was “little animals and Indians,” and he viewed them with utter contempt.

I suppose he made exceptions for the odd animal/Indian. He spoke to me, from time to time. My hair was long and I also had a beard.

As the months crept by, I began to wonder why the menu (as I learned from the other employees) hadn’t changed in years. Surely Maurice was clever enough to realize that his restaurant, like all businesses from time to time, needed a certain “freshening” of its product line. I made this observation after suggesting to the manager a new sandwich that I had created. The manager laughed when I offered to glamorize the old sandwich board with a new entry.

“Where do you think you’re working?” he asked me.

I was a college graduate, but I had a degree in liberal arts. “In a restaurant?” I answered.

The manager smiled and shook his head. “You work in a laundry,” he replied softly. He winked at me. Then he told me to put a hamburger on the grille for his lunch.

I was proud, while at the restaurant, to have earned the reputation as the fastest and best short order cook in the restaurant’s history. But it was a Pyrrhic victory, of sorts. I was the fastest short order cook in a restaurant that was never allowed to become too successful—just moderately so, for reasons best known to the IRS and the mob boss who had befriended him when he first came to America.

After a year or so, I left the kitchen, and Maine, behind, and turned to teaching. I still didn’t know what to do with myself, but I knew I didn’t want to do it in a kitchen anymore.

I don’t know what became of Maurice. But I remembered his lessons. Work hard in America, keep your hair trimmed to a proper length, and be grateful when good friends offer you an opportunity to clean their money. And again, watch out for wholesalers.

Donald Gallinger is the author of The Master Planets

View Donald Gallinger's Official Website Blog at: http://www.donaldgallinger.com/dons-blog.html

Removed from History—An Individual’s Story

I am repeatedly told by the news media that we are living in times of upheaval. China looks to be the world’s next super power. An African-American has been declared the democratic nominee for President. Prices are skyrocketing, the result of an oil crunch that’s apparently here to stay. The list goes on and on, and if you wanted to examine the list with even a modicum of interest, you would marvel at the drama, danger, and possibilities of our era. As Charles Dickens once said, “It was the best of times and the worst of times.” And, of course, he meant that every age is fraught with similar hopes and limitations.

I wish I cared more about the times in which I live. It’s not that I’m uninvolved. I simply don’t feel the continuity, the sense of cohesiveness about my relationship to society that I once did.

Incredibly (and I use that word after much thought), I felt more connected to society when I was younger. As I grew up during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, I had the sense that forces impacting upon American culture were palpable and real; there was a perception that events, no matter how slight, could be filtered and processed through an evolving cultural norm. Even the most weightless of societal phenomena, such as top forty songs and popular TV shows, resonated with the echo of earlier eras and a suggestion of future styles and interests.

Now, when I read the news, or listen to popular music, or watch television, I feel no particular sense of a larger zeitgeist. It’s just stuff. Sometimes it’s bad stuff and sometimes it’s interesting stuff, but in the end, it just feels like… stuff. I can’t identify the “happenings” in today’s society as guideposts along a cultural road. They just seem to be random events with no connection to anything else. The fact that a lot of rappers seem very fond of two specific words rhyming with “brother sucker” and “witch” does not immediately produce a series of culturally relevant connotations. I can’t make the emotional connections that have led to much of today’s popular entertainment, and I certainly have no idea where those popular diversions may be headed.

I do know that I have lost touch with the pulse of my world—if pulse is the right word for what makes a culture singular to its time and place.

I know there is danger in that sort of numbness.

I wish I could feel where I am in American society. I wish I had a better sense of society’s style and shape and density. But I don’t. My guess is that lots of other people feel that way, too. They just don’t have the words to describe that brand of loss.




Donald Gallinger is the author of The Master Planets

View Donald Gallinger's Official Website Blog at: http://www.donaldgallinger.com/dons-blog.html