Because they didn’t have much work for the moment, Jimmy Banquet Chef took Bill to a remote kitchen, one Bill had seen in passing a couple of times but had not been in. It was a wholly separate kitchen where two cooks were working. They were part of the room service crew.
On the way over, Jimmy Banquet Chef explained the room service setup. They served a limited menu all day, from early morning to late night. Two cooks were working all the time, sitting and not doing much of anything a good deal of the time.
Their menu was relatively simple. They served regular breakfast items, oatmeal to omelettes. Lunch included a variety of soups and sandwiches, some pretty nice sandwiches actually, and of course hamburgers, hot dogs, steaks, and all that. The soups were made in the main kitchen and delivered over. Dinner included any specials Jimmy Banquet Chef prepared as well as simple fish and steak items. Much of those were prepped by the main kitchen and sent over for cooking on the line by the room service cooks.
The cooks weren’t doing much when Jimmy Banquet Chef and Bill popped into their kitchen. They were two men older than both Bill and the banquet chef.
“This is Bill Wynn,” the banquet chef said. “He’s the Falstaff cook and my new first cook. He’ll be working on banquets with me.”
They both nodded. No one reached out a hand to shake, so Bill didn’t either. Bill was busy looking over everything he could see from where he and the banquet chef stood.
“Bill doesn’t affect you in any way,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “In the rare case you are all out, I want him to have an idea of what it’s like here.”
The two men, Bill judged them in their forties, looked at each other but didn’t say anything. Jimmy didn’t say anything more. He led Bill around the kitchen so Bill could see everything, opened reach-in doors and the walk-in. When they were inside the walk-in he told Bill not to mind them in any way.
Bill was already thinking about being in the workhouse. Ronnie came first, the guy who asked him what he thought his wife was doing while he was locked up. That taught Bill to be guarded, not to give out any information to anyone.
Most men in the workhouse just wanted to be left alone to do their time quietly. Bill ended up not really talking to anyone except the people on his work detail, and then they didn’t talk about personal things. They talked about the day, they talked about the weather, they talked about the food, they talked about the guards. They talked about the tough and the gangs and the groups. They talked about their commissary funds and what they were going to buy for a snack that evening.
Some people talked to other people, some people didn’t talk to anyone, some people didn’t respond to people when they were talked to. In the workhouse Bill quickly learned not to take anything personally unless it was directly personal.
So when these two cooks did not talk to him, Bill didn’t really care. Immediately, apart from thinking about his workhouse experiences he started to consider what it was in them that would cause them not to talk to him. He could think of lots of things, none of which had anything to do with him, most of which had to do with their own job insecurity.
Once they were on their way back to the main kitchen, Jimmy Banquet Chef asked Bill what he thought of the room service setup. Bill didn’t have much to say other than that it was interesting and that of course he could handle it in a pinch if he had to. He already knew that situation would probably never come up because in the evening he was always in The Falstaff Room. He felt glad about that. He liked that part of the job and he liked his girls there.
By Peter Weiss
The other day I got a notification that one of the people I sometimes communicate with on one of those social media places posted something. So I checked it out. This person is a far-lefty, an anti-Trumper, and I like reading what he has to say. I like reading it and I like seeing what he posts not because I agree with most of it, not because I disagree with most of it, but because it always gives me reason to wonder.
And wonder I do!
Before I go any further, I want to go on record for saying that if it weren’t for running my blog, I wouldn’t be on any social media except to communicate with distant family. Some of my distant family, and I find this funny, has stopped communicating with me because of some of my opinions.
Not only do I find this funny, but it also causes me to wonder.
And wonder I do!
This particular person who did the posting is a salesman. That’s how he makes his money, his livelihood. So I’m hoping this whole “virus” situation hasn’t hurt him economically, and if so, I hope not too much, and that brings me to say I truly feel for anyone and everyone being hurt financially by the situation, by the virus and the whole turn of events. I feel much less for the billionaires and multi-millionaires than I do for the regular people, and please, you know what I mean by the regular people. I don’t discriminate in my feelings by political affiliation, gender, religion or anything of that sort.
That said, this salesman is an accomplished and successful salesman. I’d be willing to bet that he is versed in sales techniques, and I’d also be willing to bet that at least sometimes he’s sold some people some things they really didn’t want or need or didn’t want to spend the money on. It kind of goes with the territory.
So I wonder: how could a successful, accomplished salesman, just a regular person, get sold hook, line and sinker on that left-wing doctrine he posted?
I wonder: doesn’t he, don’t any of them, think things through, think for themselves, examine the implications of what they’re advocating, examine the assumptions underlying it?
I wonder: do they honestly understand and believe what they’re saying? Do they ever look at or listen to the words coming out of their mouths and out of their would-be leaders? Do they ever look at their deeds? Their actions? Do they ever look at the videotapes of what their leaders have said and done in the past?
I wonder how anyone on any side could just take what that side says as gospel and go with it in its entirety.
To me, it’s mind-boggling.
I wonder: when and how did the lefties get the idea that their positions are the morally correct ones, that they stand on the moral high ground and anyone who opposes them is immoral, racist, sexist, and all the other “ists”?
I wonder: when and how did the lefties ever get the idea that they stand for all the people and anyone who can’t see it is ignorant?
I wonder: when and how did the lefties ever get the idea that they could speak their opinions freely and anyone expressing opposing opinions should be ostracized, demonized and even persecuted?
Oh yes. Especially in the Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Al Sharpton, Pravda USA mainstream media era, I have many, many wonderings about our representatives and would-be leaders and about a free and fair press.
I wonder!
And wonder I do!
By Peter Weiss
Bill was never impressed with himself. He never complimented himself, never praised himself, was never comfortable being out-front or in the spotlight. He was self-conscious, self-aggrandizing and generally, this even moreso after his still-recent visit to the Columbus workhouse, afraid. He didn’t like new things or change and the one real comfort he found in restaurant and kitchen work was that everything was always in the same place and done the same way. In his life, in retrospect, he would discover the one thing that held him back the most was himself. Self-doubt and general fear plagued him constantly.
The move up to Cleveland had not been terribly hard, but it wasn’t easy. It took him a month to find this job. He’d applied for two others and tried out for one. They had saved enough money, mostly, to be able to get an apartment, but they’d waited until he was working to move. They were sensible.
Starting the new job wasn’t easy either. Nevertheless, despite his self-doubt, Bill worked through it, worked at it, discovered the same regularity (and his own comfort in it) in The Falstaff Room and the job in general. Everything was always in the same place. Setup was the same. Each day was exactly the same. You did the setup and then the service was like a baseball game, every night a new game based upon how the orders came in and how many customers they had. That part of it, the playing a baseball game, was fun. It was a challenge.
So they did move, found a nice top-floor apartment of a two-family house in Garfield Heights. It wasn’t far from where her parents lived and it wasn’t that far from downtown Cleveland. Garfield Heights had regular bus service he could use, express buses at scheduled times that were generally good for him. It was turning out all okay.
Because it was a quiet day, they were able to sit for a while in the chef’s office. Neither Bill nor the banquet chef knew it, but while they were meeting the the executive chef was meeting with the F&B Director. In the scope of things, the new first cook’s salary, his raise, was small potatoes, but it came up as they did business and it got settled.
For the week, they had banquets but were not overly taxed. Afternoon, more like late lunch affairs, were scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Friday’s was another political thing, more chicken breasts and rolled filet of sole to the tune of some four hundred people. The meal was scheduled for 1:00 PM which meant dish-up would be between 12:00 and 12:30, closer to 12:00. The others were smaller, but Jimmy Banquet Chef made it clear he wanted Bill working all of them.
So they built him a work schedule, and when they looked it over, the banquet chef told him to just come in at ten every morning as a regular thing. When they didn’t have parties or banquets, he could do prep work.
“I’m gonna teach you everything,” the banquet chef said. “Good for me and good for you.”
Bill was already calculating. He was figuring the hours he’d be working and the overtime hours he’d get. Overtime hours, as he’d been told by the union steward, were not after forty hours a week. They were after eight hours in the day. That ninth hour and every hour after it was overtime. It looked like, and Bill was really happy about this, he’d be making good money.
The Falstaff Room closed on Sundays. Originally Bill’s schedule had been presented to him as six days per week with Sundays off. As they talked about it now, that was going to stay in place except he’d work Sundays too if the Sunday was excessively busy. Or, as the banquet chef told him, they were going to arrange for a way for him and Bill to relieve each other.
Done. Settled. Finished.
By Peter Weiss
Monday at noon Millie met Bill at her counter with a big smile. Bill only went there because he needed uniforms, pants and shirts. He needed full sets to replace those from Saturday and Sunday.
He was carrying his dirty laundry in both hands and before he chucked them into the big laundry cart, Millie reached out.
“Give them here,” she said.
Bill handed them to her and watched her put them into a different basket. She didn’t have to move much as the basket was nearby.
“I’ll take care of these personally,” she said. “I have nice clean ones for you.”
“Thanks,” Bill said. He saw that the two top buttons of her house-dress were open. He smiled at her. She smiled back.
“Been hearing things about you,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Just the start of your second week and you’re moving up.”
“I am?”
“So I hear.”
“How do you hear these things?”
“Scuttlebutt.”
“Really,” Bill said. “How do you hear these things?”
“My boss is a boss,” Millie said. “She talks to the chef. She talks to the F&B Director. Her and me are tight.”
“So what did you hear?”
“You’re gonna be the head cook, the first cook. You’re getting a nice raise and I’m gonna be seeing a lot of you.”
“News travels fast,” Bill said.
“I’m good with it,” Millie said.
“That makes me very happy,” Bill said.
“I did purple for you,” Millie said. She stepped back from her counter so Bill could see down to her feet. She was barelegged, several of her bottom dress buttons were open too. She was wearing house slippers and her toenails were purple. She held out her hands for him. Her fingernails were purple to match her toes.
“You like?”
“I like.”
“You can kiss anything or any part of anything you’d like.”
“I have to get up on the floor. I’m already running about fifteen minutes late.”
“What’s another few minutes?”
“Nah. Gotta go,” Bill said.
“Will I see you later?”
“Depends. If I get a break, I’ll come by.”
“Good. Make sure you get a break. I get mine around 3:00. She handed him three clean, pressed uniforms. “Only the best for you.”
Bill took the three hangers from Millie, noted she’d taken the time to sort them, to pair them, one complete uniform on each hanger. The jackets and pants, he saw, were wrinkle-free.
“See you in a bit,” Bill said.
Up on the floor Jimmy Banquet Chef was waiting for him. “Every day at noon from now on,” he said to Bill. “If we have a banquet we’ll adjust your in time.” He walked Bill over to the wall by the chef’s office and pulled down a clipboard. “The banquets are always listed here. When there are lunches you’ll be earlier. I’ll go through and post a schedule for you. No matter what, you’ll always be doing The Falstaff Room.
Bill didn’t say anything. He read the banquet schedule, checked for the days he’d be coming in early. He didn’t mind working and he wanted to work. First and foremost in his mind was saving money, always saving money and making sure he/they had enough money saved to be able to weather an emergency. They’d already had several of them together and they’d only been together a short time, relatively speaking. They’d needed a new car—the Rambler was a story unto itself. He’d needed money for his legal defense—if he’d had money or been able to tell his father so he could have gotten money, he would never have been convicted of anything and wouldn’t have needed to borrow money for paying rent and eating.
And so it goes, so it went.
“Your raise starts today,” the banquet chef said. “I don’t know exactly what it is yet, but it’s going to be good. As of this moment, you’re officially first cook.”
Bill wasn’t impressed with himself.
By Peter Weiss
I’ve been watching the news again lately. I had stopped for awhile because there wasn’t much to see. Honestly, there still isn’t much to see. Anyway, I had hoped we’d be beyond politics while we battled this pandemic, but of course that was too much to hope for. Apparently the Democrats are never beyond politics, and their lapdogs, Pravda USA Mainstream Media, are right there with them. Pravda USA has never let up in its unprecedented biased reporting and won’t. It is wholly vested in destroying this President and advancing a socialist agenda. Why is that?
So I don’t really want to talk about politics. Not really. If you read my blog you know my politics. I lean to the right. I believe in freedom and free choice. I believe in not being pinned to one side or the other and in looking at all issues with open honesty and an open mind. I believe in responsibility, in taking care of yourself, which means working and contributing if you’re able to and not riding on the work of others while you chose not to work to willfully exercise your personal right to the pursuit of happiness.
I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican. I believe in common sense and educated responses to the issues we face as a nation and more immediately in fighting this pandemic. I most certainly do not believe many of our elected officials are intelligent or care about educated responses to our issues and to working through the pandemic. I surely do not believe that most of our leaders exercise common sense. I do believe that most of our leaders are human and weak and guided by the group mentality of their party and by their own personal interests.
That, above, is not a political statement. It is a human one. Man is by nature selfish and greedy. You can plug most of our elected officials into that group, the greedy and selfish group that allows themselves to engage in insider trading and to employ their families in foreign places for the purpose of selling influence.
Oh, those of you who would poo-poo that statement, you know who these people are yet you choose to…
That group of the selfish and greedy politicians, not all our politicians, but a good deal of them and a good deal of them on the left who are protected by Pravda USA, the American Politburo politicians, gave themselves the exemption to Obamacare and make us pay with our tax dollars for their sexual indiscretions because we fund their slush fund, and not by choice either.
They put erasers on pencils because we all make mistakes. Making a mistake is okay. Happens to all of us. In this pandemic, something we’ve never seen before, our data may be skewed. Who knew? Who knows? Eventually more studies will come out and we’ll get real data that shows how well the scientists and doctors did with this, with determining who and how many are infected and what the real death rates are, etc.
Key point: who knew? As of yet, who knows? We’re in uncharted waters here.
The real deal is the President and his Administration and his lead scientists are looking at the big picture as well as immediate circumstances. Eventually the devastating economic effects of an unduly long shutdown will kill more people than the virus, if not the whole economy of the country itself.
And herein is the real problem. There are those, particularly the mainstream media, Pravda USA, and the undying lefty politicians (like Chucky boy and Nancy girl) who see this as an opportunity to destroy Trump and gain power. They are salivating over it.
If they really cared about the American People and this country as a whole, what they should be and would be doing is sitting with the President and looking for the common sense and educated responses to the issues we face as a nation and more immediately in fighting this pandemic.
But alas, what you see is what you got, and if you listen to Pravda USA, the mainstream media, what they tell you is not what is.
By Peter Weiss
It was almost ten when they got out and near eleven when Bill got home. He smelled. He knew he smelled. He couldn’t wait to get into the house and into the shower. He couldn’t wait to get into bed and get a good night’s sleep. He was not due back until noon.
His wife was waiting for him. He hadn’t expected this, but it certainly was not unwelcome. She was dressed up for him too. She wore high heels and dark nylons that hooked into a black-lace garter belt. She wore matching black-lace panties and bra, a complete set.
She was sitting on the sofa, a kimono draped about her shoulders. She’d put heavy make-up on (usually she wore no make-up at all) and turned her hair down in front and under in the back to make a page boy. Interestingly, for a moment as he looked at her from a distance she bore a striking similarity to Nora only twenty-five years younger. She’d painted her lips dark red, that was one reason. The page boy hairstyle was another.
“Hi,” she said. As soon as he’d closed and locked the door, she stood up and started toward him.
“Hi,” he said. He looked her up and down. “Before you come any closer, I stink from chicken and fish so approach at your own risk.”
“I poured us some white wine,” she said.
“Great. Give me a little kiss, from afar, and I’ll run into the shower.”
She came close enough to be able to lean over and give him a peck-on-the-lips kiss, a brief touch and nothing more. Still he could taste the lipstick and feel its clinginess.
“Go ahead, darling,” she said. “I’ll meet you there.”
Thank God for little things he thought on his way to the bathroom. No Rosie, no Edelgarde, no Millie, and no Beverly who was there working but wasn’t there any other way. Thank you God, he said to himself.
He was naked and the shower was running when she met him in the bathroom. It wasn’t a bad moment at all. She looked him up and down, saw him with nothing to hide and nothing hidden, saw the obvious effect she’d already had on him. That brought a nice smile to her face.
“My my,” she said. She handed him a glass of wine and sipped from hers. “Busy day?” she asked.
“Steady and different. We did about eleven hundred, different banquets. The evening one was three hundred. Roast tenderloin. It was easy. The afternoon was a lot of chicken to sauté and fish to roll. Because the chicken one was fairly big, it was a lot of work. But we had plenty of help.”
“Tired?”
“No. Not so bad.” Bill finished the wine in his glass and stepped into the tub.
“You want more?” his wife asked.
“Sure.”
“You know I’d join you in there if I wasn’t dressed up.”
“I know,” Bill said. “I’m really glad you did what you did.”
“Didn’t expect it, huh?’
“Not at all.”
“Good,” she said.
She was sitting on the closed toilet when he came out of the shower. She handed him a towel and watched him dry off.
“Feel better?” she asked.
“Much.” He turned and she stood up to dry his back.
“Wash your hair?”
“Of course. Goes without saying.”
“Well you smell good now.”
She lingered on his butt when she dried him and couldn’t help but reach around to the front to dry him there.
“That’s harassment,” he said.
“Sue me,” she said.
He turned to her and took her in his arms. When they kissed this time it was long and hard and deep and familiar. The first thing that struck him was how different he felt kissing her, how different it was being with her.
Happy as he was, he wanted to cry.
By Peter Weiss
Sunday was a beautiful day, a little windy but the sun was bright and out there for everyone to look at, out there in all its glory. My daughter was antsy and she wanted to go out so we drove to one of the parks and went for a nice long walk around. We had to practice some social distancing for people passing, but other than that, we were pretty lucky. We were fortunate.
Gratitude.
Yesterday was a wild day, very heavy rains and sustained high winds. Power outages occurred all over. We were lucky. We didn’t lose power. We lost it Sunday afternoon for about an hour or so. Why?
I’m thankful for electricity. More gratitude. But in this day and age in America, short of real tangible and uncontrollable circumstances, no one should be without power.
Today, Tuesday, is just another superb day. We have bright sunshine and it’s not too cold. The wind is there, but just a bit.
What a difference a day makes!
And it’s more than that.
I started to write a Monday Morning Rant the other day. I wanted to say that we have very little say and very little control over what’s going on these days, which I believe to be a true statement. I wanted to say that we go on and we will get through this and passed this. I wanted to say look to the sun. For me, just for me, having something like that to hold on to really helps. I don’t always feel positive, and like everyone, I’ve got my own stuff, maybe more than some people, maybe not. Who knows? I’m trying not to get weighed down by it.
Sometimes that’s easy. Sometimes not. Sometimes it’s like the days we have, some good ones, some not so good ones, and of course there’s some great ones.
Anyway, here we are. It’s important to remember that we all wear different shoes and we all have different perspectives. So no matter how I’m feeling personally at any given time, an objective look at my family and me says that as a whole we are very fortunate. It’s pretty interesting. We are not perfect, not ideal, neither rich nor poor. But here we are.
Other people are not as fortunate. Some are much more fortunate than we are. And so it goes.
So I see we are getting back to — we never really left – politics. While the President, no matter what you think of him, is doing what he can to help the country get through the pandemic, mostly behind-the-scenes and some right out there for everyone to see the Democrats aided and abetted by a corrupt propaganda media machine, Pravda USA, are campaigning, politicking, fundraising and maneuvering to effect their agenda.
I’m not going to say much more than that. We all wear different shoes and we see things as we see them. The one thing that must be continually stated is that the mainstream media is not and has not been for a very long time telling us the truth. In fact, it no longer even attempts to hide its bias. This is dangerous. In accordance with the Democrat credo – never let a good crisis go to waste — the Democrats’ puppet-Pravda USA Mainstream Media-is using this crisis to advance the leftist agenda instead of presenting truth and/or attempting to find it. It is working against the President, for the Democrats and against the well-being of the American people and America.
Not only is this dangerous, but it’s wrong and it’s immoral.
What a difference a day makes. Or is it any difference at all?
By Peter Weiss
The three female banquet waiters were working. Bill had seen them and said hello as he’d encountered them. Beverly kept her distance again. It was almost as if they’d never shared that time in the faraway staircase. She said hello, did her business and went to hang out with her colleagues.
Nora was her name, the little French one. She said hello to Bill, in French, and then asked him, in French, if he spoke the language. Bill said “Un peu,” which meant “a little,” and then he told her he’d studied it in school but had forgotten most of it.
French was his mother’s choice. As it turned out, Spanish would have been more practical, but of course now that it was a fait accompli there was no use stewing over it. Meanwhile, as he spoke to her in her native language he saw a little smile, just a faint touch of a smile, pass over her red lips.
“Nora,” she said. She stopped what she was doing and put a hand out to shake Bill’s hand.
“Bill,” he said.
“Yes, I know,” she said.
Nora had a deep voice. Bill immediately thought that if she could sing she’d probably be a big asset in a choir. Why he thought this he couldn’t say. Maybe, and it didn’t really matter, it was that Robert, so far from a saint that he was, led his church’s choir and sang like an angel himself.
“Where you from?” he asked, this in English.
“Bretagne,” she said. “Ever been there?”
“Never been anywhere,” Bill said. Been in the workhouse, he thought.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Perhaps you’ll see it sometime.”
“How’d you get here?” Bill asked
“We make choices, don’t we?” Nora looked up at Bill so that her eyes met his. He saw she had deep, dark eyes. “Yes,” she said in a most droll and sultry way, “we make choices and things happen.”
Bill immediately decided he liked her. He thought, and just from this conversation, that she was someone he would like to talk to, someone he’d like to know. It was the writer in him, maybe. It was her sultriness maybe. It was that she was small, just his mother’s size, give or take, a tight little package.
“Maybe we can talk later,” he said.
“Why?” Nora asked.
Bill watched her walk away, watched her head on over to her friends. He wondered if she’d eaten, what she’d eaten. Then he wondered what had happened to her in her life that caused her to answer him the way she did. He could understand she was not “interested” in him. He hadn’t expected her to be and when he asked her about talking later he hadn’t meant it in any way other than talking in the sense of sharing experience. But her response reeked of some sort of bitterness and if not bitterness unhappiness, maybe even resentment or regret.
The last banquet was easy, simple: roast tenderloin for a touch more than three hundred. Substitution was rolled fillet of sole that was already ready and just needed to be baked off. Vegetables and potatoes were the same from the afternoon, mostly pommes Duchesse and green beans with almonds which made a very nice dish with the roast tenderloin. Of course they would be made fresh.
Because it was only three hundred and because most everything was prepared, they worked this one slowly. Kalista and Adonia already had the salad. All they had to do was mix it. This would be done right before the dish-up. The tenderloins went in on time. Jimmy Banquet Chef had already made the sauce and it was sitting on the stove simmering. Jimmy G, or more precisely his stewards, had set up all the vegetables and potatoes for going into the oven to get hot.
All was right with God.
By Peter Weiss
They ate roast tenderloin in a superb mushroom gravy prepared by the banquet chef. He stood over the stoves and started with plain brown gravy. He had plenty of that because it was needed and already made for the roast tenderloin. Bill chopped shallots very fine. He also sliced a box of mushrooms after washing them and trimming the stems.
Everything was easy when you had the ingredients on hand. Jimmy used fresh butter, a generous amount. He sautéed the shallots and added the mushrooms. In the cooking, the mushrooms emitted a certain amount of water. Jimmy let this reduce until the shallots and mushrooms mixed were almost dry. At this point he added in white wine. Again, he let the liquid reduce until almost dry. He had a choice now. He could have added the brown sauce to the shallots and mushrooms. But since it was for the cooks and his people, he added more wine and reduced it again. Then he added the brown sauce. He finished it with salt and pepper to suit his taste.
Kalista and Adonia made a big bowl of Greek salad, traditional Greek salad with all the proper trimmings. Vegetables and potatoes were varied, several choices.
They sat in groups. The cooks (the Greeks) and Bill sat together with Kalista and Adonia. Bill made sure not to sit near Adonia. He knew he wouldn’t do or say anything, but she was a wild card, a wild one altogether. Jimmy Banquet Chef appreciated this, Bill’s effort to stay away from her, and he told Bill so.
All the kitchen stewards ate together. This was a bigger group than the cooks, more than twice the size. Some of them ate chicken. They put the mushroom gravy on the chicken, and while a chicken sauce might have been more in order, that didn’t matter. The mushroom gravy was superb and went just fine.
Pot washers, dishwashers and cleaning people stayed in their own group. It was always this way. They were very happy to be eating the same food as the kitchen crew and they thanked the banquet Chef profusely as they took their plates from the buffet-style setup lined up on a table near the rotary oven. But then they went off with their food and sat alone as a group in a completely separate space.
At Suburban West Alfreda cooked a staff meal. The setup there was wholly different from the east side where Bill mostly worked. Because they had an open hearth and only one dining room on the west side, the kitchen crew ate before the lunch service started. The dishwashers ate separately, over by the dish machine. Very often Mr. Bowman would eat with his cooks. He would say a prayer and they would talk business while they ate. Drenovis never ate with them. He always ate out in the dining room after the service.
When Bill worked over on the west side Alfreda made sure to sit next to him. In some ways it was the right thing to do because they were both cooks and the cooks sat right up by the owner who sat at the head of the table. Robert always sat across from them, on the opposite side of the table and next to Mr. Bowman. Of course she sat by Bill so she could feel him up under the table which she did freely and happily after awhile. Bill squirmed in his seat at first, but after awhile he got used to it, even enjoyed it. Tit for tat. It was what he’d done to Norma at the weekly meeting that time they were in the booth… so long ago yet not long ago at all.
Bill could have done without the food. He would have been happy with just the Greek salad and he told Kalista so too. Then they were done eating and those who smoked, mostly the men, went off to smoke a cigarette. They and the females tended to their individual needs and afterward, they all went back to work.
By Peter Weiss
So they finished the first pan and went immediately to the second batch. This meant putting the second load of breasts into that same oil from the first round. This was the cheap way, an expedient way of going about it. First they strained out all particles they could get out with a long-handle strainer. Then they waited a moment for the oil to heat up again, added some oil if it was needed. Then they loaded up the pan with the chicken breasts.
While the cooks tended to the chicken, their stewards took those that were finished and prepared them for baking in the rotary oven. This was not much more than laying them out on sheet pans which would be slid right into the oven. Breast after breast on pan after pan, they set the chicken ready to be put into the oven. As they did this, the stewards were mindful of making sure their cook did not run out of chicken. As well, they made sure they had clean pans standing by so when their cook finished with that second load they could take away the dirty pan while the cook started with the clean one. The dirty pans went straight to the pot washers. The cooks, once they started, never stepped away from the stoves.
Jimmy G stopped by them at the stoves to talk to Jimmy Banquet Chef and Victor. They spoke in Greek, quickly as always. Jimmy G had a rolled up newspaper in his hands. Bill knew that soon the kitchen stewards would be working on the vegetables while Jimmy G sat on a folding chair and smoked cigarettes while reading the paper.
Five hundred and some odd chicken breasts took them awhile. It worked out to four pans apiece, two sets of two pans. The only lull was when they went to the clean pan, when the fresh oil had to get hot. They talked during this time, not chit-chat but about the day’s work and how they were going about it.
Next up, once the chicken was done, was a quick break, time for using the bathroom and smoking a cigarette. The three cooks did this together as a group. They walked together, talked along the way about who was doing what. Jimmy Banquet Chef provided cigarettes from his pack. Bill and Victor would reciprocate. They all smoked Marlboro so it was convenient.
They spent a few minutes just resting when they were back in the kitchen. Victor and Jimmy Banquet Chef talked in Greek. Bill, still smoking his cigarette, went off after a moment to check out the vegetable station. He found everything pretty well set. Jimmy G was sitting around doing nothing. The stewards were standing around doing the same nothing. He said a quick hello and headed back to the main kitchen. He went around the long way, out by the stock pots and around. The chicken and veal stock were well cooked, he saw.
The pantry women came in just before they began rolling the fish. Kalista and Adonia, Jimmy Banquet Chef’s niece, Kalista’s great-niece, were the two who were working. Salad for a thousand people was the day’s task for them. The number, if you went by the number, was worse than the actual job itself. But they were not alone at it. They worked together for all the parties and stewards trained at the pantry operation worked with them. The stewards carried in the cases of lettuce and dumped them in the sinks. They washed and even cut a good deal of the lettuce. They shredded the carrots, cut the cucumbers, washed the cherry tomatoes. Everything was kept separate until it was all mixed. Dish-up was with tongs and gloved hands.
The three cooks rolled the fish. Stewards could have done this, but Jimmy Banquet Chef liked his cooks doing it. He did some himself then left Victor and Bill to finish it off.
Another day going home stinking of chicken and fish, Bill thought as he worked. Victor apparently was thinking the same thing.
“I hate going home smelling from this stuff,” he said.
“Amen brother,” Bill said.
