You Can't Serve That!

I heard about the opening from one of my friends. Nickerson’s needed a cook. Nickerson Farms, that is. Our local establishment was one of a chain of restaurants scattered across the fruited plain, a procession of red roofed barns squatting on Interstate exits throughout middle America that sucked the tourists in
like flies.

It was the middle seventies, and the big gas price shock was still a few years away. Motorhomes prowled the highways like a shore to shining shore procession of whales on wheels, and why not? Gas was cheap, (less than 50¢ a gallon) and three miles per gallon was deemed an acceptable level of ecstasy. Somewhere, somebody decided to cash in on this seemingly endless supply of rolling credit and hence, the concept. Nickerson’s was something for everyone. A combination gas station, restaurant and kitschy gift shop all rolled into one! Get your gas, food and bumper stickers, folks! I could never figure out why anyone would want a souvenir from my hometown (pop. 303, a town so off the beaten track that the biggest thing to happen in twenty years was when they built a new twin pond sewage treatment plant) but I guess no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of people who have been cooped up in a car with seven small children, a dog and an AM radio for ten hours and 500 miles of Interstate hell.

So, they hired me and I joined a cast of characters that among others, included:

Gladys. A hyperkinetic, 50 year old blur of a waitress who made The Amazing Flash look like a Galapagos tortoise. She whirled around the dining room at two mph less than the speed of light, and would do anything for a tip. The only way to understand her when she talked was to record her speech and play it back at half-speed, but I loved her, because she never made a mistake on her orders. And I hated her because she would substitute menu items at the drop of a hat. “Oh, you want a turkey dinner with chicken instead of turkey, fries instead of mashed potatoes, Dom Perignon instead of milk and a tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar instead of dessert? No problem.” Of course, she was a hit with the customers, and had to use a wheelbarrow to haul away her tips at the end of the day. Gladys would blow into the break room in a cloud of dust, grab a cigarette, suck off a few quick puffs and then blow back out leaving the smoldering butts to set off every fire alarm in the building. We used to soak toothpicks in pickle juice for a couple of days and then insert them into her waiting cigs. This caused a choking fog of eye-watering pickle-smoke to envelop the county whenever she lit up, but she wouldn’t put it out until the last shred of tobacco had burned down to the filter. “Oh!” she’d exclaim, wrinkling up her nose in disgust, “This cigarette tastes like shit!” But it still got smoked.

"Gracie" Poor Gracie. She never did get it straight. Waitressing was just way too complicated an ordeal for her to master. At last count I figured 372 of my gray hairs are directly attributable to her. The menus could have been written in Szechuan Chinese for all she knew. Joanne’s special talents invariably surfaced during a mad dinner rush, or when a busload of 154 Armenian whale trainers was clogging the system. Then she would blithely enter an order calling for toast; over easy. What? Or my personal favorite - fish legs. “Fish legs, Gracie?” “Oh, I guess I meant a chicken leg.” “O.K. Do you want the whole leg or just the foot part?” “Don’t get smart with me. Anyone can make a mistake.”

True. But she raised confusion to an art form.

Johnny G Our resident 90 pound weakling, and itinerant dish washer. John’s ability to be obnoxious in any situation and reputation for continual whining was the inspiration for the infamous “one hour rule”, i.e., all cooks must hit the dishwasher once every hour. If you happened to be feeling lenient and inclined to forego the ritual, you could count on the kid to do something stupid like putting grasshoppers in the deep fat fryer, or spiders on the grill or blowing his nose on his apron, and that would earn him a pummeling. So, it was, “C’mere John, your hour’s up!” “Aw, c’mon you guys - I been good.” “Get over here, John, you know the rules.” Smack. Tormenting John was a favorite pastime around the place, and if you were good enough at it, you could start him swearing. The boy had a definite talent. He could cuss for twenty minutes straight and never use the same word twice, an ability that earned him grudging respect from all of us (except for Norma, our ultra religious back-up cook who was sure there was a special room in Hades reserved for certain young men who couldn’t control their mouths). This, of course, was all the more reason to get him going, so taking a page from The Devil’s Guide To A Dishwashers’ Hell, we’d artfully stack the bus tubs three feet high with dishes encrusted with baked on bar-b-que sauce (nuke ’em five minutes in the microwave at maximum warp, and you’d need a sandblaster to get the stuff off). Within minutes enough invectives would be flying around the sink to make a sailor blush, and Norma would be grabbing for her heart medicine. This tactic worked fine for about two months, until John decided to simply throw the offending dishes away rather than trying to get them clean. We were soon suffering an acute plate shortage, and Johnny G earned another thumping.

Boog A fellow fry cook, Boog was one of the skinniest kids you’d ever hope to see. We used to tease him because he had no ass. Seriously. His legs appeared to be joined directly to his back, with no discernable cheeks intervening. But, he turned what could’ve been a handicap into an advantage saying it came in kind of handy. Not having an ass meant he never got beat up, because nobody could whip his ass. He didn’t get tired since his ass was never dragging, he never made an ass out of himself and no one could ever tell him, “Get your ass out of here!” He had a whole list of attributes that made asslessness seem positively desirable. Boog was the prototypical reason that people in the know shy away from eating out in restaurants staffed by high schoolers. Drop a burger into the no-man’s land between the steam table and the garbage can? Fish it out, dust it off (if you’ve got time) and send it out, the minerals will do ’em good. He lived by the Fry Cook’s Golden Creed: “There’s no such thing as spoiled food”, and could usually be found lurking under a counter with a fire extinguisher waiting for an unsuspecting waitress to walk by. Luckily, we never had a fire. What we did have, was a whole bunch of empty extinguishers and a squad of waitresses with frozen butts. 20 years ago this was called “fun.” Now it’s probably sexual harassment, but give us a break. Remember, this was during a time when leisure suits were considered high fashion and CB radios were the rage. Whenever I look at pictures from that era I’m convinced we were all in the grips of some kind of national dementia.

Troobs Another member of the assless set, this guy was so skinny that if he stood sideways he disappeared, a distinct advantage when it came to sneaking up on our back-up cook Ethel and tying her apron strings to the bread rack. He was the chief linguist of the place, and was responsible for inventing a whole new language which enabled us to communicate within earshot of customers without them knowing what we were saying. “Don - we got a 2-4 niner with a 26B” would translate to: cute girl at the counter (but she has a big boyfriend), just as “Looks like a hard winter coming on” would mean: Better pull Johhny G out of the trash can, the manager’s coming! Troobs was decidedly the most wholesome member of our clan, but maintained a low-level devious streak which allowed him to stretch Saran Wrap over the women’s toilet (totally invisible to the naked eye, and guaranteed to cause a minor pee-flood) without causing every waitress in the building to reach for the knife drawer.

Zoad Also a cook, Zoad was a good natured, easy-going fellow. The thing I remember most about him was his car, a 1965 Ford Falcon that he called “the Quiet Coon” because he’d just installed a new muffler. Trips in the Coon were always an adventure due to the looseness of the steering linkage, which allowed a 162 degree swing without noticeably affecting your direction of travel. Riding with Zoad was known as “Coon Pinball” because you basically bounced from ditch to ditch. As an added bonus, the brakes would engage sporadically at best, so you never really knew if you were going to squeak to a halt or continue rolling right off the edge of the world. When he bought a Mustang, Boog acquired the Coon so as to maintain the tradition of placing our lives in jeopardy on even the shortest of trips. The new car was much better, having only 159 degrees of play in the steering. After a while this zig-zagging mode of travel became second nature to us, and we’d all get a little disoriented if we had to ride in a vehicle that could actually maintain a straight line down the road.

Now, every restaurant has its regular customers, and we were no exception. There was an old guy named Cliff who showed up every morning to help make the coffee. We had another pair named Chet and Bud who always came in on Friday and split a chicken dinner (woe be it to the foolish cook who gave Bud a smaller plate than Chet!)

And then we had Fat Irene.

This was no casual nickname, mind you. This was a woman who was on a mission to single-handedly consume more food than the nation of India. We knew when she was coming because the dishes would start to rattle off the shelves from the tremors induced by her gait, and also because the dining room would be swept by a reverential hush as she walked in. The rest of the customers could sense that this lady was there to eat. Whenever she showed up, you just automatically knew to call the chicken farm and order up an extra semi-load of birds for the night, because our walk-in freezer only had 213 cubic feet of space, and you just couldn’t fit enough Rhode Island Reds in there to last through a Hurricane Irene feeding frenzy.

Thursday, 8:26 p.m. All-you-can-eat chicken night. It was starting to look like an easy evening. Thirty-four minutes to closing and still no sign of Fat Irene. But then...

...thummmmmmp.......thummmmmmp.......thummmmmmp.

If you’ve ever seen Jurassic Park you know what I’m talking about. Remember how the dinosaur’s
footstep vibrations made the rings appear in the glass of water? Same thing. Little children were diving under the tables. Grown-ups were breaking for cover like there was going to be a shootout in an old-west saloon. The chandeliers were swaying.

And then she appeared.

We had double doors at the front entrance, and squeezing her through was still touch-and-go, but
we’d all been through this before. The gas pump attendant had rigged up a kind of half snow plow - half battering ram contraption on the front of his pickup, and with a little run across the parking lot to build up speed, was able to wedge her through with a minimum of effort.

Troobs looks over to me and says, “You know, I believe she’s lost weight.”

About this time, I glanced out the screen door in the break room and saw a chicken walk by. “What the heck is going on here?” I wondered. “Zoad, you get her started on the salad, bread, potatoes and beans while I check this out.”

I walked out the back door, and waded into a literal sea of chickens. The semi was parked in the back lot, and birds were everywhere. On the roof. In the ditches. Under the cars. And more were arriving all the time. In a scene reminiscent of The Great Escape they were popping out of a hole in the top of
the truck, rappelling down the side and breaking for cover while clutching forged passports under
their wings.

They’d even set a brush fire as a diversion.

I went back and checked the cooler. Only seventeen pieces of chicken left. This was going to be trouble.

Well, first things first. I called the local small town fire department to put out the blaze which was starting to threaten the cars in our parking lot. I have to say, they responded quickly, if not efficiently. Within minutes the first engine arrived, firemen twisting a cat’s tail because the siren didn’t work. The guys dismounted, and made a great show of surveying the situation, unrolling hoses, and generally preparing to tackle this challenging conflagration, which by then was burning with abandon. The hose was stretched, the men advanced and the signal was given. But, in a scene the Keystone Kops would have been proud of, a small “fweep” of escaping air was all that came out of the nozzle. It seems that no one had remembered to refill the water tank after fighting the last great blaze (Ole Johnson’s dog house).

Under ordinary circumstances this situation would have been a matter of some concern to me, but that night I had more pressing matters on my mind. Fat Irene had consumed all but four pieces of the chicken at hand and was starting to get a little cranky. This was more than a little bit disturbing to the wait-staff, who knew from past experience that a hungry, unsatiated Irene was more dangerous and unpredictable than a badger in a bowling bag. Small animals and underweight children had been known to be sucked into the vortex that surrounded her plate if food was low and they got too close.

The waterless firemen now came in and appropriated the restaurant’s fire extinguishers, but as you may have guessed, this also was a somewhat less than successful effort, since none of them had any charge left. Boog had long ago relieved them of pressure, frosting panties.

Outside, sparks were flying from the grass fire, and inside, sparks were flying from Fat Irene’s silverware when the answer to our problems hit me. “Of course!” I thought, “It’s been right in front of my nose all along!” Acting quickly, (the last drumstick had just disappeared whole into her mouth) I collected the kitchen staff and we started a chicken drive. Banging pots and waving aprons we rounded up about thirty of the critters and herded them toward the ditch. Dust flew and much squawking ensued, but luck was with us, and the disoriented fowl ran directly into the path of the oncoming brush fire where they were bar-b-qued on the spot. The heat burned their feathers completely off, and left behind a golden brown carcass, fried just right. You could smell that roasted chicken all the way into the next county!

We picked ’em up, threw ’em on a platter and shipped ’em out.

So, that was the end of it. The fire eventually burned out of its own accord, and Fat Irene declared the night’s repast to be the “best damn chicken dinner” she’d ever eaten.

Nickerson’s closed years ago, a victim of the Arab oil embargo, but I still think of that day whenever I stop in to visit the Colonel for a bucket of extra-crispy.