Ricky
“How did I get here?” The ever-hopeful rhetorical question. Somehow, we always hope the ‘here’ will be a better place than the last time we asked the question, and the ‘how’ will be a more interesting tale. Eventually, overtime, we all drop our stories into warmed cups of milk to help us sleep at night – blurring the ‘here’, and the ‘how’.
At 6:47 a.m. on a Thursday or Friday morning, end of May, or maybe one of the first few days of June (I know it was 1990), dressed in our tuxedos, Ricky and I stared down at his ditched car. The date and day are foggy, but I remember the time; after the car had settled and three moments had passed, Ricky pointed towards the analog clock on the dashboard and casually laughed “I would say it is about 6:47 a.m. Atchie.” He was still my unacknowledged mentor that morning, having followed his suggestions (instructions) since I was sixteen. I was now twenty. He had suggested I drive his car, explaining he was too drunk to do so. Nevertheless, he possessed enough faith in his Scotch-laced wisdom to determine I was adequately sober to drive.
Six hours earlier. After we had cleared and reset the last of our tables, with no time to change out of tuxes, Ricky and I rushed from the restaurant to the Pub. We joined the rest of the team who had secured our ‘last call’ drink order. Ricky and I each pounded back the 2 pints of Brown Ale and 2 double J&B scotches, in attempt to catch up with the gang or celebrated a veiled nihilism, as we smoked cigarettes and laughed. Soon the Pub’s owner began to flip chairs on to tables, we paid our tab with fresh earned cash. Some of us head home, while the rest, me included, hauled a hundred-and-fifty yards up the street to Ricky’s apartment, wake Ricky’s current convenient girlfriend, consume some more scotch, and cocaine (did not happen often, but I discovered I was a great Euchre player on coke), yell loud stories about the evening service as we smacked playing cards onto the table. A fight breaks out between Ricky and his (now inconvenient) girlfriend. The others read the room and leave. I remain (I was wallpaper in Ricky’s life by this time). ‘The Girlfriend’ commences to repeatedly hit Ricky’s head against the bedroom door frame. Ricky is looking at me not her, seeking permission to retaliate. I gestured no. Finally, Ricky says “Atchison, let’s get out of here.” Nothing more is said about the fight.
Next, driving down a rural road between Kitchener and Guelph Ontario, I remembered holding the belief I could careen around a corner in a boxy 1979 240 Volvo sedan at high velocity. The back wheels did not follow the front, and we spun into the ditch ass first – concrete evidence contradicting Ricky’s faith in my sobriety. After we sat for three moments and Ricky noted the time, he calmly gathered his cigarettes, wallet, and grabbed a clean shirt from the back seat of his car (his car doubled as his wardrobe, with folded clothes in laundry basket, work shirts on hangers, and a duffle bag for the dirty clothes - “I just have to drive to the cleaners on laundry day”, he would say). Then we stepped-rolled-heaped ourselves out of the car and walked up the slope.
The morning air was fresh, it was sunny, and burgeoning childlike leaves poked through the wet humid earth in the fields; I was never sure what was grown in the fields, until the August corn arrived. After a good silent stare at the problem - his car grinning back at us with its headlights and grill, appearing to enjoy an unobstructed view of the blue sky - we began to walk back to town.
“Let’s get some breakfast at Judy’s” (diner). Ricky proposed, breaking the silence.
“I need to sleep, I start at 4 p.m.”
“Come on. You don’t need to sleep more than an hour. You will be fine, I do it all the time.” He spoke with a challenging laugh. “Come on Atchie, let’s get something to eat.”
“Okay”.
Years later I would learn I had been trying to keep up with a bi-polar Ricky. A Ricky who could not stand to be alone or inactive. His routine was my routine, and it exhausted me – he was the ‘control’, and I was the ‘study’. I had no other reference to give me perspective. I had been a ‘latch-key-kid’ from the time I had chosen my own clothes to go to school, leaving me with little guidance. Ricky performed an important principle in physics, he filled my void.
Why does my story of becoming a Chef begin with Ricky? A server who was only four or five years older than me. Why not with licking a grandmother’s cake-battered bowl? Or foraging mushrooms with a wise uncle? Or drinking sacred unpasteurized milk straight from the cow’s teat? An origin story worthy of Marvel Comics. A regular log-cabin living, Abe Lincoln-of-the-kitchen, story; roasting up freshly hunted possum and squirrel, napping with homemade butter and sage, in a wood oven. You have heard the stories. The Chef-hero walking off the farm into the city, harnessing his homeland’s terroir to the delight of city folks. Or a would-be Jean-Michel Basquiat, drizzling strawberry coulis on Foie Gras rather than paint on a canvass, the artistic chef with an ingredient for a muse and a mini off-set spatula as brush. No, my origin story is not so exotic. It starts with a black polyester vest with two small practical pockets at the belly, a clip-on bowtie, a tight collared shirt, black slacks, and non-slip shoes. Pimply walking up to tables, changing perpetually dirty ashtrays for clean ones and filling constantly thirsty water glasses, in 1986, at an old hotel in downtown Kitchener; a town with the gastronomy of a mule lying on a road, dead from bewilderment and deprivation. This is how my Chef origin story begins. And Ricky is the first character to appear.
It was my third shift at the hotel when I met Ricky. He came swirling, hustling, bustling, into the room as we were setting the tables, still buttoning the last few buttons on his untucked ruffled tuxedo shirt. He was short, with a rugby player’s thickness, creating a low center of gravity, and an almost 1980’s haircut. Instantly laughing with the other servers, asking about the book that night, he proceeded to un-buckle his pants and tucked in his shirt, as if he was putting on hockey gear in a locker room. Watching his fantastical entrance, I noticed he consciously avoided direct eye contact with me (waiters can be master of eye contact avoidance, as you most likely have experienced). Then, as if he had just entered the room, he stepped up to me, grabbed my elbow, and asked, “Do you have matches and a corkscrew?”
“No”
With his laugh he jested, “You always have to have matches or a lighter, and always a corkscrew on you. What if a candle needs to be lit, or a bottle opened?”
“Ok”
“What is your name?
“Ronald”
“And your last name?”
“Atchison”
“Atchie, I like it. I’m Rick. Come with me.” The ‘y’ or ‘ie’ was always presumed in southern Ontario.
Ricky turned to the Maître d’ and said, “I’ll take care of him tonight”, and just like that, the sorcerer claimed his apprentice. It could be argued this was the moment I entered the guild. Soon I was trapped in a paradigm of tables, chairs, and wine glasses; ice clinking, Caesar Carts rolling, bus-bins rattling, chefs barking, hushes hushing, lights dimming, and candles mooding. An environment crafted to induce pleasure. For the next four years I would always be three steps behind Ricky (even though I was four inches taller), as he walked me through my initiation, desperately trying to open my rookie eyes to see what was missing on a table or correcting a misaligned setting. To anticipate our clients’ needs from the most subtle of clues. Prevent startling sounds. Imagine a more cunning service. To “think of them as ‘guests’, as if they were in your home.” Teaching me how to ‘turn a table’ without appearing to rush them out the door; simply serving at a slightly faster pace. Plus, a plethora of other little magic tricks, from constructing a variety folded napkin sculptures, to changing a table’s linen without removing mandatory items (candle, flower, ashtray, salt and pepper shakers).
Sometimes his teachings were accompanied with a logic, a rationale as applied theorem, but mostly they were packaged in the form of a game. An unannounced competition that would only emerge once I had already lost. “Atchie! What are you doing man?” he would say as he contorted the left side of his face. First by lifting the eyebrow, then slowly pulling upward the cheek and half the lip that hung beneath. As if an invisible marionette’s string was tied to the left eyebrow. “You cannot up-sale without indicating the price? You cannot just offer a choice of Hennessey V.S. or Remy X.O., without indicating the X.O. is twice the price. Listen, this is how you do it ‘Sir, we have a lovely Hennessey V.S., or better yet, a Courvoisier V.S.O.P., and then there of course is the very special, Remy X.O.’ you see!” His face now balanced by laughter, the eyebrows both perking in unison, an exclamation for the ease with which a solution was found. Another match won; a lesson delivered.
Other times, Ricky would speak fondly of his mentor. How he would gracefully light a client’s cigarette. Sparking the flame first, then gently gliding the fire towards the client’s face and cigarette - consciously keeping the smell of butane and flint at bay. How he polished candle globes with his own special cloth before service, tossing and rolling the glass orb in his hands with a devoted and efficient manner. The mentor, who wore a white tuxedo jacket, miraculously unblemished, with a small rose in the lapel, crossed the room like a matador - silky and confident – to an unsuspecting table. Upon arrival, he would quietly and quickly put all matters in their proper place- corralling salt and pepper shakers before removing the appetizer plates - caressing the client’s bubble, rather than breaking it. Ricky’s mentor seemed to be from lore, a type found in leather-bound books, one worthy of study and emulation, as he had done.
A gentle wind brought the smell of freshly sprayed manure. We had been walking for about ten minutes or so before we reached a road more travelled. Ricky stuck out his thump, he was fond of Hitch-hiking. My slightly younger generation never took to it, did not see it as a pragmatic source of community transportation. Soon enough an old country station wagon pulled over. I believe the driver was hopping to hear a crazy tale of a bachelor party going sideways. He asked with a smile, “Were you coming from?” as we climbed in, our tuxes being the oddity of the morning. I remained silent sitting in the back as Ricky made him laugh up front. He may have told him we were searching for the groom. I am not sure.
After we were dropped off in front of Judy’s diner, Ricky waved to our driver, then turned to me and said, “See Atchie, people are nice. You do not have to be scared of everyone.”
“I am not scared,” I said with neither defiance nor acceptance in my voice.
“Yes, you are.” Ricky laughed dismissively (How do you argue with a laugh?) “Listen, people are basically good. Anyways, the worst can happen is you get a punch in the face. Have you been punched in the face? I mean since you were an adult?”
“No.”
“You see. That is your problem. Now let’s get some eggs.”
My slice of the universe, from birth to that moment, had been summed up in one observation - I was afraid to be punched in the face. His idea left me with an odd and unpleasant paralysis as we entered Judy’s Dinner. Years later I would have a conversation with a very reasonable man, who spoke fondly of his street fights, while a friend (one of the unpunched, like me) and I listened with a queer admiration. My own father never taught me the value of being punched. “Ronnie, I am more of a lover than a fighter” he would say. My older brothers punched me often enough when I was young, that I knew the sensation was to be avoided. Ironically, they acted as my protectors in the schoolyard (I attracted bullies, being tarred in vulnerable honey and sweetened insecurity). Although, I am still not sure if their protection spawned from a sense of love and duty, or a sense of ownership.
By the time Ricky entered the picture, no one noticed my drifting from the family’s dock. It was not a complete severance. I was more like a canoe, with too long a tether, weightless, influenced by each ripple in the water; moved by any breeze coming across my bow. Floating and floundering around the dock, I would be bounced out by its bumpers, only to be pushed back by a passing boat’s wake. I did not act with purpose, nor govern my own life. I had passively accepted the tether; never questioning its nature or testing its strength. I accepted Ricky’s worldview in the same unexamined manner, as it leaked from his coffee and cigarette-smoke-filled breath into my absorbing chest and mind. That was the reason I did not scoff at him, as he reduced my existence to such a polluted equation – the fear of being punched in the face. I am aware now, by not rebelling against his assessment of me, I had provided validation of his idea, and of him. Perhaps that was my function in his world at the time, to validate his being. Nonetheless, I felt a self-inflicted pain in my belly and paralysis of my tongue.
Like most, I was born - to a mother and to a father. Beyond that fact, my parents remain pretty inconsequential in my story of food. Do not get me wrong, they did feed me. Maybe not the way God had intended: juicy fats dripping from your lips, roasted vegetables bathed in butter and seasoned to the edge, served with red wine reductions, or salsas filled with fresh cilantro, charred corn, grilled red onions and chiles poblanos, freshened with lime. To be fair to my parents, some of these food words were not in their lexicon when I was growing up. Certainly, no poblano could be found in a Toronto suburban supermarket in the nineteen-eighties (although, I wonder if cilantro was there? If by accident they had once picked it up, believing it to be parsley, and were shocked by its soapy flavor). Truth be told, and it is not necessarily a negative observation, our family’s food culture was firmly placed in the Protestant camp; food was to be eaten with a purpose, evaluated on cause and effect. The ‘good-in, good-out’ approach. Art and ceremony could not break down the door to our house, those concepts remained on the outside, ridiculed for being silly and unnecessary acts of indulgence. Did our family eat tasteless stews cooked by a burlap-wearing chef? No! But the idea of food as fuel did dominate the evening’s meal, with great taste being an incidental bonus rather than a goal. Even a simple cookie required an inherent good beyond its flavor. Carob rather than chocolate. Brown sugar replacing white sugar. Bran or oats for the digestive track. The word organic could always describe one aspect of the meal. And, when my mother embraced the back to nature movement, my parents started a garden at my grandparent’s cottage. I was just three years old. My mother would pull a carrot from the earth, wash it with the garden hose, and pass it to me “taste it Ronnie” as she chomped down on her own. She would gasp “it tastes so good” each time we performed this summer ritual, as if she herself had never eaten a carrot before.
The necessity for goodness in what we ate went beyond the virtue of the ingredients themselves. A recipe had to have a history. Perhaps coming from a friend who was a good person, or a cookbook embedded with the right set of values, The Moosewood Cookbook or The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Further to this act of goodness, mother and I would shuffle in and out of health food stores, speaking with longhaired-bearded store keeps who wore robust woolen sweaters like my Mom’s. My job was to hold small plastic bags as she filled them with bulgur wheat and brown rice from bulk bins. As she scooped, she would explain what each item was, and why it was good for us. It has always struck me how the health food stores all smell the same. The smell of a concern for bodily functions over flavor.
When I was a teenager, when the groceries would arrived at home, fights began. I wanted butter; we ate margarine (pre-trans fat phobia era). I wanted Kraft peanut butter; Mother bought grainy-pasty-healthy peanut butter. Bacon was a sin that remained unpurchasable, skinless chicken breast was an indulgence. The tofu-faux-turkey dinner (a square block of tofu, slightly browned in a pan, served with button-mushroom gravy) during a house-imposed stint with vegetarianism, pushed me over the edge. I did not rebel by uttering right-wing politics or plaster my wall with sexist swim-suit posters. I ate meat to rebel. Greasing up our kitchen with the bacon I had bought with my own money; popping sweet and salty breakfast sausages like a cherry-tomato into one’s mouth. Pure and unhinged indulgence.
All that is to say, pleasure was never the singular reason for eating in our house. Perhaps, my mother could not enjoy food that was only defined by pleasure. That she needed an inherent ‘good’ to be present in a dish, acting as a filter of virtue, before she could be carried away by the flavors, textures, and aromas. As for my father, I think he would have preferred my side of the menu.
Do not worry, I did not remain completely ignorant of God’s intention for our taste buds. There were other places for me to find decadence. Trips to non-protestant friend’s houses, or at my gourmand-touting aunt and Jewish uncle’s emporium of butter, salt, lardons, and drinking appellation wine. Even our bi-annual family meal at the local Crocks & Barrel restaurant, in the basement of the new Yonge Sheppard Centre, brought an injection of gastronomic culture. As lowly as that may sound, it was wonderous to an eleven-year-old suburban boy. Even the teriyaki sauce served on the side of a tough top strip loin steak delighted my senses. I would soak in all the restaurant had to offer: the warm bread served in tiny baking pans; the thick exotic glassed tulip carafes of house ‘white or red’ wine my parents ordered for themselves (the ever-precious Shirly Temples for us, the kids). Enchanted servers arriving and departing with various objects, mostly edible, asking how we were doing, offering desserts. And the sounds! A hum of activity. A murmur of voices padded by the thick textiles on every possible surface - abetted by real curtains drawn for two fake windows on the facing wall. One window’s painted view was a starry night over an ocean view, with a lighthouse in the distance, and a small fishing boat on silver waves: the other’s, a sun rising over a farm and pastures. Both windows brandished real wooden frames and windowsill planters, filled with dusty plastic flowers, to complete the illusion. The shorthaired carpet dampened the clacking of heels and screeching of chairs, as it absorbed morsels of food falling from plates into a psychedelic camouflage of brown, dark green, crimson, and maroon colors. Ice water clinking into glasses, utensils tapping and tinning on plates would pierce the mulled muffled sound, like a rim-shot on a snare drum shatters a bass’s resonance (I love restaurant sounds; then and now). I would be excited and comfortable from the moment we walked through the door. I would be happily perched on the edge of an oversized, vinyl upholstered, wooden ‘Captain’s chair’, reaching to my plate. Once filled with iceberg salad with Italian dressing, the above-mentioned Teriyaki strip steak, and a slice of Black Forest Cake, I would slumber back and bask in all the world’s glory. Heaven.
In Judy’s diner, we sat at the counter (Ricky always sat at counters and bars - some people are like that, he was one). The countertop was turquoise, freckled with silver and white flakes, and had chrome edges. The line of six stools had a matching color scheme, could swirl, and were bolted to a stoop the length of the counter. All designed so one could sit, turn, and eat at a height that was comfortable for Judy to serve from the other side, while at the same time concealing the required necessities (sink, work counter, storage) beneath. A classic diner design; mathematically comfortable. The rest of the room fell into the same anticipated order, things were in place where they were expected to be, in a dinner. Four booths in the front, a few tables in the back, the bathrooms just beyond the server’s station at the far end of the counter. Small server’s passageways at either end of the counter created a continuous circular motion in the diner. The florescent lighting (the bane of restaurants) and plastic menus, with small pieces of tape covering old prices with new numbers, felt natural. Strategically placed handwritten notes were taped to walls, ‘Replace Coffee Filters When Done’, ‘Napkins Here!”; each one faded, stained, and curling were ever it could, indicated all of Judy’s pet peeves. Conversely, the photo of two dogs (one photo was old and yellowed, clearly indicating its subject lived first), adhered to the tiles beside the kitchen pass, revealed her loves. Today, Judy’s diner would have been converted into a hip wine & tapas bar, though I doubt location survived as restaurant after Judy’s own demise. I heard that she died, had fallen asleep while smoking in bed, a silent accident. When I learned this from an old friend, it was just a brief update-on-things in a longer conversation. I did not know Judy, beyond a few breakfasts. Even so, I was unnerved when I put the phone down. The loneliness of her death sounded sad and terrifying.
“What will you do with the car? How will you get it out?” I asked.
“I don’t know, will figure something out.”
“Are you going to just leave it there?”
“Yah, why not?”
“I don’t know, someone may take it, or the police…” Ricky began to look tired with my concerns.
“Stop being so anxious. No one’s going to take it. It’s a car in a ditch. My clothes are worth more than the whole thing anyway. And they are worth nothin’.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. “Anyways, why are you worried? It’s my problem, not yours. I asked you to drive.” He finished with his laugh.
“Ok, ok. I was just trying to help.”
“Asking me questions about what I am going to do, is not helping. I do not need your anxiety to become mine. I will work on my problems, you work on yours”, I felt one an eyeroll.
“I do not have any problems.”
“That’s because you haven’t done anything yet. Taken on risks - done things for yourself,” he snorted and chuckled. “I will head out there tomorrow, or something, ok? If that makes you feel better. Now I am hungry,” he said as he lit a cigarette.
In Toronto, before we moved to Kitchener, we had the whole-suburban-nine-yards. A split-level home on a nondescript street, lined with small trees, backing onto a hydro-electric field, filled with tall grass. The grass would waft and wave in the wind, like a river’s current as it passed by the backs of houses on its bank. As children we knew the grass-river went somewhere, to other parts of the city, beyond our knowledge, but that was all we knew. My world was small there, a few bus routes, malls, shortcuts, and schools. The only neighbors’ names I remember are the Thompsons, as they from time to time talked with my parents, mainly about my brothers and mine concerning adolescent behavior. When we learned of my father’s office transfer it did not trouble me, I knew I needed a change. I was fifteen with only a quagmire of friends. No one special or close, a collection of tacit connections, many being my closest brother’s friends, none really my own. I would hear of the parties or sleepovers on Mondays at school, after the fact, awkwardly stunting the conversations with my peers. The trouble was, for me, the whole process of making friends. It was like a riddle, a combination lock: a) an interest in the person, b) communication with said person, and c) how to act once communication was opened. Borrowing my brother’s friends solved this problem, a package deal - with brotherly approval included. By the time we left Toronto, my Friday nights consisted of cooking Betty Crocker Instant Chocolate Cakes.
In Kitchener everything was the opposite, we lived in the downtown core, in an old Victorian house, facing a park. The town itself was an old Germanic factory town, an hour-and-a-few minutes west of Toronto. 1985’s Kitchener downtown was desolate. Half the shops had already departed to the new Fairview Mall on the edge of town, leaving late nineteenth century buildings decaying, fronts covered with half-lit 1960’s signage, all caked with a hundred years of factory grime. Acid-washed jeans and high-cut sneakers paraded up and down King Street, topped with Slayer t-shirts and regal golden hair-manes, darting in-and-out of greasy diners and poolhalls. For the young in Kitchener, ‘Life is Elsewhere’ peeled like paint from the closed factories’ yellow brick walls. These random recent ruins dotted the town with their rusting train network, ever present in our path. As we would walk from anywhere to anywhere, we were forced to straddle, cross, trip, over the abandoned lace of train tracks, that once fed two main lines. Only one main line still functioned. Shorter lifeless splinter tracks nestled up to the old Factories’ docking bays; their bulkheads, lost in hay-coloured weeds by summers end, just past the last port. A dormant iron web laid on the ground, hidden beneath grass or snow, catching our feet when taking short-cuts at night. By our late teens panicky dreams set in, as we collectively tried to sort out and answer to the question: ‘stay or leave?’. We knew nothing remained of Kitchener’s closed factories but fragile pensions.
Ricky tapped his cigarette in the ashtray as he spoke with Judy and drank his post-breakfast cup of coffee. Judy had the beginnings of vertical lines above her upper lip, combing the skin, from years of smoking. Her raspy voice and puffy auburn dyed hair completed the diner’s honesty. She shared Ricky’s ashtray from her side of the counter. Over her shoulder, leaning with his arms crossed on the window ‘kitchen-pass’, was a cook who listened intently and smoked a cigarette – profiting from the break in orders. ‘Chef’’, as he would be referred to, was older than Judy with a wiry body. Vein and tendon lines departed from his knuckles and traveled up his forearm, passed under his white short-sleeve button-down shirt, and reappeared above his collar; one line ending at the jawbone, while another went further, hooking behind his ear, emerging slightly slenderer as it crossed the hairless skull to his left temple, terminating in a tight rapid squiggle. I had already known enough about our industry to piece together his story. Where he was standing that day, a short-order cook in a diner, was often where cooks’ and chefs’ careers ended. Many had once worked in big hotels or restaurants, cooking flashy food for the town’s dignified clients. Then, once their passion for cooking dipped below the waterline and drowned in the brutal conditions of fine dinning cookery, finding better pay and regular hours in diners, golf courses, hospitals, and schools. Some found themselves there by ‘the drink’; shift done by 3 pm, changed out of their uniform by 3:15, drink their customary ‘Beer for the Road’ at the end of the counter, travel to the pub by 3:45 pm, remain until 7 pm, ‘my night cap’ of rye whiskey before bed at 9 pm; up at 5 am, foggy-headed, at work by 6 am – cigarette and coffee. Never missing a shift, always getting ‘their’ beer, maintaining a functional alcoholic equilibrium. Others worked in diners to avoid ‘the drink’. All of them were relieved to be their own bosses for eight hours, with no chefs or sous-chefs barking at them. Left to organize their own time and space. Proud to be employing their own methods when cooking. “Frank does it his way; I like to add a little margarine at the end. That makes mine special! But Frank’s is fine too.” Comfortable in the roles they played, in stories they told.
The three talked about the old auto-parts distribution centre that closed a few years back. Judy lamented the lost clients, nine daily regulars, but laughed as she recalled their lunch-time order: “4 burgers, 1 steak-n-mash, 3 club sandwiches, one fish-n-chips, or a daily special – regardless of what it was” after a lament-full laugh she added “they always took the two back tables for themselves”. Chef laughed along, nodding in agreement, as Judy half twisted her body and smiled in his direction. “You never forget a regular’s order!” Ricky laughed along. They spoke like the elders of a guild, each agreeing with the other’s assessments of everyday problems, the clients, the delivery drivers, how to find a good hand-cloth, or comparing techniques to remove coffee stains from coffee pots. I sat and listened. Is this my world? Did I choose it? Or was this industry my default? Am I happy? Ricky always used to say my best quality was that I was malleable. Is that something I can put on my resume? Is it good to be malleable? Does being malleable mean I should stay here, accept the contours of the rock on which I lie, Forever more?
School had not worked out for me. I oscillated between frustration and laziness. When I first stepped onto a dining room floor, all those educational struggles and labels (learning disabled) went away. Poof. No one cared how well I read, or if I could spell the words I was speaking. Addition and Subtraction were the only mathematical equations I needed to know (and how to eye a 15% tip). Inevitably, I graduated with a fifty-seven percent average, (three teachers gave me the ‘Fifty-one and don’t-come-back’ percent), leaving me with few options other than to continue working in restaurants, as I had since the tenth grade.
But it was more than all that; almost from the first day in a restaurant I felt I belonged. The service I learned was from an older school, one that believed in performance, it was theatrical. When we put on our polyester-uniforms, our costumes, our armour, we assumed roles that were clearly written. I enjoyed being in the role, being on the stage, improving at the tables, listening to my Matrie D's directions, as one would a theatre director. ‘Come on Ronald, you can do better, keep up’ I would hear over-and-over again. It was terribly stressful, and within a month I had my first service-dream, a night mere, in which I heard her words and her high heels they clacked behind me. But I loved being part of a cast, playing my small role. At the time I did not realize, none of us did, that we were participating in a dying style of service - Baroque in feeling, swinging sixties in spirit. I loved it: I miss it. Today, the clients sit as parishioners, in hard pew-like chairs, shoulder-to-shoulder, as the servers preach the gospel of the Chef’s creations. Something gained, something lost. Looking back, I feel lucky to have worked in those ancient restaurants – like a paleontologist who had the chance to walk with the dinosaurs.
My first job was a busboy at The Walper Terrace Hotel, built in 1893, (it was the place where I first met Ricky). When I started, The Walper was already a living time capsule. A grand luxury hotel not often found in North America. As if a cruise liner from the golden age of transatlantic travel ported on the corner of King Street and Queen Street; old tiles, ornated craftsmanship in every room, and crystal chandeliers hanging from the Ballroom’s intricately plastered ceiling. Oversized windows with a hundred panes of glass in a grid of muntins brightened its café. Layers of old-world plushness clung to the drapes, impregnating the carpets and upholstery, inspiring owner-after-owner to tried to resurrect the hotel’s amputated glory.
When I arrived the Walper’s spell was afflicting a former employee, Mr. Khalifah. Causing him to run the hotel with too much affection, blinding him to all its follies; half-drunk bottles of Labatt’s Blue stashed near service elevators, communal cigarettes kept lit in overflowing ashtrays at each service station; Bellhops sleeping in soon-to-be-cleaned guest rooms to nurse hangovers. I was never sure if Mr. Khalifa saw any of it, but I do know he loved his hotel.
After a few years, and to everyone’s shock, Ricky left the hotel to work at the The Ali Baba Steakhouse (I did not make up that name). Shortly after his departure, and to no one’s shock, I followed. Although the year was 1989, the Ali Baba felt like 1964 - the year it opened. Back then, fads and trends took their time to seep into smaller restaurant markets, leaving the Ali Baba untouched. It Provided a glimpse into history, like seeing the light from a distant galaxy, a view of how things once were in New York or Paris. I was not aware of this phenomenon at the time; a lapse in trends inadvertently preserving the past. At the time - it was just starlight to me.
Each night, armed with bowties, tuxedos, lighters, corkscrews, crumb-buns, and ‘crumbers’. We raced Caesar Salad carts past rows of semi-circular paisley upholstered booths, negotiating with the on-coming Dessert Cart; both carts having chosen to avoid the Specialty Coffee Cart’s Pyrotechnics and its primordial flames - tickling the ancient recesses of every brain in the room. Meanwhile, the sound of a searing steak hisses from the Flambé Cart was followed by the anticipated aroma, then punctuated by a flash as Brandy hits the hot pan; mustard, touch of tomato paste, and small boat of Chef’s veal jus are quickly added. “Voilà! the Ali Baba’s Steak Diane” plated and served, direct from Cart to table. Four Carts in total, wheeled to small audiences. Cozy and cocooned clients were swooned over to their delight.
The tableside-cook Cherries Jubilee’s, drunken with brandy, would be ignited. Flames would reach the ceiling and cause Mr. Kaufman’s young dining partner ‘Sandy’ to yelp (Saturday night was reserved for Mrs. Kaufman). Giggles and gasps tickled the room’s air all night long. The holy trinity of Rum-and-Cokes, Caesar Salads, and Well-done Sirloin Steaks were flamboyantly served to broken-down-alcoholic-soon-to-be-divorced couples whose love was re-awakened by our efforts to make them feel like stars for one night. Seeing them roll out the door, laughing and loving one another, meant we completed our task, served our purpose. Those days were fun. It was a carnival.
Ricky had walked me through the carnival grounds. He pointed out all the fun stuff, tried to help me avoid snake oil salesmen and fresh horse droppings, but it was his path we followed. I saw what he saw; played where he played; and I chose to believe the same people under the Big Top Tent to be important, as he had chosen. This image is where my mind had settled when I became conscious of my surroundings again. The breakfast’s topic was now ‘best pickled pig’s tails in town’ (Germanic roots remained), and I felt the fatigue of the night hit me. I took out my last twenty dollars from evening’s tips and placed it on the counter. And gestured to Ricky that I had to go.
“Yep. Big night tonight Atchie. Better get some sleep.”
With one foot still in the diner, I heard Ricky say to the others “Good Kid.” I was never sure if he meant for me to hear this. He often dropped these gumdrops of esteem for me to eat. At sixteen they were lovely candy, at twenty they felt awkward.
Once outside Judy’s Diner, the bright sun did not induce the metaphor I needed. It simply furthered along my emerging hangover. I thought of how it was possible to be so tired, while being so young. How the same underlying energy of restauration that was intoxicating. A gust of gas to brighten a room, that also possessed the potential to burn your nose. Walking down Water St., the sun squinted my eyes, as I headed to my bachelor apartment. The winter had been late to leave that year, and early June still felt like spring. The shaded snow only melted and departed a few weeks earlier. The packs of snow-compressed leaves, crowded beside houses, fences, and front porches, remained moist. Through the cracks in the sidewalk came the first weedy seedlings, sprouting. All signs of decay and growth, a fertile rot. On that walk I began to understand what I already felt; that nothing was to be had by me staying in Kitchener. Within a few months I moved to Toronto and began work at a life insurance company - in a cubicle. It did not go well.
As for Ricky, he left town before me. Not in disgrace. He just drove away.