All Work and No Play
When school let out in the summer of my 15th year Dad said it was time I got a job. Our neighbor across the street had a brother who was a restaurant manager at "Buckaroo Steak Ranch". If I wanted to work I had the job. No interview, just show up at the appointed time. I was to be a broiler cook.
I remember my first shift. I showed up and was told to put on these baggy white pants over my jeans and an equally baggy white shirt. A paper hat topped it off and I was introduced to Eddie Arbogast, the Head Cook. Eddie was Popeye; a short retired Navy cook with no upper teeth and tattoos on both forearms. He guided me to the broiler and began to teach me the basics of how to cook steak. I was at the end. He explained the cuts. Ribeye, Strip Sirloin and Top Sirloin were the most common. My job was to put the raw steaks on the grill as the orders came in. I would then turn them once when the edges singed to a certain degree and he would take it from there. The dinner rush began around 5:30 and I did my duty for the next 3 hours. By the end of the shift I had burned all of the little bit of blond hair I had off of my right arm. But I felt good about it.
For the next year and a half I flipped steaks 4 to 5 nights a week from 5:00 to 10:00 p.m. for $1.00 per hour. After school I hitchhiked about 5 miles to and from work each day. I didn't participate in any school related activities. I never attended a football game, I never went to a school dance, I wasn't invited to parties. It didn't matter to me at the time. In school you were categorized as either a Jock, a Hippie or a nothing. Socially I was a nothing at school but the money I was making at work gave me a taste of independence because I had money in my pocket.
My work life became my social life and the people I worked with became my friends. There was Ted Boyer, a senior from another high school who I looked up to. I could tell that he didn’t really like me but his girlfriend acted like she did, though it was likely to make him jealous. Mary Wilman was her name and she was a short blond, with a very cute face and a big butt for a 17 year old. I had a big crush on her but she going with Ted. After they broke up I tried to start something with her but she told me I was too young for her.
Another one of the girls from work was Janice. She was older too but not as well endowed or attractive as was Mary. Janice had a little sister, however, named Sheila. She introduced me one night and we all went out to drive-through Steak and Shake for hamburgers. I liked her and we went steady for a while. I’d go over to their house and sit with them in the living room. Their mom would chain-smoke and talk to me for hours. She was a very cheerful but overweight woman with no teeth.
The restaurant manager that hired me left soon after I started and a new guy was introduced. His name was Chester Carr. Chet, as we called him, was legally blind. He wore these Coke bottle glasses and still had to hold things about 2 inches from his face to read them. He was about 5’ 6” weighed about 280 pounds and waddled around the store, periodically running into the ends of dining tables, but generally taking care of business. At the end of the evening sometimes we’d have big food fights with leftover baked potatoes and bread, tossing them at each other and then smashing them in each other’s faces. The fire extinguishers would come out at some point and then it got crazy. He would get really angry because it was really easy to sneak up on him. We took advantage. He tried to fire Ted one night after one such incident. But Ted was our best broiler cook and I’m sure he knew I wasn’t ready to take his place.
After a little more than a year a new Bonanza Sirloin Pit was opening up closer to my house so I applied for a job as lead cook, making $1.25 per hour and they hired me. The owner was a Christian Minister from Springfield, MO named Leo Grebe who invested his life savings in a franchise.
Dad loaned me $325.00 to buy my first motorcycle, a Honda Super 90, at 5% interest, I might add. That would make it easier for me to get to work and I could stop hitchhiking.
There was another cook named Ray Linfield, who had a blond girlfriend who I thought liked me. She was named Debbie, a very pretty and quite voluptuous 17 year old who just rocked my world with her long blond hair that went almost to her more than adequate figure. She liked Ray more. But Ray had a little sister who was 15 and really built for her age. We double dated a few times but she didn’t really like me that much. It was hard dating after work. The restaurant closed at 9 and we’d lock up around 10. All of the sweat and smell of steak was bad enough but we had to wear hats and they would cause your hair to stick to your head giving you what we called “hat head”. Broiler cooks aren't the most attractive dates a girl could nuzzle up to after a long shift.
I got a friend of mine a job with me at Bonanza. His name was Paul Groth. His older brother, Randy, was a star football player at our high school. Paul looked up to his brother and wanted to be just like him but he was smaller and didn’t have the same skills so he went out for wrestling. When the season ended he needed a job so I introduced him to the world of restaurants. He bought a small motorcycle too, a Hodaka 100, that we said was geared so low that “it could climb trees”.
Several of us now had motorcycles and we’d all ride together in packs, going up and down Highway 140, weaving in and out of traffic, and irritating those crotchety old adults. Most of the guys had Honda 350’s so it was harder for me and Paul to keep up with them. We’d all go riding the winding back roads of Missouri Bottoms or “MO Bottoms” as we called it. There was nothing like riding motorcycles in the country in the spring and early summer. What a feeling of freedom.
All of my work related experiences took the place of those that the average high schooler was living at the time. While I was working on Friday night the normal kids were watching McCluer High School football or basketball games. When I had to work on that special Saturday evening in October or May others were at the High School Homecoming dance or Prom. I do remember thinking about asking a girl named Connie Gunkle to Prom but she already had a date. I didn’t really date anyone at my school. I didn’t learn to socialize as most kids did. There were lots of us outsiders, though. Very few of the people I hung with at school participated in school activities much.
