Chapter 1

Working at the restaurant was cool, mainly because of all the pretty waitresses working there while going to college. At first dad stopped by every week or so to check on me, but that dwindled down to once every couple of months. The work wasn’t too hard except during meal times; as a cook you had to be clean, conscientious, and focused; being fast helped. I mostly worked the night shift, 5 pm to closing; which was midnight on weeknights, 1 am on Friday night, and 2 am on Saturday night/Sunday morning. The restaurant had seating for about 350; most evenings we were full for supper and had enough business the rest of the night to keep us busy. There were enough shopping and entertainment opportunities in the area to keep people out at night during the spring, summer, and fall; during the winter we had the place cleaned up and restocked early enough that usually at midnight we locked the doors and walked out.

Weekends were different, especially Saturday nights. There was a dance hall not too far away that closed at 1 in the morning; at that time, we might have 3-4 people in the restaurant, by 1:45 we’d be full with 4 people sitting in the 2-person booths. For some reason almost everyone wanted breakfast; we could easily go through more than 48 dozen eggs (that’s right, over 600 eggs) each weekend night, along with 50 pounds of bacon. If we were lucky, we could get the place cleaned up and ready to go again before the day shift showed up at 5 am. When we did get out of the place, most nights we were all still pretty wired; many of us took to visiting a small local diner just down the road that opened at midnight and closed after lunch. When the diner got busy in the middle of the night, we’d just pitch in and help out. The Greek owner and his wife were really grateful; when I first graduated high school, I ended up working there for cash most mornings for a couple hours; just to delay going home.

That home was a small, furnished, one-bedroom apartment over a three-car garage; behind a 2-story house. I rented it from the Millers for $65 a month plus utilities. Mr. Miller was a retired mechanic, hard of hearing and usually not willing to use a hearing aid; conversing with him was a challenge. Mrs. Miller was very nice, and had a small beauty parlor set up in one end of their house. They’d had 4 daughters, the youngest, Mary, was the only one still at home, a senior in high school; the others were off in college out of town somewhere, and/or married.

The apartment came fully furnished with a black and white TV, an old cabinet style stereo, and some decent furniture (including a double bed and dresser); obviously cast-offs from the main house. It was a nice apartment, one of the good things was unlimited hot water. Mr. Miller had installed an oversize hot water system to heat the garage; his pride and joy was a pale pink 1956 Cadillac Eldorado convertible in pristine condition, in one of the garage stalls beneath the apartment. That car was only taken out a couple times a month, and never in the winter. I’m pretty sure one of the reasons I got the apartment was that he liked old cars, and I was driving a 1960 Buick. The fact that I was waiting to go to Marine Corps recruit training (boot camp) didn’t hurt.

I bought a few odds and ends, including an electric blanket, and was set. The kitchen was outfitted with a few pots and pans, some cooking utensils, and mismatched silverware and dishes; more cast-offs from the main house. There were linens for the bed, several towels and the like; not many decorations, but I thought it was okay. Even my few visitors thought it was pretty nice. I had enough clothes that I only needed to do laundry once a week, and Mrs. Miller let me use their washer and dryer. There was a large public library nearby, I could satisfy my love of reading there for free. I would usually get through most of the monthly periodicals before they were stored; and when I found something interesting, I’d do more research on the subject in the library. I learned a lot, on a bunch of different subjects; something that continued throughout my life. I was living on my own, had my own car, and taking home a little over a $100 a week, I thought I was doing just fine; for an 18-year-old in 1972, I was.

I hadn’t dated much in high school, mostly because I was working in the city so much. The last high school I attended was quite small, my graduating class totaled less than 100, including the VoTech students that were only with us half the day. When I showed up the first day, I was the first new student in many years; they really didn’t know what to do with me. I simply tried to fit in enough not to get hassled too much, and did just enough work to maintain a C average. I decided fairly early that college wasn’t for me, and I wasn’t interested in making any life-long friends. What little social life I had was centered around working around the restaurant. I did take a couple of my female classmates out to a movie and such, but nothing serious developed; one of those dates is when I lost my virginity. She was not a virgin and had a better idea of what to do than I did; I must have disappointed her, one date was all we had.

I’d had the ‘birds and bees’ talk from my dad fairly young; and had several longer personal conversations with the uncle we occasionally worked with, he was a real font of information (and adult magazines). The end result is that I wasn’t interested in marriage, or kids; what I wanted was to be able to comfortably support myself and see the world; experience as much as I reasonably could. Joining the Marine Corps was going to take care of the supporting myself and experience part; getting the ladies to understand that while I was available for fun and games, nothing more serious was going to happen took a bit of effort. I quickly decided to lead off with that information when various ladies started seriously chatting me up at work, and especially when visiting in my little apartment. Most took it well, though there were many long conversations about it. How could I not want kids of my own, someday; or settle down?