Tightly Wound

Memoirs of a Food Service Flunkie

So I spent a good portion (okay most) of yesterday reading this blog.

Oh, the memories. I had an on-again, off-again relationship with the service industry during college which culminated in a summer spent as a Waitron at the Eseeola Lodge in Linville, NC. That summer was one of those that you mentally file away as "good fodder for a future novel, if only people would believe that this stuff actually happened." Some of the highlights:

• Living in a condemned building behind the kitchen dumpsters that we euphemistically referred to as "The Last Resort." Seriously. The second floor shower was only prevented from plummeting into the hallway below by a thin, thin, layer of DAP adhesive. Showering was quite the eye-opener.


• Drinking. A lot.


• The second-string chef who grew his own pot and lived in a trailer in the woods, and by trailer, I mean a thing like the one Lucy and Desi were dragging behind their car in "The Long, Long Trailer."


• Pulling my friend out of the box of fireworks after she fell into it clutching a string of lit firecrackers, and watching the whole thing explode. Did I mention we were frequently very very drunk?


• Trying to understand the mumblings of Major Lane, the 89 year old Lothario who had a yearly rendezvous at the lodge (they would push their twin beds together in the room, much to the bemusement of the staff) with his 85 year old lover, a former Miss Sweden, at breakfast. Seriously, when he informed me that his oatmeal bowl wasn't sitting on a doily plate it sounded like this,"Heh hoi-ee haaaayyy! Hair hooo hoi-ee haaaayyyy!" Only Missy, she of the firecracker box incident, could understand a word this man said.


• Having a slight mishap while french-serving the creamed spinach to General Westmoreland which resulted in the General wearing the spinach on his forearm. He was very nice about it, by the way.


• Serving straight vodka to many, many middle-aged women at 10 in the morning at one of the myriad brunches they had catered at their summer homes. The rich? Drunk. Very, very, drunk. Though I suppose I'd drink too if I were pushing sixty and watching my millionaire husband making an ass of himself trying to hit on the 21 year old catering staff (males and females--who says the rich are discriminating?) at a party.


• And then there was the drinking. Of which we did a lot.

That barely scratches the surface. I enjoyed that summer immensely, mainly because I was a 21-year old college grad with no firm plans, living in a beautiful part of the NC mountains where room and board were free and we had a base salary of $7.50/hr. Visitors were told that they didn't have to tip, but most of them did. I cleared enough cash to pay off my post-graduation "driving trip across America" credit card debt AND pay for a two-month return trip to Scotland. Most of the folks who worked at Eseeola wintered down in South Beach, FL at a different hoity toity hotel/resort. I was tempted, but ultimately went to Scotland and then back to graduate school. Even a couple of months showed me that the life of the itinerant resort waitron took a toll on a person. I doubt my liver would have survived more than a year of that lifestyle.

Posted by Big Arm Woman at May 20, 2005 09:10 AM