Another Love Letter

So the summers I was 14 and 15, I worked at the K&W restaurant in Minden for my Aunt Gladys. I talked about that last year but wanted to give you a sense of the actual work. Arrive at 5:30. Chairs back on the floor, make coffee, set tables. Clouds of greasy goodness from the cooktop were her first order of business as bacon and home fries would be required quickly. I can't remember if she actually had a cigarette dangling from her lips while cooking but my sense of nostalgia almost demands it. Doors open at 06:00 and they immediately start drifting in. Singles at the counter, tables of twos and threes, coffee for literally everyone. There was no chai tea. No decaf. One waitress would bark "Coffee or no coffee?" Those were your choices. There were actually two waitresses on most mornings, Aunt Gladys in the kitchen and me. Fourteen and a hundred pounds soaking wet. Bacon and eggs, sausage and eggs, the occasional pancake, the occasional Western and by 06:30 the first customers were already gone. People were sitting down at tables with dishes still on them and now ... the place is rocking! Serve coffee, bus tables, make toast. Serve coffee, bus tables, make toast. Rinse and repeat. They had two four slot toasters side by side just by the door from the kitchen to the restaurant. There was a nine by nine pyrex dish with four pounds of butter melting into a slurry from the from the glow coming off the cooktop. The toaster were warmed up now and flinging eight slices about a foot in the air with breathtaking regularity. A nasty three inch paint brush was provided for the slathering said butter on the toast ... the moment it landed with a crunch on the counter. Cut in half (diagonally), place on a side plate and stack them where the waitresses could grab them on their way by. God help you if they had to stand there for a nanosecond with hot food while waiting for you to produce toast. "PUT SOME BUTTER ON IT FOR CHRISTS SAKES" was a recurring theme from the pulpit. The only other infraction that drew her ire was rubbing my nose with a tea towel when drying dishes. For some reason, my nose just wanted to itch ... because my hands were full. That would draw a little slap in head. "The customers can see you doing that. Leave it alone"

At around a quarter to eight, things would let up. You could feel the air go out of the place. The time is instructional as well. Not much shift work in cottage country? Businesses opened at eight. If you were sitting in a restaurant after 07:45, people wondered why you didn't have a job? My aunt believed that simple instructions helped simple people not piss her off. "STOP MAKING TOAST. EAT TWO." She was building my strength for what was to come. "DISHES." Piled across the room in grey tubs were the four horsemen of dish piles. Back then, you wouldn't serve a coffee with out a saucer underneath it, and every order of toast was on a plate. Do the math. Twenty-four at tables, ten at the counter, three or four seatings, a cup, a saucer, small plate, a large plate and cutlery plus, whaever pots and pans come out of the kitchen. There were two gigantic side by side sinks. Soap, hot water, scrape and unload two tubs. in to the left one. Warm water with a shot of javex in right. Wash, dip, stack on the drain tray, dry em, stack them back on the shelves over by by the stoves until both sinks are empty. Change the water ... start two more tubs. On and on until the end of time. You know that monumental task of cleaning up after Christmas dinner for 15 at your house last year? Multiply times five. Every morning. I think I got paid $0.85 an hour. Which was a fortune! For me, the end of time arrived around at 10:00. You would gain ground all morning, tourists wandering in later would add the occasional tub but by mid-morning more and more countertop would be visible. This would clear the way for the third chapter in my morning routine. Down the steepest, most decrepit, ancient wooden steps into a low ceiling, dirt floor basement cut into the hillside. One grimy tiny window and a single 40 watt bulb hanging from one of those ancient cloth covered electrical cords from the dawn of time. There was no switch. I think that light had been on since 1937. It's probably still on? In the basement, a slowly leaking garden hose, snaking out through the strategically broken window, 20 dingy white five gallon pails and about a quarter of a ton of the finest Ontario grown russet potatoes you can imagine. Fill two buckets with dirty potatoes. It takes about eighty. Cover with ice cold water from the hose until yourhands are blue. Half fill three additional buckets with water. If you really put your head down, the two buckets of grimy, eye-filled potatoes can become two buckets of peeled potatoes in about an hour. If you can splash one of the waitress who come downstairs to taunt you when tossing a potato into the water ... bonus points. When you're 14 and horny, you take your entertainment where you can! Now the magic happens. Over to a cival war era, razor sharp, steam punk, potato chipper. When I say razor sharp, I do not mean the blades. I mean every other protuberance on the thing. Patched and repaired so many times over so many years, a Health and Safety Inspector these days would faint at the scraps of knuckles, blood, potato juice and dirt from the floor coating the entire thing. But it chipped potatoes! Two pails of peeled potatoes become one pail full of giant beefeater french fries. Lug it up the stairs. Drain it out in the back lot. Refill with freezing cold water again, and into the kitchen beside the fryers.

About 11:00 she would actually fed me. I don't recall ever getting asked what I wanted. "LUNCH", would be shouted down the stairs. I do fondly remember, hot hamburger sandwiches, piles of fries with gravy, canned peas and a glass of milk.

So, the point of this story, is to describe how I became a process guy. This was my first inkling that the money "under the covers" as it were, held some fascination for me. I would sit there, wolfing down her cooking and pestering her with questions? I wanted to know how the restaurant made money? What made the most money? How did she survive when the tourists went home? I believe she was shocked at first, then indulged me in a trip to her office. Picture a broom closet dipped in tea and tobacco smoke, piled with tea and tobaocco smoke coloured recipts. It turns out that she can put a ten cent cup of the coffee on the table for about two and a half cents. It quadripled her outlay. Turns out the other cash crop was fountain soda pop. She said if she could have have a restuarant that just served those two things, she could die happy. Everything else, roasts for hot beef sandwiches, construction workers lunchs, home made pies, clubhouse sandwiches and tiubs of ice cream were just a way to get people to come in and buy a coffee or a coke. French fries were third.

All these years later, now retired, I can't help but think that all the finance stuff, contracts, payroll finagling and process creation that I did for the bank, started in that little office fifty-six years ago. When my first boy was born, Minden was my third stop to show him off to Great Aunt. In later years, she suffered from terrible dementia and asked over and over again from her wheelchair to be taken home. It was heartbreaking. She was such a force of nature. There is a line from the Gilbert O'Sullivan song: ... and when she passed away, I cried and cried all day, alone again naturally. I certainly wasn't alone that summer. We were together. We still are.

Our Optimum Week

I continue to draw down points to pay for my sins at the garden centres. When I get home after each foray, I back into the driveway and sneak my stash into the backyard. As the flats of flowers and perennials are revealed, she watches with distain from the living room and pretends that I grew them in the basement or transplanted them from another location. It's harder the hide the deliveries of lumber, patio stone, and earth that arrive almost daily from various big box stores. Of course, the three Mexican sitting at her kitchen table wolfing down my pickles was a dead giveaway as well. Our third weekend together (and last for this season coming up). I rented a cement mixer. I did a large points redemption at Shoppers. Here is what it looked like:

Looks like a quiet week between flyers and offers and you have to watch as there is some extraordinary fuckery going on in the flyer. You know, stuff that is purportedly on sale? A lot of it looks like a price increase with the old price now being called a sale. Don't bite. Other than veggies there were no new larger continuity offers, so, if you can, I would go light this week on everything except fruit and veggies. There 6000 points there. One other thing that got reinforced this week, was when you redeem at Shoppers, it is not treated as a new purchase. It is a special transaction that does not generate any love from the Optimum algorithm! You do not get points from spending points. Redeeming at Zehr's, you qualify for all the same perks as if you had paid with cash. That's a big difference if you happen to be drawing down a million points this month? Here is your list:

We Are Watching

Marner - It's all you have left as a Leafs fan this year. F1 and World Cup coming soon.

Next Week

Summers In Cottage Country - Playing at being Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

Mitch & Maddie