In the park one Sunday, I was sharing coffee and gossip with a neighbor who’s a waiter in a French restaurant. He mentioned the proprietor in another French place (they stick together, these Fenchies) who needed a quick replacement for his hat-check girl. She’d got word the night before of a part in a Broadway show, walked out in the middle of the dinner crowd, and got herself fired. Without a quick replacement, his wife would have to cover for the weekend. Mon Dieu! “Me Me,” I said, raising my volunteering hand. I’d not get tips, he warned, just a steady $25 per night, 5 p.m. to midnight, plus dinner with the Wait Staff.
Dinner too? I’d leave school at 3 p.m., take a downtown bus to the restaurant in the mid-50s, and have dinner in the kitchen with the Wait Staff. I’d have teaching materials with me so that, between hanging and unhanging coats and hats (and smiling graciously), I’d make lesson plans for the week. Long day? Well, yeah, but with a travel break, the variety of duties, and no more grocery shopping on the way home? It was “Job Opportunity,” and to the relief of that proprietor’s wife, I signed on.
The barkeep was a charming young man who, because he got tips, was not entitled to dinner. My cubicle was 3 feet from his bar, and in a night or so we had chatted up a friendly relationship opening with … “And what was on the ‘Insider’ menu tonight?”
On learning I was from Mississippi, he mentioned his roommate being a Southerner too. Mississippi? He wasn’t sure. Place names below the Mason Dixon were as foreign to this brainy, upstate New Yorker as … “The Netherlands.” But he’d ask.
Next night … “He’s from your place, Mississippi.” I asked what town? He had no idea. Never thought to ask. Brainy he was, but geographical place names of the Deep South were not his thing.
Next night … “He’s from Columbus. Ever hear of it?” “Hear of it? It’s my hometown!”
Next night … “Correction. Not really Columbus … up the road a way. Caledonia?” I gasped.
Next night … “Correction to correction (was this getting ridiculous or fictitious?), “Out from Caledonia, an odd name, maybe Indian? I wrote it down … ‘Kolola Springs.’ You lived there too?”
No, but I’d passed the turnoff to it a hundred times between Caledonia and Columbus! (My parents had picnicked there when courting, if that counts.) He’d gone to school in Caledonia and offered the clincher … his sixth-grade teacher … Miss Carolyn King! Mine too! Till moving to Columbus.
Next night … The roommate appeared in person to lay eyes on a compatriot who was hat-checking in a French restaurant in midtown Manhattan. (Teaching too, but nary a lesson plan was completed that night, the one time in my life I can honestly say, “I hung out at the bar with a guy from home.”)
The roommate moved to California, but the barkeep and I have stayed in touch. He moved to France with Gap International, and we had lunch in Paris one summer and mused over the twists and turns in our lives. He’s in Ireland now, managing a B&B outside Dublin. Our Christmas cards meet somewhere over the North Sea.
Marion Whitley lives in Manhattan where she reads, writes and remembers. Her email address is [email protected].
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