Youth As Seen Through The Rose Colored Glasses of Middle Age

Early spring 1972. Welcome to the dumping ground—the dark end of the kitchen—the place where high and mighty busboys sneer at you as they dump another bin full of dirty dishes on the bottom shelf. But I had done this kind of thing before the Trident, before the Army, before this dishwasher heaven where you got to do it and watch the soft parade of beautiful young women as they came into the kitchen where Pierre would drill them with his disdainful devil eyes as though every one of them was bad, and just barely tolerable. I looked at them somewhat differently. After all, there I was backstage at a hippie playboy club, and how bad could that be? And, oh those girls. Wearing everything from the diaphonous to the skin tight. The impossible to miss hundred pound party girl Nancy MacAllister in those shiny pink pants—the impossible to forget Kathleen Delahanty in her well fitted, subtle but sexy I. Magnin gabardine slacks and crepe de chine tops—Noreen, the sweetest woman since Donna Reed in “It’ a Wonderful Life”, floating unflappably above it all, and Lynn, the cool, imperious cocktail waitress in her tight cowgirl jeans that none of us could help but notice after she walked by. So many wonderful women.

But I was still just one of the trolls toiling in the shouting and clatter of the bright white cave. The busboys got to follow these goddesses out into the rocking and rolling rounded wood and draping greenery of the big sun-splashed room, where the customers were merely the necessary extras who had to pay to watch the show. I wanted to watch too. So when the time came, and I got the chance to go out and bus the floor I took it, thereby disappointing Pierre, the chef, and one of the greatest and most indelible of all the characters cast in that particular play.

Pierre, who addressed everyone as “goofy” in a low and ominous tone, had moved me up to food prep and chief pot washer. I used to peel a quart of garlic and field strip 50lbs of frozen prawns in the morning and then deal with the cascade of pots and saute pans that flooded my station when we opened. It was in the morning when I witnessed Pierre do something at age of 65 that I, small, fast, and coordinated as I was, would not have even attempted at my prime of life 26. The big rice pots were kept on a shelf above my head and Pierre needed one. As he tried to grab it, I could see that it was just out of reach (Pierre being even smaller that I was) so I reached up to grab it for him, only to see his hand snatch it before I could, and turned to see him jump back off the edge of the steel garbage can beside me, give an almost imperceptible smile with the inevitable accompanying, “goofy”, and walk off leaving me in drop-jawed astonishment. Quick as a cat, he had jumped up onto the edge of the trash can with kitchen slick shoes, grabbed the pot and was gone while I still had my hand in the air. We all knew he was a Kung Fu teacher (or something like that) but that doesn’t begin to explain how he could even think to do something that dangerous and actually pull it it off. Thirty-four years later I am still amazed. So there I am working on the tech crew while all the actors are out on stage performing in a full on musical with dancing girls. (Did I mention the girls—God, what beauties) Being an actor myself, but stuck backstage, I couldn’t resist when I got the chance to get out there on the floor and do a little dancing of my own. Besides it being a lot more fun, then I got to work for Lou, and Lou was definately worth working for. So was Pierre, but for him the floor was a necessary evil, and any work worth doing was done in the kitchen. Fun? “Humph!” It was like I had given up a chance to play Hamlet on Broadway so I could play a low rent gigolo in Hollywood. Pierre never quite forgave me.

The Trident had a distinct dual identity, as do most restaurants, but at the Trident that duality had a more theatrical quality because of the personalities of the two crowned heads who ruled their separate kingdoms in such completely opposite ways. Pierre, in the kitchen, like some demented devil with his unblinking baleful blue eyes, and Lou, on the floor, like an affable angel, smiling indulgently upon his little harem of naughty cherubs.

By Eric Shuggare