Mama Mia!

The other night after taking in a movie, the lovely Amy and I decided to get a bite to eat. Not super-dooper hungry, we pulled into the Higgins Corner Quisno’s to grab a quick sub and some chips to take home. The sign said they were open till 8, but when we tried to go in the door, it was locked. The time was 7:55.

 

The two guys on duty were, apparently, serving their last customer of the evening, a scruffy looking gentleman. Amy and I would've loved having the last call honor on this drizzly Sunday night, but the Quisno’s guys continued finishing up their work, taking money from the disheveled dude and steadfastly ignoring the semi-hungry, and not as untidy, couple standing outside their locked door. So we left.

 

But it wasn't a big deal. There were other places to eat and we didn't go home un-fed. And it didn't really bother me that the boys of Qusino’s were getting a head start on closing up for the night, either. I’ve worked in food service and know, often, that's just standard operating procedure. What bothered me was the general lack of good customer service. At Mama Mia’s, the Italian joint I worked in one summer, had I, or anyone else on duty, turned a hungry customer away because we were trying to close up, we would've been fired.

 

Crazy. I hadn’t thought about Mama Mia’s for years. But as soon as we got turned away from Quisno’s, the not-there-anymore little hole-in-the-wall on busy Manzanita Avenue in Carmichael was there again. And so was I; 19 years old, working the night shift, working the kitchen.

 

Mama Mia's closed at ten p.m. But the way Tom, our boss, ran his store you’d think the closing sign on the door was merely a suggestion. Like it or not, we served customers right up till 9:59:59, and mainly because Tom said so. He believed in squeezing every last dime out of a business day. "Even if they don't show up till one minute to ten, you will serve them. Period." Tom threw in a couple other colorful words for emphasis, but I got the point. Everybody working the night shift got the point. There was even one Sunday night when we had to stay crazy late after a party of eight showed up at 9:55. Assholes. I mean, Great for business! But I think we were there that night, cleaning up till after midnight.

Like the food he served, Tom Mariano was very Italian and very proud of it. He had dark hair, mustache, and a well-honed hair-trigger temper if pushed, Tom had the part of Gambino family member wanna-be down quite well. Maybe, too well. I didn’t work often during the day, but when I did, at least twice I observed Tom sipping beers between the lunch and evening rush with a couple of brainless looking, granite jawed “gentlemen”. They both looked right out of central casting and fully expected someone to make a deal someone else couldn't refuse. Turns out one guy was the beer distributor; the other the bread supplier. They were just Tom's drinking buddies. So what did I know? I was a just kid with a wild imagination.

Though he scared me to death at first, because I didn’t know him and he seemed a little intimidating, Tom was actually a teddy bear—at least, as long as you did your job and followed his rules.  The waitresses were all early 20’s, the rest of us working in back were all under 20, but he treated everybody as grown-ups and made it a fun place to work. Nobody made much money working there, but even so Tom was fair and a pretty decent guy to work for-- even if he did have ties to the Mafia (just kidding).

 

My first sister-in-law, Lynn, helped me land the gig. She was one of Tom's waitresses and the catalyst in getting both me and my best friend, Glenn Vogel, in the door. I’ve always appreciated for not only how she greased the way for me, but going above and beyond for Glenn, too. I started in late in May- Glenn about a week later- and, with Mark Roberts, who was there already, we worked the dinner shift together from 5- 10 p.m., Sunday through Thursday nights.  The job was cook/busboy, cooking when it was busy, busing tables and washing dishes when it wasn’t. It was steady, if not lucrative, work- $ 2.00 an hour and around 25 hours a week. And I got one free meal per shift, too, though I had to cook it myself.

 

Until the end of June, though, Glenn and I were coaching Little League, the games were in the evenings, and posed a scheduling problem. We couldn’t be in two places at once. But Tom was a Dad, had played Little League and the Mama Mia’s had even sponsored a team one too, so he worked with us. Until the season was over, on game days, Glenn and I were allowed to swap hours with the lunch crew. To help out Mark, Tom stayed late those days to get though the dinner rush and close down. There were only 5 or 6 games remaining that conflicted with the work schedule, so it wasn’t a huge deal. But it cemented my opinion of Tom being a great boss.

 

I liked working the dinner shift, because Tom left by 7, it was busy, so there wasn’t a lot of slow time, and closing the place down was almost like a party. As the last patrons finished their meal in the dining area, Glenn or Mark and I began closing down in the back areas. We divvied up the duties- putting all the food back into the refrigerators, sweeping the floor and running the next last batch of dishes. (If anyone was still in the restaurant, they’d be washed last). The waitresses helped out too, straightening up in the dining area and locking the receipts in the safe. But after the last diners had left the premises, or at 10:00- whichever came first- that’s when the fun began.

 

We’d b.s. with the waitress for a while until she left, too, and then Glenn, Mark and I played a variation of the game, "3 Flies Up". Instead of a baseball, we used meatballs as balls and a big ladle as the bat. Home plate was at the cash register and the outfield was the dining area. The fielders had to chase frozen meatballs all over the place to make a catch. Though solid, after being hit a few times, these little projectiles tended to bounce off walls and windows too, rather than break glass or dislodge any of the signage or decorative knick knacks hanging on the walls. Nevertheless, we sometimes knocked over chairs and tables and other odds and ends to make a catch. So the place was kind of a mess when we were done.

 

For the record, though, we only played this game after finishing our work and never in sight of customers. And everything was always left clean, spotless and back in place when we locked up for the night. Besides, the games didn’t last more than 10 or 15 minutes because we’d generally run out of usable meatballs. At that point, the ones that looked beyond salvageable, we’d toss. The rest, we reshaped into balls again, washed them off and tossed them back into the refrigerator.

 

I was convinced they’d be fine, though, because, when served, the ones that weren’t deep friend were microwaved at over 400 degrees; any microbes inadvertently picked up from their ‘other use’ probably wouldn’t survive all that grease or heat. But would I have wanted to eat those meatballs, knowing the abuse they’d been through? Probably not. Put another couple of years under me and you probably wouldn’t find me whacking meatballs around my place of employment, either. But at 19, and probably no more mature than 12, this one gets filed in the young and dumb folder and, hopefully, isn’t ever used against me in a court of law. Besides, what the health department didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

 

But then when we were done playing “3 Flies” and putting the restaurant back in order, we cooled our heels with a couple drafts out of the Olympia keg. Of course we were all underage, but who cared and who’d ever know? I did, of course and of course, knew better. However, I’m less ashamed about drinking up Tom’s profits than hitting his meatballs for sport because he gave us his permission. Sort of. He unexpectedly dropped in one night after closing.

 

Mark had left early because he had a date, so it was only Glenn and I “quenching” our thirst when Tom showed up. Thrusting his hands on hips like he was about to scold us (or call a cop), yet in a very non-threatening voice, Tom said if we wanted to have one beer it was okay with him- but only after we were officially off duty, the work was finished, and only if we drank it in the back of the building, away from the windows. So from then on, whenever extracting some liquid refreshment from one of the restaurant’s kegs, we drank it in the back parking lot and drank a toast in Tom’s honor- sometimes tow or three- for the privilege.

 

And, yes, I’m well aware I was under 21 and, technically, drinking on the job. However back then I chalked those summer nights up as just a harmless rite of passage…although most other bosses and the Highway patrol might disagree.

 

One more reason I liked working at Mama Mia's was the complete lack of a dress code. As far as Tom was concerned, as long as we weren't naked he didn't care. So I came to work every night (or day) in cutoffs and a tank top. I'm not sure you could do that today, working so closely with food. But back then it flew- at least at Mama Mia's if flew. Anyway, the kitchen area was an absolute sweat box so the less clothes the better. Wearing those ratty clothes to work had another fringe benefit, too- besides totally irritating Mom- they showed off my tanned legs and drove the ladies wild. Well, sort of.

I'm not kidding, though, when I say I had great legs and one of the waitresses- a redhead named Linda- noticed and thought so, too. She liked them so much, the rest of that summer she called me “Legs”. Do you know how special that made me feel? A girl- no; a woman (Linda was probably around 24) had given me a term of endearment. Me: 19 year old, insecure, non-ladies-man, goofy me. I lovde being called “Legs” that summer, loved Linda for giving me the handle, and took as much mileage out of it as I could.

I mean, up till then, no female had taken much notice of any part of my anatomy at all. Linda had. She liked me. Just for being me… and having nice legs. In fact, Linda liked me enough that when she got a real big tip, a couple times she shared it with me, well actually, all of us working the shift with her. But I knew I was her favorite and that made me doubly like her. Linda was the best.

Funny what triggers a memory of people and places. I haven't thought about Linda or Mama Mia's in years. But sitting in the car, pondering our supper plight and watching the Quisno’s guys ring up their last customer- who wasn’t us- I smiled at the recollections. I really enjoyed that little dive and working with that little group of people. Shoot, I only worked at Mama Mia's, for Tom Mariano and with Linda, Lynn, Glenn and Mark for three months, and the place no longer exists. But when I think about it now, that was a really fun job and a really fun time in my life. 

My last day there was pretty hard, though. I was going off to college at Whitworth and, at the time, not very happy about it. But at the end of that last shift, and before clocking out for the final time, Linda gave me a little kiss on the cheek, told me to write often and said she'd miss my "legs."
And- thanks to a closed Quisno’s- all these years later I still think fondly of Linda, “Legs” and that little restaurant we all worked at in the summer of 1974.

Now, let’s go hit some meatballs!