Every high school has a place off campus where kids go to hang out with their friends. For students at John Marshall Junior Senior High School the place to go was The Pizza Wagon, or simply The Wagon. Not only was M influential in getting me to join Witt AZA, he recommended me to Steve and Tom P’s dad who owned The Wagon. Mr. P hired both Jim and I to be busboys for the handsome wage of one dollar and five cents an hour.
On weeknights we would work one or two family hour shifts from five to nine so we had time to participate in extracurricular activities at school and still get home on time to finish our homework before heading to bed. Friday night had both the family crowd and from nine to closing the party crowd. Saturday night was family, party and after hour’s crowds since we stayed open until 3:00 AM, a full hour after the bars closed.
Besides Mr. P, Dick, a happy go lucky college aged cook, and Nick, a forty-something cook who insisted he made Greek balls not meatballs took turns at the grill. Marilyn and Mrs. P took turns as hostess and monitoring the waitresses, and George who usually mumbled through puffs of smoke coming from his cigarette racked dishes and ran them through the scolding water of the dishwasher.
Up front by the large glass window through which patrons could watch from the sidewalk Steve and Tom P would roll out the dough and toss it in the air until it was the right size. Then, they’d lay it on a bed of flour, ladle on the deep red sauce, place the squares of mozzarella, put chunks of sausage into spaces between the cheese, sprinkle onions all around, run the shovel under the dough and slide it into the oven. There were a number of others whose names I don’t recall who shared this job. M joined them shortly after I was hired. Their performance won them instant stardom in the eyes of both the family and party crowd. The drunks could care less. Get it to them hot and fast and don’t spill the coffee.
As a busboy my first duty was to clear the tables and wipe them off as soon as the customers stepped away. When our trays were full we hustled them back to the kitchen and filled the racks with plates, glasses and silverware for George to wash. Then, we brought out the clean plates, glasses and silver for the waitresses.
When we weren’t clearing tables we were trimming slimy leaves from the cabbage with a cleaver and taking it up front to the slicing machine to slice into cole slaw. We also sliced cheese and pepperoni on the slicing machine being careful not to add a finger or thumb to the ingredients.
At various times Dick, Steve P, or one of the other pizza makers with a driver’s license would make deliveries. Since the back door led to the parking lot Mr. P posted one of the busboys there to make sure there was no trouble. The parking lot adjoined Henry’s parking lot. Henry’s was a local hamburger joint that competed with the McDonald’s across the street.
Since kids liked to congregate in the parking lot Mr. P liked to have someone of stature at the backdoor. At six foot two and one eighty the Argentina born Hector was the easy choice. Although he already had earned his black belt in karate his imposing figure was enough to deter any would-be troublemakers. He enjoyed flirting with the girls that gathered around, but insisted his girlfriend, Marcy, and he were going steady. In their case it lasted more than two weeks.
At the end of the night we mixed and kneaded the dough on the butcher-block table in the kitchen and left it there to rise.
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