Excerpt from My New Book:
Dear Readers,
Here’s an excerpt from my new book, Double-Dutch Life… it is from the lighter side of the story. The book will go on to recount some of my journey through mental illness. Please let me know if you have any comments whatsoever, as they will voice your thoughts and aid my writing:
Excerpted from:
Chapter 3 – Road 2 Lonely
… My first job in Albuquerque was at The Frontier Restaurant, something of a fixture near the University of New Mexico in the downtown district. The Frontier’ is nationally famous for their amazing cinnamon rolls, but they make a mean green-chile burger, awesome BLT’s on wheat toast, which I modified onsite, to include grated cheddar, as well as other tasty items.
This famous culinary destination began as a one building/one room dining establishment that grew to take up an entire city block by the time I joined their staff in 1984. With each dining room decorated with various famous and more pedestrian Western and Southwestern paintings and artifacts, one could dine in relative calm or have an animated feast amongst friends.
The process for diners back then was to order at the counter in the original building, take a numbered ticket to your table of choice, and then return to the pickup counter in the same building to collect your meal and accessories. Given their volume of business, it was an agreeable and effective model.
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I spent my time as a cashier taking orders on some very antiquated cash registers, peeling green chiles, and after a promotion, making toast… yes, I could have been a luchador like in ‘Nacho Libre’, so advanced was I in toast making skills. In fact, operating such a toaster involved more coordination than I realized. The Frontier’ did a crazy volume of business, so I had to keep the bread bags stocked, the toaster filled, the toast buttered, the plates filled. It was quite an operation.
While I might not have been completely content at The Frontier, I enjoyed the simplicity of the old time cash registers, interacting with customers, peeling the chiles, and making the toast. In the words of Homer Price, “the (toaster) doughnut machine just kept right on making (toast)… and the (toast) kept right on rolling down the chute.”, and while my work was rudimentary, sometimes the simple life is the better life…
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(thank you for reading; end of preview; more to come)
Cheesy Illustrations © 2020 FitzGerald Press
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