photograph by mark stone
I was a short-order cook for a few precious months of my youth. For two summers — and every Saturday of my senior year in high school — I prepared breakfast and lunch at the Red Kettle in my little hometown of Northfield, Vermont. The first business northbound travelers saw on their way into town on Route 12, the Kettle was a charming “greasy spoon” …but so much more than such a tag implies.
Fifty people would have been quite intimate with one another had they packed themselves into the Red Kettle for some French toast and home fries. The dining room more often seated between 10 and 20, with a few regulars at the counter chatting with the wait staff. But the Kettle made up in impact what it lacked in square footage. And it provided lessons for a young man not yet sure which northbound (or, as it turned out, southbound) route he’d be traveling. The lessons have steered me for more than three decades.
Preparation is everything. I would typically enter the kitchen at 6 a.m., but I wasn’t the first in the building. Particularly during hunting season, certain regulars brewed their own coffee at an hour that would make a rooster groggy. The Kettle’s owner provided keys for these customers. (When I say “small town,” Northfield has topped out at roughly 4,000 residents since Nixon was in the White House. Locking doors is optional.) These men — they were only men, at least at that time — barely nodded at me when I turned on the grill. For them, I was a late arrival.
Waiting for me in the refrigerator, even at that hour, were chopped onions, chopped peppers, a large jar of premixed pancake batter, potatoes cut nicely into cubes. I could have an omelet on a plate by 6:15 if ordered, as the kitchen’s regular cook — Jody — had finished his shift the previous day by making sure I started mine smoothly. And I finished each of my shifts — even if a busy day pushed us beyond our 2 p.m. closing time — by chopping onions, chopping peppers, mixing pancake batter. There’s a flow to every good business, one managed better with anticipation than reaction.
“You can solve your problem if you exert yourself.” I have this note — from a fortune cookie — taped inside a beer mug Dolly gave me as a graduation gift.
A customer knows what a customer likes. “Ellie’s toast!” Most orders were delivered on a small piece of paper, peeled from a tablet (the old-fashioned kind). But one of the Kettle’s most endearing regulars was Ms. Ellie, an elderly woman who knew precisely how she liked her toast: burned (seriously, almost entirely black) and slathered with butter (I applied it, already melted, with a brush). Whichever waitress saw Ellie pull into the parking lot — Leslie, Pam, Gretchen, Becky, it didn’t matter — would simply shout those two words … or gently deliver them if my hands were full.
I’ve come to appreciate personal preferences and custom orders. And I often think of Ms. Ellie when someone asks for a very specific article or magazine from our archives. Favorites matter. They color our personalities and make us memorable to others. Next time you’re making toast, burn a slice for Ms. Ellie. Just make sure you have plenty of butter.
Our work affects others. In what’s now a commentary on the maturity level of your average 17-year-old, I included “busy mornings at the Red Kettle” as a pet peeve in my yearbook profile. When the establishment’s owner — the late, great Dolly Stone — learned of my jab, she let me have it, emphasizing what “busy mornings” did for her family’s livelihood.
The aggravation and “stress” of serving a big breakfast crowd — while many of my pals nursed hangovers — paid the bills not just for Dolly’s family, but for my teammates at the Kettle: Jody and the waitresses who actually toiled to reduce aggravation and stress for me. I learned about the ripple effect of serving a club sandwich with bacon cooked just right, but it took the regurgitation of that yearbook quote for me to fully appreciate it.
“You can solve your problem if you exert yourself.” I have this note — from a fortune cookie — taped inside a beer mug Dolly gave me as a graduation gift. (She knew I had Saturday nights, too.) I’ve never taken a sip from that mug, as it’s been home to pens and pencils on my various desks throughout college and every life stage since. Not an insignificant vessel for someone who aspires to a career in writing.
Wisdom comes to us in different forms, from different voices, with varying degrees of impact as we absorb it. I damaged some fingerprints on that grill at the Red Kettle. I prepared a Western omelet for someone who ordered mushrooms and cheese. And yes, I sometimes cursed my decision to slice Friday nights in favor of work on predawn Saturday mornings. But I also served a lot of tasty breakfasts to very fine people, some who knew me outside the kitchen, but most who didn’t. I like to think some left the Red Kettle happier than they were when they walked in the door. And I hope memories of the place make them as happy today as those Saturday mornings now make me.
