Notes in November 16

April 2013/March 2014

“In reality, serendipity accounts for one percent of the blessings we receive in life, work and love. The other 99 percent is due to our efforts.”

Peter McWilliam

The Dough Boy

The Maples occupied the first floor of a large old home near Broad and Linden streets, not far from the neighborhood where I lived as a boy. The owner, John Shigo, and his wife and two sons lived on the second floor. John ran the kitchen and his wife ran the dining room. The boys and I worked the dinner hour and I stayed on to help clean up after the restaurant closed.

From the first day I worked there, I was impressed by the atmosphere in the kitchen. John was a powerful man who had everything under control at all times. He memorized at a glance every order that came in and then orchestrated their preparation—I  would like to say like a conductor, but it would be a conductor that also plays most of the instruments in the orchestra. The boys, John Jr. and Allen, and I were his page-turners, his mise en place guys: he trained us carefully to have everything prepared and set up for him to grab what he needed when he needed it.

When I worked there, pizza was one of the most popular items, and I was in charge of making the dough, running it through a machine that rolled it into shape and placing it on metal pans. One of the boys would sauce it up, add the cheese and other ingredients and toss it in the oven. On a good night we would make hundreds of pizzas and, with a glance, John would inspect each one as it went out.

Because the job was mostly at night and on weekends, it didn’t interfere with my studies. I liked the Shigos and they liked me; we worked together well and they were generous with me. They worried about me going home late at night after the food was prepped for the next day and the kitchen cleaned so I soon found myself staying in a spare bedroom upstairs.

In one of the rare free moments we had, Allen and I explored the attic where I saw dozens of old louvered wooden shutters that once lined the windows of the house. When I told Carl about them he called the Shigos and arranged to buy them: he refinished them and had them installed along one wall of his new studio and they became the trademark “look” of his decorating business.

Carl’s business was thriving and he began offering me more and more work. He wanted me to go to New York with him to furniture shows and fabric houses. He wanted me to go out on jobs with him. He wanted to train me as an assistant and he had hopes of my changing my mind about Puerto Rico and going to design school in Philadelphia.

One of his friends (who became a national radio presonality a few years later), Sally Jesse Rafael, hosted a morning show on the most popular Lehigh Valley station. When Carl kidded me one evening about getting to class late, Sally offered to help, and each morning she began her show with the words, “OK Ronald, it’s 8’oclock and time to get ready for school.”

His life and offers were glamorous and interesting, but they were not what I wanted to do. I also had the discomfort of knowing that he was gay and that his interest in me was not all altruistic. I called him on it and we had a terrific row—at least he did. He yelled. He threw things. He cried. When he finally calmed down he agreed that we could just be friends and that we would love and respect each other—and we did. We worked together until I finally left for Puerto Rico. He eventually met and adored the woman who became my wife. He decorated our first apartment when I went to graduate school at Penn State. He was the godfather of our son. He was my best friend until the day he died—still a relatively young man--of AIDS during a successful career as an interior designer in New York City.

But I am getting ahead of myself. As much as I liked the Shigos, my career as a pizza dough chef had to come to an end. Carl made me an offer (along with the one of mutual respect): a part time job as his assistant at a salary higher than The Maples could afford and the use of his car to go to class (it was a convertible, but he claimed that it was poor taste to ever actually lower the top).

I needed to find a place to stay in Allentown, and, as luck would have it, at this same time an old friend, Frankie K., reappeared in town and looked me up. He had just found an apartment in Allentown and needed a roommate to help pay the rent. My family often said that if I fell into an outhouse I would come out smelling of roses (or a more vulgar version of that saying). This is one of many examples that they were right!

Frankie and I were soon installed in a second-floor rear, two-bedroom apartment a few blocks from Carl’s studio. It was a gloomy place, reached through a tunnel in the row of houses, but Carl spruced it up with fabric and furniture left over from some of his jobs, and the tiny kitchen faced a bright back yard garden. I remember that the tunnel opened on the back porch of the neighboring house and inexplicably there was always--day and night--an old woman seated on a rocker there, silently watching us come and go. Naturally, we called her Mrs. Look. I don’t remember too much else about this interlude: I was busy working for Carl, studying and being tutored by Mrs. K so I spent little time with Frankie.

What free time I had I spent with Michael, who lost his custody bid after his divorce and was often depressed. It was already winter and in spite of the cold weather, I went with him on long hikes in the woods and along the banks of the icy rivers. I think the harsh landscapes cheered him up, but it only made me long more for a new life in the warm tropics. I was worried about Michael—he he drank a lot—but I didn’t know what to do to help him.

The winter passed this way. I received my high school diploma from Moravian Prep acing all of my classes and meeting all the entrance requirements for The University of Puerto Rico. Mrs. K helped me fill out the application and I sent it off, hoping upon hope that I would be accepted. I had one special thing going for me, my last name. Although my Flores surname and ancestors were all German, Flores also happened to be one of the most common surnames in the Spanish language. My hope was that the admissions office would assume that I was Hispanic.

Spring came and on one of our outings, Michael and I came upon a cluster of wooden cottages on a wooded hillside above the city. The place had been a religious community of some kind, but were now “cabins” owned by city people who visited them in the summer. We talked about how great it would be to spend my last summer there. Michael had a motor scooter, so transportation to the diner was no problem for him. Carl usually picked me up for work and brought me home. Frank was moving on to a job as a still photographer at a movie studio in Hollywood...and the very last cottage at the top of the hill had a for rent sign on it.

We moved in a few weeks later. It was still cold at night, so we refurbished the potbelly store in the “great room” and gathered firewood. There were only two rooms, a huge open living area and a small kitchen. We talked the owner into providing paint and spent a few days sprucing up the interior and exterior. We bought two cots to serve as sofas and beds.

It was as if I had moved into one of my paintings: the trees exploded in yellow-green leaves. An abandoned quarry hole a few hundred yards up the hill had filled with crystal clear water from underground springs--a natural swimming pool. There was rarely a soul in sight during the week and we could only hear an occasional neighbor on the weekends.

It was the perfect place to paint, to study, and to prepare for my move to Puerto Rico...if only the acceptance from the university would arrive! We had no washer, so every week we bundled up our laundry, balanced it between our legs on the scooter and the two of us carried it to my sister’s house.

My nephews hounded the mailman for a letter from Puerto Rico every day. I can imagine the poor man arriving at the house and being greeted by a changing assortment of up to five little kids begging for a letter for Uncle Ronald!

The acceptance finally arrived and I was set to start classes in August. I had saved enough money to get started on this adventure, but not enough for more than a year. Almost all of Michael’s earnings went to alimony and child support, so there was no way he would be able to go. He was truly happy for me and promised he would work toward joining me later--he felt he could get a job as a cook and start a new life on the island. He was drinking heavily, however, and I suspected that it would never happen. As it turned out, I never saw him again.

In early July we gave up the cottage. When I think about that short summer on the mountain I see an impressionist painting, mysteriously inhabited by two lithe young men, skinnydipping in a perfectly round pond surrounded by a forest of flowing trees. Memory can do that!

Michael went to live with friends and I with my sister in Bethlehem. Shirley told a friend that her brother had enrolled in the University of Puerto Rico and her friend told her that she knew someone whose son was going at the same time. His name was Orlando D., the very boy that I had befriended at Liberty High School during my short career as a Christian!

I soon renewed my friendship with Orlando, met his family who had moved to Bethlehem from the island, and made plans to meet him in Puerto Rico before classes began. He promised to help me find lodging near the campus.

Now all I needed was a little more financial security. I had no idea if I could work in Puerto Rico--or what I could do. I knew studying for a degree in a language that I was barely fluent in would be a full time job. Shirley and Earl had their hands full, feeding, caring for and corraling their brood, my sister Barbara and her husband had nearly half dozen of their own kids to care for. I calculated that I could manage on about $100 a month (room and board at the time was less than $80 a month). The only person that might have the resources to loan me enough to keep me alive was my maternal grandmother--who unfortunately was staying at my parent’s hotel in Walnutport. I had to bite the bullet and go and see her there.

At this point I was totally estranged from my father. I don’t remember exactly why (this time), but in retrospect it may have been a combination of his disappointment in my not coming home to work in the hotel kitchen and my compulsion to study and live in a remote Caribbean island--a place he likely had never heard of.

I had only seen my mother once during this dramatic year of change--she came to see me at The Maples when she heard that I had a minor accident in the kitchen. (I slipped while carrying a pot of boiling water and burned my arm.)

I can recreate the moment, much of which I remember clearly. I came in the dark of night. My grandmother was in the dining room, playing the organ. My mother was tending bar, an antique oak oval that nearly filled the whole barroom. My dad was propped in a corner watching my mother work.

She came over and hugged and kissed me and asked me how I was, then returned to filling beer classes.

Dad: “What the Hell do you want?”

Me: “I came to talk to Grammy.”

Dad: “What the Hell for?”

Me: “I was accepted into college and need to borrow money.”

Dad: “Figures. What college?”

Me: “The University of Puerto Rico.”

Dad: “Jesus H. Christ.” He gave me his incredulous look, then asked, “How much do you need?”

Me. “The tuition is really low, that’s one of the reasons I want to go there. It’s $75 a semester.”

Dad: “How the hell are you going to live?”

Me: “After the first semester or two, I hope to get a job. I only need $100 a month to live on there. I’ve saved enough for my flight and registration.”

Dad: “You sure as hell aren’t going to ask your grandmother for it.”

My heart sank.

Dad: “I’ll give it to you.”

The last thing I remember of that night is my shock and disbelief, joy and confusion. Why would he do that? What had I done to deserve it?

The last obstacle had been blown out of my way--and of all things, by my father, the man I had been at odds with throughout my adolescent years.

I suppose now that it was a combination of pride and embarrassment. By will power and hard work, I had managed to get myself into college. He must have been proud of that. Also, why would his son go to his grandmother for help instead of to him?

Whatever motivated him, for the next four years he faithfully paid my tuition and sent me a monthly check. Needless to say, our relationship improved and by the time I was in graduate school it was almost normal—until the incident with the maid—but  that is another story.

My mother, in turn, was proud and happy that I was going to college. Her only comment about Puerto Rico was, “Whatever you do, don’t marry one of them.”

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