Kenny was like the Fonz.
You know, the Fonz from Happy Days? The cool guy, who was small, yet seemed
tougher than everyone else. He was
cool. Kenny was just a kid, as I look
back on it now – maybe 19-20, but for a fifteen year old getting into his first
ever job, he seemed to be in complete control.
Kenny was the dayshift/prep manager at
Gianelli’s Pizza. I had joined the
coveted Saturday afternoon shift as the dishwasher. I had heard about Kenny, but had yet to work
with him. I generally worked evening
shifts after school or weekend nights. I
had just tied on an apron to start my shift and was scrubbing a few random
leftover dishes from the previous night to run through the machine. Kenny came around the corner, in faded Levi’s, and the black Gianetti’s
t-shirt, hopped up on the counter next to me, propped his feet on an empty
garbage can, revealing worn black Converse
high-tops. He had a Frusen Glädjé ice cream container in his hand. Remember Frusen Glädjé? It was the copycat fake Scandinavian fancy
ice cream trying to horn in on the other fake Scandinavian ice cream, Häagen-Dazs. It came in a
pint sized plastic capsule container.
Kenny popped the lid off with the thumb of the hand he was holding the
capsule with, while twirling a spoon with the other.
“Did you eat a nutritious
breakfast?” Kenny said without looking at me.
I assumed he was talking to me, since no one else was around. I nodded my head side to side. I had literally been in bed asleep 30 minutes
ago, before rolling out of bed, getting dressed and walking the mile or so to
work. He poked the spoon into the
container revealing a quiet crunch and scooped out a small bit of cereal into
his mouth. Between chews, he continued:
“I expect everyone to be ready to go.
Get yourself one of these.”
That is where my training
began. Every moment with Kenny contained
teaching moments. Not all of it made
sense at the time, and a lot of it still doesn’t make sense, yet I still feel
like those lessons are still to come to fruition 35 plus years later. Being the Saturday dishwasher really meant
that I would be doing prep for the evening rush. Saturday nights were the busiest and we would
have to prep the cheese, the pepperoni and salami, cook the ground meats, and
slice the tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and green peppers. Everyone helped with prep, but dishes were
light duty during the day, so it was mostly up to the dishwasher to get this
stuff done. I learned these trades from
Kenny. He was a master. Everything he did oozed quality. He was neat, efficient, and in his hands, all
of the prep work was immaculate.
I remember him showing me how
to use the slicer. He fastened on a big
heavy metal tube and we poured about 10 pounds of raw yellow onions inside and
turned the switch on. The thing jumped
to life with a stutter and then jolted violently back and forth. I was terrified. He tightened a knob on this jerking
monstrosity to adjust the thickness of the slices. We would collect the booty into a tub, seal
it when full and date it. Eventually, my
intimidation with this beast wore off.
When slicing onions, the air of the entire restaurant would fill with
that eye burning toxicity. Often I would
handle the run off by approaching the slicer with a makeshift blindfold. It feels incredibly stupid in retrospect, but
after learning the trade from Kenny, I had an intimate knowledge of that
machine and total confidence. It was
like Jedi training. I could mentally feel the machine. I only learned years later that a 15 year old
should not have been working the slicer at that age, nor should any of us been
working 75 hour weeks during the summer like we often did.
The stove tops near the
slicer would be on simmer all afternoon cooking ground beef or sausage, which
we would flavor with seasonings when ready.
Every so often, someone would have to check the meat by throwing the
massive pot on the floor, and mashing and stirring the brew. The meat mashers became our guitars. Whatever horrible songs would absolutely
blare from the one speaker transistor radio out of the dough room was generally
emitting from KSKD 105 (an early Top
40 station with no DJs, which then became the hair metal leaning Top 40 station
Q105), if there was a guitar solo,
someone was likely performing it on the meat masher. Kenny taught us the importance of this. To be an effective performer, one could not
simply put their hands in position and move their fingers around. One had to play with passion. One had to contort their face with pained
expressions accentuating each note. It
was important to look like you mean it.
The dough room was an isolated
long hallway that was parallel to the front kitchen, which was out in the open
public area. The dough roller would make
a lot of each size of pizza dough and store them in a two-sided refrigerator,
so the pizza makers could grab them from the other side. They worked the day shift. I never knew who the dough guy was, but he
was cool. He had long sweeping bangs,
wore surf shorts and band t-shirts, wore a lot of those fluorescent colored rubber
bracelets around his wrists, which were all the rage in my mind, and was always
covered from head to toe in flour. He
reminded me of Peter Zaremba from The Fleshtones. He and Kenny would nod to each other
occasionally, but otherwise, they never seemed to communicate.
One of the things I
appreciated most about Kenny is that he wanted everyone to know how to do
everything. He would spend the time to
make sure you were comfortable at each stage of learning. When I was taught how to put together a pizza,
it was simply having me learn all of the toppings for the combos on the
menu. The business had no limitations
for toppings. We didn’t weigh
ingredients or count pepperonis or anything like most places. People just piled on a lot of stuff and the
result would often be a mess leading to a pizza that would have burnt crust and
a doughy middle. Kenny taught
moderation. His skilled hands would wrap
around the pizza and each effort would be a perfect balance of toppings and
little to no run off. He guided the
toppings onto the pizza looking like a potter working the wheel. He was an artist. He insisted that we shout orders and commands
randomly. He had seen a restaurant TV
commercial that had all of the chefs shouting back and forth with urgency –
likely displaying the busy yet smooth running kitchen. Know what you’re doing, and look like you
mean it.
Over at the ovens, it was the
same thing. Kenny had the ability to
cook the pizzas to the perfect crispness and taught us what signs to watch for
that would signify when a pie was ready to pull. More importantly, Kenny took me aside out at
the ovens one afternoon and showed me what to do during any downtime. There are some open minutes after putting a
pizza into the oven. Again, our kitchen
was up front. The crew worked away right
behind the counter where the customers placed their orders. The wall by the ovens displayed pans
representing all of the pizza sizes available.
Below these was a stool – about knee high. He put one foot up onto the stool and leaned
into his upraised leg. With his arms
crossed casually over that leg, Kenny looked out towards the counter and did a
subtle one finger wave and a head nod.
It gave me chills. He looked like
a movie star hero. Kenny was teaching me
how to do this. It took a lot of
practice, but I began to get the correct nuances. This, he taught, was the proper way to
acknowledge our fans.
It didn’t take long to become
a devoted disciple of Kenny’s teachings.
As my skills increased, the training led to more excursions. One afternoon, Kenny took Nick and me outside
and had us lug a 50 pound bag of onions up and down the hillside out front of
the building by the Gianelli’s sign. The
landscaping was more fitting to the high desert with its red lava rock and big
sagebrush and Idaho fescues, than what one would generally see on the
constantly damp and dreary coast. This
military style training wound up bringing in a few curious customers.
As the Christmas holiday
neared, Kenny had Nick and me out on the roof of the building stringing
lights. The slippery roof was incredibly
hazardous with the coastal wind whipping us around and blasting the driving
rain into our faces. As I look back on
it, it feels like maybe Kenny was trying to kill us. It felt different at the time. I was terrified of heights, but he instilled
in me a confidence that I didn’t know I had and felt I could accomplish
anything.
On another outing, Kenny,
Nick, and I, suited up in our Gianelli’s shirts, took a handful of pizza pans
down to the beach access (D-River
Wayside) and tossed them about like Frisbees. When not engaged in some sort of acrobatic
diving catch, we would employ the casual ‘stud’ wave to any curious
on-lookers. The local kite shop, who
employed teenagers to fly kites on the beach as advertisement, were getting
annoyed at our invasion. We were a
curiosity who were taking attention away from their wares. We began planning to make our own t-shirts, as
we were now known as the Wayside Wonders.
Late one Saturday afternoon,
as our shift was winding down, Kenny was sitting on that counter where he liked
to eat his morning cereal, he looked exhausted.
He was tussling his hair and taking deep gasping breaths. This was about the time that Kenny announced
to us, that he was packing up his young family and moving to California. It was an uncomfortable emotional moment. He continued to look spent as he described to
us all of the effort he had put in to this job.
“Sometimes you tell the day, by the bottle that you drink,” he
continued. After a beat, we realized
that he was mimicking his favorite music video: “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi, which was the ultimate
example of how to look like you mean it.
I continued to work at
Gianelli’s all through High School.
Things were never the same after Kenny left. Several months after he moved away rumor had
spread that he had become the head chef at some fancy restaurant in the Bay
Area. This was no surprise to any of
us. All of us who had learned from Kenny
tried to keep the teachings alive, but it didn’t translate. None of us had the Fonz-like charisma.
A couple of years later, one
busy evening, I was working the ovens and standing out by the size display pizza
pans and a fan. I was lost in thought. I looked out at the building crowd hanging
around the front counter queuing up to place their orders. A pretty tourist girl with a Slippery When Wet t-shirt and tight
jeans with slits cut into the thighs caught my attention. She was looking at me, even though I looked
like a few discarded clumps of leftover dough balled together, rolled through
some pubes, and stuffed into an Echo
& the Bunnymen shirt. I locked
my gaze on hers and gave her a slight nod, along with a little finger
wave. She smiled.
* Wayside Wonders drawing by Arlon Gilliland
