Monday, June 20, 2005
Mind your manners
I heard a piece on NPR recently, in the "This I Believe" series, where a guy was talking about politeness and common courtesy -- you know, the kind of thing where the person driving the car you let in waves at you as part of the general courtesy of the road. It made me think of the 1991-92 NBA season, when I was a stringer for UPI covering the Charlotte Hornets.
For the grand sum of $25 a game, I got to drive the 212 miles from Chapel Hill to Charlotte for all home contests, where I sat in auxiliary press row and filed game stories on deadline. Standard hero lead: "Kelly Tripucka scored 23 points and Larry Johnson added 19 points and 8 rebounds to lead the host Charlotte Hornets past the Cleveland Cavaliers 94-90." It was hardly worth the money -- I probably spent more in gas money and abuse of my car, but it was a cool, earn-your-stripes, pay-your-dues kind of experience. 22 years old and covering an NBA team! Not that my stories were published many places...I can't even say if I saw them anywhere, as UPI was in its death throes at the time. (Apologies if I'm repeating myself -- did I blog this already?) Anyway, the road manners thing: I spent so much time in my car that winter that I picked up on some habits of truckers cruising on I-40 -- like flash your taillights to say "thanks" to someone who let you in, etc. I felt like part of the Brotherhood of the Road -- the truckers, the traveling salesman with their clothes on a rod in the backseat, etc. Hey, when you are pulling down $25 a game and living off seafood scraps from your day job as a waiter/bartender, you find entertainment and solace where you can.
Ah, the day job. I was employed at a place in Durham called Fishmonger's -- an attempted duplication of a beach seafood joint, complete with butcher paper on the tables, paper plates, plastic utensils and the strong odor of seafood from the fish counter. The owner was a sweet guy named Gary Bass (no joke), who was full of kooky cuisine notions (corn cob "slices" that required a huge table saw to cut) but was terrible on the follow-through. There was Bernard (pot-smoking cook), Al (a bartender who played nothing but Bela Fleck in the upstairs oyster bar), Mike Horowitz (a freakishly fit waiter/bartender who loved the same music I did [lots of 3rd Bass and Red Hot Chili Peppers and Seal that summer/fall], drove a cool camouflage VW van, made a mean double espresso and tragically died at age 23 of brain cancer), Robert (dishwasher, kitchen helper, jack of all trades who may or may not have spent time in jail for murder), Deirdre (college pal and short-time roommate who got me the job -- one of the sweetest, coolest women I've ever known) and some other random people I can't remember at the moment (the guy who ran the fish counter -- what was his name? -- who insisted on using some all-natural crystal/rock deodorant thing that failed miserably). I waited tables downstairs -- lunch often -- and bartended upstairs at the oyster bar, usually on Friday nights when oysters were $3 a dozen. On a good day working a lunch/dinner at the bar double, I could make $150-$200 in tips. I learned how to shuck oysters and eat them with lots of horseradish, clean a flounder and crack crabs, pluck a live lobster from a tank, deep fry onion rings, appreciate good beer (the place served Pilsener Urquell, Bass, Guiness and Harp, not college crap) and more. It was a great place to land as I figured out what the hell to do with my life...even if me, my clothes and my car smelled like the sea for about nine months.
I think Fishmonger's is gone now...as are all my Fishmonger's T-shirts, and those cut-off thrift store khakis I wore just about every day. But the memories remain.
FYI: the 91-92 Hornets went 31-51, led by Kendall Gill and rookie of the year Larry Johnson, the #1 pick overall in the 1991 draft.
For the grand sum of $25 a game, I got to drive the 212 miles from Chapel Hill to Charlotte for all home contests, where I sat in auxiliary press row and filed game stories on deadline. Standard hero lead: "Kelly Tripucka scored 23 points and Larry Johnson added 19 points and 8 rebounds to lead the host Charlotte Hornets past the Cleveland Cavaliers 94-90." It was hardly worth the money -- I probably spent more in gas money and abuse of my car, but it was a cool, earn-your-stripes, pay-your-dues kind of experience. 22 years old and covering an NBA team! Not that my stories were published many places...I can't even say if I saw them anywhere, as UPI was in its death throes at the time. (Apologies if I'm repeating myself -- did I blog this already?) Anyway, the road manners thing: I spent so much time in my car that winter that I picked up on some habits of truckers cruising on I-40 -- like flash your taillights to say "thanks" to someone who let you in, etc. I felt like part of the Brotherhood of the Road -- the truckers, the traveling salesman with their clothes on a rod in the backseat, etc. Hey, when you are pulling down $25 a game and living off seafood scraps from your day job as a waiter/bartender, you find entertainment and solace where you can.
Ah, the day job. I was employed at a place in Durham called Fishmonger's -- an attempted duplication of a beach seafood joint, complete with butcher paper on the tables, paper plates, plastic utensils and the strong odor of seafood from the fish counter. The owner was a sweet guy named Gary Bass (no joke), who was full of kooky cuisine notions (corn cob "slices" that required a huge table saw to cut) but was terrible on the follow-through. There was Bernard (pot-smoking cook), Al (a bartender who played nothing but Bela Fleck in the upstairs oyster bar), Mike Horowitz (a freakishly fit waiter/bartender who loved the same music I did [lots of 3rd Bass and Red Hot Chili Peppers and Seal that summer/fall], drove a cool camouflage VW van, made a mean double espresso and tragically died at age 23 of brain cancer), Robert (dishwasher, kitchen helper, jack of all trades who may or may not have spent time in jail for murder), Deirdre (college pal and short-time roommate who got me the job -- one of the sweetest, coolest women I've ever known) and some other random people I can't remember at the moment (the guy who ran the fish counter -- what was his name? -- who insisted on using some all-natural crystal/rock deodorant thing that failed miserably). I waited tables downstairs -- lunch often -- and bartended upstairs at the oyster bar, usually on Friday nights when oysters were $3 a dozen. On a good day working a lunch/dinner at the bar double, I could make $150-$200 in tips. I learned how to shuck oysters and eat them with lots of horseradish, clean a flounder and crack crabs, pluck a live lobster from a tank, deep fry onion rings, appreciate good beer (the place served Pilsener Urquell, Bass, Guiness and Harp, not college crap) and more. It was a great place to land as I figured out what the hell to do with my life...even if me, my clothes and my car smelled like the sea for about nine months.
I think Fishmonger's is gone now...as are all my Fishmonger's T-shirts, and those cut-off thrift store khakis I wore just about every day. But the memories remain.
FYI: the 91-92 Hornets went 31-51, led by Kendall Gill and rookie of the year Larry Johnson, the #1 pick overall in the 1991 draft.
// posted by Bill @ 8:38 PM 
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Alas, Fishmongers indeed exists only in our memories now, having moved on to Davy Jones' cafeteria at some point during my time in law school at the other university. I had my twenty-first birthday party there, attended by the likes of Amy Germuth (who still lives in Durham and owns her own consulting business there), future Rhodes Scholar Ryan Balot and the late, great Chuck Pierce. Man, I loved that place.
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