ROBERT GARDNER -- The verdict

My major job as a young man was at the Green Dragon, where I worked off

and on during law school. I had other jobs in between, but the Dragon was

my principal employer during those years.

I started working for the Dragon when I was 9; I guess there weren’t any

child labor laws in those days. I washed glasses and chipped ice--and for

that I was paid 10 cents an hour.

This was before ice cubes. Ice came in large slabs, and it was my job to

chop those big slabs into pieces small enough to fit into a glass.

Washing glasses involved leaning over the sink behind the counter. This

made my pants tight across my rear end, and the adult countermen snapped

my bottom with towels until they brought welts. But it was all in the

name of fun--for them.

Don William, who later became an immortal USC quarterback, was the lead

snapper.

I finally got out from behind the counter and into the kitchen as a

dishwasher. This was a really lousy job, but it paid better. Long before

electric dish washers, the dishwasher in those days was one step up from

the sideshow geek--the guy who bites the heads off live chickens.

Most dishwashers were drunks. I know why. Cooks always seemed to have

vile dispositions, and they took out their pent-up anger on the

dishwasher. They threw hot pans--and I mean that literally--at the

dishwasher, who had to catch them in mid air, thus burning his hands.

The waiters were almost as bad as the cooks. They almost threw the dirty

dishes at the dishwasher, too. We didn’t have bus boys. The waiters would

rush into the kitchen and toss dishes piled with partly eaten meals onto

a shelf leading to the sink, leaving the dishwasher to clear off the food

and clean the dishes in greasy water.

At the end of a 10-hour shift, one took a very jaundiced view of mankind,

particularly cooks and waiters.

When I was about 15, I graduated to waiter and counterman. People never

tipped countermen, but tips were few and far between anyway. So I liked

being a counterman better than being a waiter, and you could and did talk

to the customers, too.

Nate Cox was our chief counterman. He and I worked so well together that

the bosses made us a regular team at the Dragon; we also worked at the

Rendezvous.

There was a long counter in the Rendezvous that sold orange and grape

drinks to the dancers. Nate and I would get the counter wet, then slide

glasses down the surface, trying to make them stop right in front of the

customer. Of course, it didn’t always work, and we spilled a few drinks

on customers. That was the reason we only did our glass sliding routine

at the Rendezvous.

Back at the Dragon there was always a boss at the cash register watching

the counter, and the bosses took a dim view of wetting the customers.

My restaurant career came to an end when the New Deal went into effect in

the 1930s. Part of the New Deal was the NRA, or National Recovery

Administration created by the National Industrial Recovery Act.

In the Dragon, we had worked for 25 cents an hour for a 10-hour day,

seven days a week. By the end of the summer, I expected I would have

enough to pay for college for another year. The NRA stopped all that by

ordaining 50 cents an hour for an eight-hour day, five days a week.

This obviously put more people to work. But it bankrupted the restaurant,

and we all lost our jobs.

So much for a managed economy.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge. His

column runs Tuesdays.