Salad Girl

 

After my last blog, a couple of people asked me about being a salad girl.  I’ll explain.

 Between our junior and senior year at Georgia Tech, two buddies, and I decided to go out west, tour, and work when our money ran out.  We had a great time driving out, sponging off of friends, camping out.  But we knew we needed gas money to get home so we planned to go to Yellowstone to look for work.  But we stopped at the Grand Teton National Park before we got to Yellowstone and asked about jobs.  They had three openings.

 The first one was for a pot scrubber for the cafeteria.  That sounded awful to me, but one of the other guys took it.  The next opening was for a salad girl.  Thinking that was better than a pot scrubber, I raised my hand immediately.  I was told they were looking for a girl, but they needed someone right away, so they took me.  The third opening was for a manager of the laundromat, which the third guy took.  It turned out that young women were the main customers of the laundromat, and my friend had a different date every night.

 Clara, my boss, complained when she heard a boy was going to work for her.  But I worked hard, listened carefully, did my best, and within a couple of weeks, she loved me.  I chopped vegetables, mixed dressings, put salads together, and learned a lot.  When I left to go home, she told me I was the best salad girl she ever had.

 Aloma tells me I make good salads.  I should.  After all, I am a professional.

 Seasoned Man

stevelem117@gmail.com

Like Going On Vacation

When we go on a vacation for a week or more, I do the grocery shopping and most of the cooking.  After all, what kind of vacation would it be for Aloma to cook and shop on vacation just as she does all year?  

When we’re in Florida for two months, she’ll get tired of my plain cooking, give me a shopping list, and cook a delicious casserole.  She’s a great cook, and I can just do the basics. Since her surgery, I’ve been shopping, cooking, and taking care of her.  For the first three weeks, I was so anxious and tired that I wasn’t sure I could handle my responsibilities.  But now that she’s seven weeks out from her surgery and doing really well, she is doing more for herself.  I still shop and cook and it’s getting routine for me.  While Aloma would always shop once a week, I go at least three times, usually before 8:00 a.m. 

I give her a choice of a few menu items.  Last evening she asked what we were having tomorrow.  I admitted I didn’t have anything planned.  She said, ‘You could grill me a steak.”  So I went to Harris Teeter and bought a 1 ¼ pound NY Strip steak and grilled it perfectly, serving it with baked potatoes, and a salad (I pride myself on my salads because I spent one summer as a Salad Girl in a resort in the Tetons--may be the subject for another blog.)

 It was a perfect meal and she told me I’m still her hero.

 Seasoned Man

stevelem117@gmail.com