Friend Ted:
I don’t think I will be able to take it out here much more. In the 1st place it is because you never saw cold weather until you spent a winter in Chi. I do not mean weather like you have to chop the alcohol before putting it in the radator of the car. I mean weather that is so cold that the other day this pan handler came up to me and braced me and said I look as if I had a warm heart and I gave him a two-bit piece because if it wasnt for him would not of known I was alive or frozen to death. That has how it has been here in Chi. Maybe that explains some of the pecular actons of many of the inhabintants. Illinois is a state of suspended animaton and the people live in hibernaton from Oct. to whenever it ever gets warmer. I do not know and hope I am not here long enough to find out. I am merely telling you this in case you ever decide to take a job to spend the winter in Chi and I am not there to stop you at the point of a gun.
Well if you think I am trying to infer that I have been running up against some of the pecularities of the local natives you will only be 100% correct. The club opened up again after the fire as you no doubt read here or there like in the Variety or the Down Beat. We got off to good business but that was to be expect it. It wd of surprised me had it been otherwise so only menton it in passing. What I want to tell you is about the pecular local people and this one case. Two wacks if ever I saw one and they are Nick the prop. of the Olympia rest. and Pete that works for him in the kitchen. The Olympia is on my way home when I am on my way home if you know what I mean.
I just as soon never go home but a man has to have his rest so when I go home ever since I have been living where I now am I use to stop in at the Olymp. for a coffee and raison cake before going to bed. I got to be a regular customer there and Nick would expect me to come in around 3, 4 in the morning so as to relive the monotony with a wise crack or two and I guess Nick was very grateful to me because one nite I heard somebody out in the kitchen yell “right” and a minute or two later out through the hole in the wall bet. kitchen and rest. a plate slid and on the plate was some food. Nick was just about going to throw it in the garbage and then he noticed me and he said “could you use a ham omlet?” I said sure. So he gave me the ham omlet, or what ever it was. I asked him what was wrong with it but he said nothing was wrong and go ahead and eat it if I preferred to. So I ate it and it was as good a ham omlet as I ever ate.
A nite or so after I went in Nick’s again and was having a cup of coffee and once more I heard somebody out in the kitchen yell “right” and a couple minutes later out came a jelly omlet and once more Nick looked at me and said could I eat a jelly omlet and I said I could force one and he assured me that there was nothing phony about it but go ahead and eat it and it was as good a jelly omlet as any jelly omlet I ever ate.
Then I went in the next nite and ordered a coffee and waited but Nick didn’t offer me anything. Then the nite after that I went in and sure enough somebody out in the kitchen yelled “right” and in a minute or so out came a beautiful club sandwich. Nick asked me again could I use a club sandwich and I said I tho’t maybe I could and it was a tasty club sandwich which I enjoyed to the hilt. So that was the way it went. Some nites hungry and not wishing to throw away a dollar I wd go to Nick’s hoping to get an omlet or tasty sandwich but no cigar. I wd not get a thing. Other nites I wd go in and get like a small steak one nite. But I began to notice one thing. The only times I got a free meal it was when the fellow out in the kitchen suddenly yelled out “right.” Nobody wd order anything but he wd yell it and then in a minute or two something very tasty wd come through the opening. So naturally I wd wait around hoping this fellow in the kitchen wd yell “right” because if he did that meant I wd get a free meal. So all the time naturally I was helping Nick relive the monotony by chatting about this and that and one night the usual thing. The fellow yelled, out came liver & bacon and Nick just looked at me and at the liver and bacon and I said sure. Then my curosity got the better of me and I asked him. I said “Nick what’s with the free food? Explain.” So he said eat my liver and bacon and he wd explain the entire mystery. So I ate it and then he said to look out in the kitchen and I wd see a husky well built man about 50 yrs of age sweeping up or polishing pots and pans. That is Pete, said Nick. “Pete use to be the best short order cook I ever ran across in all my experience in this business. But one day Pete’s wife ran away with a wrestler and took their three little ones with them and Pete began hitting the sauce and got into a fight and somebody hit him over the conk with a bung starter and he was never the same after that. But Nick knew Pete as boys in the old country and Nick made up his mind that Pete wd always have a job as long as he owned a rest. So Nick had to hire another cook and gave Pete the job sweeping up. But every once in a while while sweeping up Pete wd think he heard Nick order something like a ham omlet or small steak or one of the other dishes that Pete was good at and he wd put down his broom and go and cook the omlet or whatever he tho’t he heard. Oh and I forgot to say in there that when he wd think he wd hear Nick ordering he wd yell out “right” and then start cooking it. I said to Nick that must run into money. Yes, it does, said Nick but that is okay and anyway you are here to eat the stuff so I do not have to throw it away.
Well that is all about Nick and Pete and I do not know which one is wackiest either Nick for keeping Pete or Pete himself. You can make up your mind as I have my own idea. But that is the way they are in this town. Even the Greeks.
Your
Pal Joey