TALL ORDER FOR YOUNG WAITRESS
This 14-year-old learned fast and kept her cool.
My mom, Patty, was tall for her age, to the point movie theaters tried to charge her the adult price. But one time her height worked to her advantage.
The budget was tight for the Gayle family in the 1940s, so 14-year-old
Patty applied for a part-time job at the coffee shop called the Purple Cow. She convinced the manager to let her work as a counter server. To his credit, he tried to verify that she was
16, but Patty “forgot” to bring her birth certificate until the manager finally stopped asking.
The coffee shop was at the Anderson Hotel, an entertainment hub in Anderson, Indiana, and celebrities visited with some frequency. Patty remembered serving the famous “Johnny the Bellboy” Roventini, a cigarette company spokesman.
She also waited on actor and musician Smiley Burnette. I remember him as Charley Pratt, the engineer of the Hooterville Cannonball on TV’s Petticoat Junction. In my Mom’s time, Burnette was better known as Frog Millhouse, Gene Autry’s comic sidekick. Smiley added “Frog” to his autograph for Patty, which he signed on a card promoting the restaurant’s
65-cent special of beef stew, whipped potatoes and cabbage.
As an underage employee, Patty had one especially close call when her school principal stopped in for a sundae. Nervous, she took great pains to provide excellent service, including an extremely generous serving of ice cream. Patty’s deception was never detected.
My mother graduated high school in 1947 and worked for 30 years in human resources for a local General Motors plant. But she never forgot her days meeting interesting people as a waitress at the Purple Cow.