PALACE HOTEL: IN THE MIDST OF CHAOS…
In 1978, while working at New Morning Group Home in Ukiah, Louise Boas applied for a job at the Palace Bar and Grill.
The hotel was under construction and they were hiring. Having dabbled in food and thinking it would be a cool place to work, she applied and interviewed with Pat Kuleto who told her he would put her on as a backup hostess.
Although he never said it, she knew she was not the type.
“I looked at all the girls who were hosting and waitressing and it wasn't me.”
Just prior to the free opening party, with staff serving as greeters for the bankers and business men, a circuit blew and the lights went out.
“Because, you know, they hadn't done much with the electrical.”
Louise, who does well in chaos, stayed calm in the midst of it all.
“I told the staff to go to the store and buy some candles, remove any tripping hazards. We lit the candles, the place settled down and the lights came back on.”
The next day she went to see Pat about scheduling her. He thanked her for her help a bit dismissively and then she explained… that he needed her. Soon enough she was working full time and within three to four months became an assistant manager, doing the scheduling for the dining rooms and events. Cockroaches were ever-present.
“All the wooden booths in the dining room served as a cockroach freeway for them to run along the wood at the customers' shoulder level as they ate. One customer called me over to show me a dead one face up in his salad.”
The exterminators did their job but said there were so many tunnels and holes between the walls that it would be difficult to flush them all out.
She says that Ron West, one of the primary finish painters, might have been the one who came up with the idea to build the giant cockroach that was dropped over the side of the building in April, 1979. Afterward, Ralph Hamby the night bartender, a big guy with a handlebar mustache, developed a special drink to celebrate the occasion.
“Ralph was adamant that he would not tally out his bar at the end of the night; he was a bartender not a bookkeeper. So, I would take the receipts and do it.”
She was called at 2 a.m. the morning Kenneth Parnell, auditor/night clerk, was arrested for kidnapping Steven Stayner and Timmy White. She talked to reporters from KTVU and took over the desk until the morning shift arrived.
At night she would cash out the bars and hand Parnell the receipts and money to be put in the safe until Pat came in the morning to pick them up.
“I don't think I even signed them over; I handed them to him and he'd put them in the safe.”
At the end of the growing season, the major marijuana players would come down for dinner and would be served in the small back dining room, a little alcove for about 15.
“They would have wads of cash and buy the best wines. They'd bring us little baggies of shake… that they'd never smoke.”
She remembers seeing Charlie Musselwhite at the Back Door. He was accompanied by a woman who told them not to give him anything to drink, no drugs.
“Then he'd call us over to the corner and say, `Come on, can you please bring me a drink.'”
Rapunzel Oberholtzer, the Back Door bar
tender, told her about David Raitt's private birthday party when Bonnie showed up with her equally famous father, John (“Carousel,” “Oklahoma”).
“Everybody's having a great time and Bonnie says, `I think I'll get up and sing a couple of songs.' That place just seemed to draw people.”
One night John Parducci brought a hundred-year-old bottle of port from his personal cellar and gave her a taste.“Oh, my God, it was like sipping the best liquid chocolate.
“When business was getting slow, Mimi McCarthy arranged for the bus tours to stop on their way to the wineries and we'd have one hour to serve them. It was crazy to be exhausted at the end of an hour after serving 100 people, throwing food at them.”
There was John, who cooked over the mesquite grill — a rather unpleasant fellow who did a lot of drugs — and ruled his station with an attitude of `you get the food when I'm ready to get it to you.'
“Mike Cash was a good waiter, slow but good, and his customers were not getting their food on time. I asked John to speed it up.”
He arranged a plate of sausage and sauerkraut so as to offend, an artisticallyarranged, edible insult.
Prior to their shifts, at 3 or 4 in the afternoon, she and Lon Custer, the head waiter, would go into the little staff closet off the main bar and add just a little bit of pick-me-up to their coffee.
“So, we'd be ready for the customers, you know.
“Inventory days were always interesting. They had to count every ounce of everything and there was always an argument as to who'd get to count the alcohol inventory. If it was in between, they'd get to pour it off and drink it.
“The managers served as go- betweens with Pat and the staff. Pat would always schmooze and everybody thought he was a great guy; but he never wanted to pay. He had the best artists working with him and hardly paid them anything.”
The backers told them from the beginning that Ukiah was a meat and potatoes town and the place was going to be a hard sell.
“`No,' he said, `It'll be fine. This is going to be good.' He just had a way of charming people.”
One night while talking with her co-workers, she discovered that her male counterpart was being paid far more than she was making.
“I worked harder and did more; he hung out at the bar (more than I did) drinking and socializing.
The next day I told Pat.”
He became defensive but eventually acceded, saying he would pay her equally from then on but not for back wages.
Soon after, Louise burned her feet with flaming hot oil at a home party and was unable to walk. Pat kept her on payroll and after a few weeks stopped by
to see how she was doing.
“He really came to see me because he wanted to know how long he was going to have to pay me.”
After the visit, Lon began carrying her back and forth to work so she could do the scheduling.
In 1981, she left to help Lon and his partner Bob Simm, the chef at the Coach
House, train the dining room staff at their new restaurant in Idaho.
After six months, she returned to the Bay Area and from 1983 to 1992, Louise ran her own business, Ruby's Midnight Pies, delivering a variety of pies, including Midnight Pie ( peanut butter pie), to restaurants in S.F. and Oakland.
The following is a collaborative recipe for the Palace Hotel's Peanut Butter Pie — from my memory and Louise's written version:
Crust: Combine 1½ c. crumbs of vanilla and chocolate wafers and graham crackers; 6 T. ground almonds; and sugar, cinnamon and crème de cocoa to taste. Mix in ½ c. melted butter and shape into a pie plate. Bake at 350 degrees for about 5 -10 minutes.
Filling: Mix 1 cup peanut butter, 8 oz. cream cheese and 1 cup sugar. In another bowl whip 1 ½ to 2 c. whipping cream with 1 T. vanilla until peaks are semi stiff. Combine the two mixtures well, fill the pie crust and refrigerate.
Topping: In a double boiler, melt 4- 6 oz. semisweet chocolate chips, 1 t. vanilla and a bit of Kahlua. Add cold water (or heavy cream) slowly, mix to desired consistency and coat the pie. Refrigerate.
For each cut, run a big knife under hot water and wipe dry.
Old friends from Ukiah including Carmelita Springsteele, Rose Royce, Roger Pernod, Walter Ego, Flo Cone, Rex Begonia, Max Raft, Crystal Cavely, Rodney Colodney, Bubbles a la Carte, Natasha Two-Shoes, Stefano Ballerino and Con Cretin send their best regards to Ruby Styx, who no longer resides in the fair township of Ukiah.