She was single once again, and needed income, so she took a job managing a truck stop restaurant. It was a typical “greasy spoon” when she started, but I like to think she brought an element of class to it. She wasn’t young any more, but she still had her figure—with the help of a girdle, that is. Where many women of her age and generation wore girdles to squeeze the waist and slim the hips, Leta used hers to keep the shape of her body she was used to. In the dark, men didn’t seem to notice that the skin was somewhat looser than that of a twenty-five-year-old. And for the most part, she wasn’t with men who could get away with a twenty-five-year-old that they enjoyed doing with her. And truck drivers, she knew, were lonely men.
Working had never and would never be an anathema to her. In her life, she kept house, hand washed laundry, sewed and embroidered (although she didn’t like the latter very much), took in borders (which she hated), maintained vegetable gardens, canned vegetables, cleaned chickens and cooked. She was a good cook, although she never made anything particularly fancy. “Meat and potatoes—that’s what I make most of the time, and I do it pretty well. Never had any complaints,” she explained. “But country fried chicken—that’s my specialty. I know everyone says its her specialty, so I just say my fried chicken is very good.”
Her fried chicken got her the job. One evening, she was spending time being friendly to some of the drivers when the owner of the place, a very traditional man always concerned about her, was lamenting that he had lost his restaurant manager and the one waitress was threatening to leave. He wasn’t a good boss. Although he knew that young women inspired his almost exclusively male customers to eat more and spend more, he could never reconcile that he was using young women, who should be home being taken care of by their parents or home taking care of their equally young husbands, for income. He had a different kind of respect for mature women who had “two feet on the ground and their heads out of the clouds.”
To him, she was womanly and something else, not manly, but solid, sure, certain, like a man in that way. It was a kind of self-confidence in herself. Or maybe that she knew how to be a woman and a person at the same time. It could have just been her magnetism. He understood, married for twenty years to the girl he met at age 18, five kids, feeling tremendous respect for his silly wife, that his customer-friend was a womanly force, and he better be careful.
The evening he hired her was a near-disaster. The previous manager had quit the previous night, and although the owner was ready to fire him for his indiscretions with the waitresses and his lousy cooking, no actions had begun for a replacement. After the somewhat inebriated manager cornered her in the storage room for the umpteenth time and actually fondled her, the primary waitress quit in a huff. When the owner confronted him, the manager threw a punch and walked out, leaving him shy his primary waitress and cook-manager. His wife agreed to fill in briefly, but neither she nor he had any interest in her working. Especially there.
By ten p.m., when the late night drivers usually arrived, seeking a chunk of beef or a full-on late night breakfast, he was left with his youngish waif of a waitress. She was fine at making coffee and slicing pie, but terribly unqualified to run the restaurant, even in the interim. Plus, when she worked late, her fiancé stayed late at the bar until she was finished. He was an insecure, jealous sort, which the owner excused in the name of love, while also realizing that drinking and jealousy were a bad combination. The only saving grace was that the night in question was generally a quiet night for both the bar and the restaurant. But not entirely.
He stormed into the bar after chasing off a suspicious fellow who was more interested in molesting the waitress than eating pie. While he was forcibly excising the degenerate from the establishment, a tired, hungry trucker walked in.
The waitress followed standard procedure and poured the trucker a cup of coffee.
“What would you like this evening?” she asked.
“What you got?” he asked.
“We have some delicious chicken soup and fresh peach pie,” she answered. “Yes, I think we have a few pieces left. Even have some vanilla ice cream; I can put a dollop on top.”
“That sounds great for dessert,” the man answered. “but I’m powerful hungry.”
“Then I suggest the hearty soup and toast,” she covered cheerfully, “It’s a lot more filling than the usual crackers. And,” she added pointedly and proudly (for her mother made it), “we carry fresh raspberry jam!”
The man thought for a moment. “Little lady,” he finally said, “Toast sounds absolutely great.”
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