Working as an apprentice at a Greek restaurant was challenging, but not without its rewards. It was an outdoor venue, so floor cleaning wasn't required. Picnic tables were scattered along a grassy hillside with trees and natural lighting during the daytime and candles and moonlight at night. I had a lot to learn, so most of my time was spent shadowing the boss's son as he performed almost every job involved in the running of a small restaurant.
"Get those hotdogs for me, will you?" he barked. "They've been in the water too long."
I hastened to retrieve the drowning dogs from the steaming tub but soon realized that I had no tongs with which to grab them.
I remembered a fellow at YMCA Summer Camp who bore the scars of what he called "hot dog gloop" from an incident working at his father's restaurant in which he dropped his wristwatch into a vat of boiling hot dog water. Without thinking he reached in to rescue the watch, a gift from his father, and was instantly scarred for life by the scalding water.
"Never mind," the son said in disgust, pouring off some of the water and skewering the dogs with a fork. He could see that I was paralyzed, lost in my daydream of summer camp and the horrid purple and white scarred hands of my campmate.
Next he proceeded to show me how to prepare the sauce for one of their main dishes, the Miso Burrito.
"Do you know what Miso is?" he questioned me.
"Tomatos and corn meal," I said promptly. I had recently learned this, after many years of passing this item over in the supermarket, when Emery brought some home from the food bank.
(Now that I think about it, it wasn't Miso after all, but polenta. But for the purposes of this dream, I'm still going to call it Miso, error or no.)
"Correct. So you can look at this as a Greek Tamale, or as we like to call it, the Miso Burrito." He went on to explain how the sauce was also tomato based but had a strong chili component.
"Dammit, Patty!" the owner said under his breath, looking up toward the fracas.
The pretty blonde had taken her top off and was serving the patrons in true early Greek fashion. She was certainly not getting any complaints, but the loud comments from some of the more inebriated male customers became a bit much for the normally sedate atmosphere. The owner suggested that I attempt to rein her in, and a foot chase ensued.
Giggling, still topless and flopping about, Patty ran off behind some apartment buildings, maintaining a pretty good speed despite her natural encumberments.
"You keep after her, and I'll try to head her off," said the owner's son.
His strategy didn't work, and soon she'd disappeared completely from view. We came upon a chair that was placed strategically at the top of a decrepit old staircase so that if anyone sat in it they would most certainly fall backward to their death. I touched the arm of the chair with one finger, and it plummeted into an empty chasm where the staircase had fallen away in ruins.
"That was a close call," the son said.
At the same time, across the ravine on the other side of the hill, I saw a man with a hat and briefcase standing in a drainage culvert. Behind him, in the side of the mountain, a set of elevator doors suddenly appeared, and he took one step backward and disappeared into them. The doors then vanished as quickly as they had appeared, leaving no trace of the man or the passageway.
Back in the restaurant, a heated discussion was going on between the owner, his son and I on the subject of toplessness, and breasts in general.
"It's not appropriate in a dining establishment, and that is that!" exclaimed the owner.
The son and I took a different view, but our stance was puerile at best.
"I think it depends on the breasts, really," I stated. "Some of them are quite nice and could be appreciated in any venue, purely on artistic merit."
"Poppycock!" said the owner. "You boys just like seeing a nice set of tits. You don't give a damn about art or any of that."
I did not disagree with him. The dream ended on that note. Springtime rages on, apparently, at least in my dream world.
