Pizza Schiddy...from the "Best Of" Vaults

In April of 1981 I was winding up my sophomore year and had just turned 16. I had tried out for the Roch. John Marshall JV baseball team, but there was a guy my age, John McThompson, who was already a starter on the varsity team at the position I played, catcher. Plus I could not not stand it when a high school pitcher threw a slider or curve that looked like it was coming right at you. I would bail out of the batter's box and be halfway down the road to a pay phone to call my mommy and cry about a ball heading right for my head, and then "SWOOSH", the ball would break across the plate for a strike. I can still see the look of disgust on Mark Lang's face as he sneered at me from the mound. And then a fastball would come. This was probably thrown around 80 mph, maybe, but I could not hit one of those damn things past the pitcher's mound.
Of course, at that age I had the self-confidence and back bone of a jelly fish, so I promptly quit (a decision I now regret because back up catcher in retrospect, would have been a lot of fun if I could have made the team that year or maybe the next year) and decided to get a job. I had a neighborhood friend Deanna, (see Kick the Can H. Schiddy) whose older sister was married to a manager at Shakey's Pizza Parlor in Shakeys. I had an "in", and before long I had donned the trademark Shakey's cap, pinstriped shirt, and apron and was serving "...fun at Shakey's also Pizza."

At Shakey's Pizza we served fun at Shakey's also Pizza. And also 3.2 beer. And we had a manager who had no problem with serving under-aged employees free 3.2 beer after closing time. By the time I was 17 I usually had the opportunity to "close" the restaurant on a Friday or Sat. a couple of times a month with a couple other employees and this particular manager. So when we finished around 1:00am sometimes we would knock down a pitcher. Sometimes it became 2 or 4 pitchers of 3.2 beer. It is not as hard to get drunk drinking 3.2 beer as one might imagine, especially when you a relatively young lad with little alcohol experience or tolerance under your skinny little belt. I can still taste that cold beer in those frosted mugs after working in a hot kitchen for eight hours. They went down pretty easy, and I was not much fan of beer at the time. I remember one particular night where after a couple hours of 3.2's we locked up Shakeys and ambled next door to Mr. Donut and weaseled and whined until they gave us free donuts. Then it was time to go home. As I drove down the hill to our house on 18th Ave about a mile away, I realized I had committed the Cardinal sin. My dad was a chef, and got up at 3:00am to open the main kitchen at the Kahler Hotel in Roch. He would be up eating breakfast! And I didn't even bring him any donuts!
This 3.2 stuff was going to get me in to big trouble. What was I going to say to him? He was no stranger to the smell of stale beer breath and would bust me for sure. Here I was, Joe Eagle scout, reduced to Slushy Drunk as a Skunk Scout, about ready to catch some serious crap from my dad. Yet when I pulled up to the house the lights were not on. I could not believe my luck as I quietly slunk up to the front door, put my key in the lock: wrong key, put my key in the lock: upside-down, fumbling and swearing now as I put my key in the lock, turned the knob, and walked right into a stone faced angry mom standing in the door way. She totally scared the intoxicated crap right out of me. She said very little, maybe nothing, I can't remember, and then turn and stormed away.
As I drifted off to gaga-sloppy-snore-cotton-mouth-dreamland, I speculated on what my punishment from mom would be. What would she do? The silent treatment? Forced labor? A week of guilt tripping? Grounding?
I don't even remember if my mom inforced anything or not. The next morning two things became more apparent than my parents did. 1. Maple glazed long johns are not nearly as tasty the second time around. 2. The poison from the 3.2 was giving me a far worse punishment than anything my mom could dish out.
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Then there was the head manager, we'll call him Ronald, or 'Big Ron' as we called him behind his back. He was a Nam Vet "I don't want to talk about it" who was the head manager of the restaurant. Ronald was a big round, amiable guy who was quite intelligent and friendly-until something went wrong. I think he might have had some PTSD issues. If someone screwed up on a pizza he would give a kind of warning, a kind of shot-across-the-bow short burst of expletives directed at the culprit or perhaps the whole crew that someone had f!@#ed up and that had better be it for the night. Well, on busy nights with hundreds of pizzas, there was bound to be another screw up or two with a pizza order. A mistake like someone wanted half olives on the pizza and they got olives on the whole pizza. The customer, instead of just dealing with it, would whine to Big Ron. This would be the second offense of the night. Ronald would smile through clenched teeth to the customer informing them that they would get a new pizza as soon as possible and then he would walk back to the kitchen. You could tell something was wrong just by looking at him. His face would turn bright cartoon-blow-your-top-tomato-red, and then he would forcefully unleash a string of expletives that would make a sailor wince. "God D!@# you God D!@$ Son of a B$%*&! What is so God D!@$ F!@#ing hard about half olives!" He would slam the rejected pizza down. "That’s $15.00 down the God D!@$ F#$%ing drain! God D!@$ it!" This would go on for a little while and then he would storm off.

Occasionally there would be a third or fourth mistake in the kitchen. Ronald could no longer keep the expletives quiet enough then, and would walk to the back prep area and dishwashing area so he could yell them out. Usually there was a guy back there doing prep work, and Ronald would scare the crap out of him. Then he would come back and make whoever the culprit was in the pizza kitchen go back and wash dishes for the rest of the night. Good prep chefs working back in the dishwashing area would go on to become excellent therapists, having cut their teeth in counseling by repairing the egos of these broken employees. But there was no repairing Ronald. Sometimes he got so mad he would turn bright red, and then his eyes would kind of glaze over and he would just go stone silent and stare at the wall. I had seen Coming Home with Jane Fonda and John Voight, so I was pretty sure Ronald was having Nam flashbacks during those times, but I can not be sure. My first day at work Ronald was my manager. I think I made two mistakes (hey I was learning!) in the first half-hour and spent the rest of the evening washing dishes. As I got more experienced I would shelter the younger more inexperienced from him, often beating Ronald to the punch and suggesting they go back and wash dishes before that third or fourth "screw up" was made.
In the kitchen where we made the pizzas there was a window to the arcade game room. The window was primarily a vehicle for snotty nosed little twerps to express themselves to us by pressing their snotty noses and drooling lips up against the glass while we slaved in 90 degree plus heat on their stupid pepperoni pizzas. Often it was used by the first manager (3.2 beer guy) I mentioned to check out some attractive high school girl (O.K. we all did that). But I often wondered what those kids thought about when they looked through the window and saw the big red faced man shouting at us while we were making their pizza. I bet they would go running back to their table, shouting "Mommy, there's a big red man where they make the pizzas and he is going to explode!
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We also had another manager at Shakeys, we'll call him Jim, who was a brother of the first manager I mentioned who would serve us the 3.2 beer. Jim was pretty cool; he was basically a fill-in manager for the shifts when the two previously mentioned full time managers were off. Jim was, and probably still is, what I call a weather groupie. These are men and women who get excited by bad weather. This was in the 1980's, and was long before the weather channel was well known or easily accessible. It was before local news affiliates learned that broadcasting two hours of "storm tracking" with technology with some kind of sci-fi name like, "Super Storm Transmogrifying Urban Position Indicating Device 2000 (SSTUPID 2000)" radar equipment brought great ratings, whether there was actually a storm or not. Nowadays, at the most pivotal point of whatever game I am watching in the summer, I can expect to interrupted by Paul "I'm really an alien" Douglass on Channel 4. Paul will report that they have satellite verification that a butterfly has flapped its wings in China, so they need to give us expanded coverage of the Zen-like chain of events that will lead to a potential class 4 hurricane touching down somewhere within 300 miles of my home for the next four hours with their SSTUPID 2000 device.

Back in the 1980's, weather groupies did not have as much coverage or technology to aid them in getting their weather fix. The highest role for an amateur weather groupie to attain was that of a "spotter." for the local weather service. I'm not sure if John was an official spotter or not, but he definitely aspired to be one. To get an idea of what these spotters are like, listen to WCCO radio sometime when there is bad weather, and they break in to their regular programming. Often they will put live callers on the air. It usually goes something like this.
WCCO Radio Personality: " We have Ralph Malf from Barnum area on the WCCO Weather Watch Phone. Ralph can you tell me what you can see."
Ralph: " Well I was going out to the shed to sharpen my axes when I looked up. I thought I felt a little wind on my face, you know, like about as much as a butterfly would make. Then the sky was turning kind of pea-soup green, with a gray haze. Then it got really dark, then it got light again, kind of a sickly yellow light. Now its really windy and raining a lot. I'm pretty sure we are going to have a tornado."
WCCO Radio Personality: " Sickly yellow, hmm. That’s like the color of Sid Hartman's complexion! Ha ha ha. There you have it, a possible touch down of a class 5 tornado in Barnum. That will be the only touch down you will hear about today friends, because we going to have to pre-empt the rest of our Golden Gopher football coverage to bring you weather coverage. And speaking of coverage, let me tell you about the latest advancements in medical hair restoration..."

Jim was a little like Ralph, so when he started working at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor he noticed it was on top of a hill in NW Rochester and offered a good vista of the surrounding areas. Especially the roof of Shakey's. Unfortunately, Jim also had a bad knee or something, and could not climb up on the roof. So whenever the weather got really bad and Jim was working at Shakeys, he would ask for a "volunteer" to go up on the roof to see if they could spot a life threatening weather phenomena bearing down on them. The worse the weather, the more Jim had to know, and the more likely a "volunteer" would get to go up on the roof. This is where the Shakey's pecking order came into play. It was based on seniority, but was also based on whether you were related to the owner, Chuck "Bunches of Lunches Today Boys?" Canfield. He had a Barbie doll-like dtr. working there doing nothing, and also a son that would go on to become a manager. I'm pretty sure they never had to do the fun task of climbing up on the ladder when the wind was blowing about 50 miles an hour in a downpour. I luckily never had to do this fun task either, but can still see in my mind the soaked, wild eyed look of some new employee as he came off that roof, no doubt wondering if the $3.35 an hour before taxes wage was worth it. I don't know if John ever spotted a tornado or got on a local radio station, but I'm pretty confident he is still out there somewhere, searching, watching, waiting… with WCCO on his speed dial.
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So what else was served up at Shakeys? Well the Shakey's in Rochester was apparently sensitive to the lack of a good "coming of age" ritual that so many other cultures and regions have. They tried to fill that void by welcoming high school youths into the working world by the dreaded INITIATION. In the back of the restaurant the back door opened up into a area that was fenced off and roofed off by two by fours and chicken wires. This is where the garbage dumpsters were kept. An unsuspecting new employee would be sent back to the "stockade" as it was called to throw out some garbage. As he stepped into the stockade, one of us would jump out, slam the stockade door shut behind him, and lock it. Then we would climb on top of the stockade and dump water and pizza dough on the disgruntled employee. After letting them stew, or perhaps rise for a while, we would let them out. Depending on whether they were liked or not, we would give them a shirt to change into or allow them to run home to change.

Several people tell me they miss Shakeys. I know I don't, I still have recurring anxiety dreams about working there. I still get jumpy when I see a butterfly flutter. I get quite anxious about "screw ups" when I make homemade pizza with the kids (see Mrs. Schiddy and the Schidlets about the time I mistakenly added powdered sugar instead of flour). I still will not drink 3.2 beer to this day. Shakey's has pretty much made every other place I've worked for since then seem like a piece of....pizza pie.

Schiddy out