Turned
out I could bus dishes pretty well. At
five o’clock Norm, Eddie, and I put on our dark pants, white shirts, and bow
ties then went across to the restaurant.
Mrs. Marshall looked us over and sent Eddie back to shine his
shoes. I met the two pleasant young
waitresses (names lost in the mists of time), watched Norman and Eddie serving
coffee and clearing tables for a while, then I was on my own.
Actually,
even though the restaurant was busy most evening and there were always things
that could be done around the grounds days, I do not think that Mr. Marshall
really needed all three of us. Two bus
boys could keep up handily. More often
than not, Marshall would give one of us the evening off so we could lounge
around the cabin and read a book or listen to the radio he provided.
Each
of us had two days a week off so we could catch the bus home to be with our
families for a night or go to a movie.
Although he always kept us fairly busy with gardening the grounds and
cleaning the restaurant mornings, we sure did not hurt ourselves working. The morning splitting wood was the hardest
work I did during the entire summer.
The
restaurant was closed each Monday so the waitresses could have a whole day off
and, under Mrs. Marshall’s supervision, we could thoroughly clean the place,
scrub the floors, wax all the tables.
The evening was ours. I recall
one Monday evening when we finished work in the early afternoon. We decided to walk the mile down the hill to
LaCenter. Norm, being nineteen, was
elected to go into the local tavern and get us some beer.
Norm
got half a case of Lucky Lager and I went to the store and bought a green pack
of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Eddie bought
a bottle of fortified loganberry wine.
We took turns carrying the beer back up the long hill to the cabin. The rest of the evening we sat around with
the radio going, talking, singing, and smoking cigarettes. We had quite a party since none of us was
used to drinking anything stronger than Coca Cola except for a very infrequent
single bottle of beer or a few sips of wine when we were in high school.
There
is no telling what time we finally went to sleep and I know the Marshalls would
have heard the noise because their house was only about forty yards away. We were a sorry looking threesome the next
morning and fully expected Marshall to give us hell, but he never said a word
about it. All he said was, “Boys, I
would appreciate it if you would not smoke at night in the cabin—might burn it
down.”
That
summer at Summit Grove passed all too quickly.
We were happy and carefree, liking what we were doing and having
fun. As fall approached, however, we had
to face up to what we were going to do.
Norman was going back to college at the University of Washington in
Seattle where he was taking pre-law courses.
I do not recall what Eddie Sutherland was going to do.
Marshall
told us that he only kept one man on after Labor Day and that any one of us
could stay. He gave us each a ten-dollar
bonus for the summer. When I declilned
to stay on myself, he gave me a letter of recommendation and suggested that I
see Lloyd Garrison, owner of the CC Store in Vancouver about a winter job.
