I’d started cooking after being fired from a job as a hot tar roofer. Most of my jobs during the period of life from ages 19 to 21 were grunt labor. That included glass factory worker, golf course mower and carny. I was ‘between things’ mentally as well as spiritually. Very soon after I was fired my celebration dance turned to disco dread. How would I pay the rent portion of the shamble of a house I lived in with a roving cast of other ‘searchers’? I looked in the want ads. I saw one that said, “Short order cook wanted. No experience necessary”. I circled it. A few days later I was strapping on an apron and heading into the hot unknown.
I really had few skills that were going to pay anything. I mostly enjoyed reading, playing pool and messing around with bands. Fate intervened and I landed in Key West. Being a tourist town there were places to find more cooking jobs and I did. But it was a thing I was just doing ‘for the time being’. Something to pay the bills. I built up some skills but I was still a ‘short order cook’ but in some places that had a bit fancier menus. I had not ‘bought in’ to the notion of being a chef. I knew that at the end of a shift I would be likely burned on some part of my body, possibly nicked if not cut, smell like fish and sweat and be ready for a gallon of beer. And I’d get up the next day and do it all over again. Such is the life of a line cook who has not yet found their calling, if they ever would.