NIGHT COOK FOR NURSES

Times Square / 1976 / Photo by RCS

While night cook for nurses sounds like the title of a 1970s exploitation movie, it was my last job in the Sunshine State, before I finally left Florida for good. I worked the night shift at The Metropolitan General Hospital, just off 66^th Street. Most nights I rode my ten-speed there, and wheeled back home in the early morning. From autumn of 1977 to the springtime of 1978, I worked topsy-turvy hours, starting work at midnight and getting off at 8:30 a.m. Making burgers, fries, grilled cheese sandwiches, and sometimes an order as exotic as a tuna melt with fried onions. The supervising night nurse, with dyed auburn hair and Joan Crawford lipstick, often demanded to come back to the grill and cook her own onions. She was the dark queen of the night nurses, and I handed her the spatula. The nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, and electricians who worked the night shift could tell I was a completely different breed than the former night cook. Those in the know told me he half-assed the gig, at best. I went all in. I cared, since I liked the night shift crew, and I wanted to keep the job until I’d saved up enough money. I was saving up for my goal. Escaping Florida. Taking the Amtrak out of St. Petersburg all the way to New York City. Several of the night nurses were from Canada. They loved living in Florida, and had been enticed by higher pay, sunshine, beaches, and suntans. I’d already had enough sun to last a lifetime. The most interesting of the nurses wasn’t one of the beach-going nurses. Gloria was quieter, more contemplative, and was an ex-nun. Some nights when things were slow in the lunchroom we’d talk about who we’d been reading. Most recently, I’d been reading Kurt Vonnegut, Sylvia Plath, Hunter S. Thompson, and Henry Miller. She mentioned reading Thomas Merton, and the Tao Te Ching. I said I’d read the Tao Te Ching, and wondered if she’d read Alan Watts. She hadn’t, and said she’d pick up one of his books. Gloria perked up when I mentioned moving to New York, and going to art school. I said, “I flew up there last year, and visited The Metropolitan Museum, wandered through Central Park, and explored Greenwich Village.” She assured me it was going to be the best thing for my life. And she said, with the voice of an encouraging soothsayer. “I see good things for you, once you arrive there.” One of the respiratory therapists, Lori, had a far different perspective. Curly-haired Lori was a few years older than me, and had grown up in The Bronx. That’s where she’d escaped from. We went out for a while, but we each saw we were on far different life paths. Like the Canadian nurses, she loved Florida. I was ready to get out. I think I was born being done with the place. Nothing was keeping me there any longer, besides going to the Tuesday night life drawing sessions in downtown St. Pete. One of the good things about working for a small community hospital, at night, is rules can be bent, if not broken. I’d found out Henry Miller was not only still alive, shockingly, but he was going to be interviewed on The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder in a couple of nights. I asked the nighttime engineer if there was a vacant room I could use on my lunch break. He checked, set it up for me, and told me all was OK. Just make sure I locked the door on my way out. How strange to view this writer, old and close to dying, yet with a vital life force and sharp mind showing. I’d discovered his books by browsing at a downtown bookstore, and happened to pick up Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. Definitely not the book Miller was known for (as I’d soon find out). Someone at work saw me carrying around Big Sur, and said, “Oh, you’re reading dirty Henry.” I said, “There’s nothing dirty in here, and besides, what’s your definition of dirty?”

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