Help! I’m being held prisoner in a Chinese Restaurant!

That’s not my story but it makes a good title, right? I did read an article about the practice of undocumented Chinese cooks working subjugated to restaurant owners. They work for low wages in order to pay back employment brokers who arranged their jobs. Because of their undocumented status they are exploited.

Indentured workers may be why your Fried Rice is inexpensive.

In 1976 I worked briefly as a dishwasher at Chow’s Garden Restaurant on North Main Street in Dayton, Ohio. Picture golden fried rice with bean sprouts, roast pork, shrimp, and egg in a serving dish with a round lid so your food, when uncovered, reveals a perfectly molded steaming hemisphere. That kind of cuisine, Chinese food for Americans. Across the road from the restaurant was a small frame house where the cooks lived. They lived in the little house and worked seven days a week at Chows. Looking back, I’m thinking that they were probably indentured workers. Not that we ever had much contact because none of them spoke English. Chow’s was busy and I remember the cooks prepping great tables of chopped cabbage, onions and other filler veggies that were part of most recipes. They cooked in large caldrons the sauces and tossed in the air, stir fried dishes in wide woks, expertly catching and flipping vertical columns of fried food.

Chow’s did not have an industrial dishwashing machine. Stack the dishes on plastic racks, slide the rack in, close the cover, hit a switch and the machine blasts the dishes so they get sterilized. The hot racks of clean dishes get stacked up to dry. Instead, Chow’s had an assembly line of workers who washed all dishes by hand. One sink for scrubbing, one for rinsing, another of iodine tinted water for sterilizing and racks to stack and let air dry all dishes, glassware and tableware. Sloshing around in the filthy water and dealing with food waste and garbage was a horrible job. Especially the first scrubbing sink.

My buddy Glen got me the job. Another friend John, also worked there. They were more or less budding criminals, and I mean that in the best possible way. Honor among thieves type of crooks you could say. None of us were destined to be career dishwashers. The last time I saw John (forty years ago?) he was looking quite natural on a Harley Davidson.

“Just took some crazy monkey tranquilizer. Feeling good!” he said.

I was in no way bad like them but, I was one of those youths who didn’t really have a niche and had friends in many circles, an occasional tag along with the wrong crowd. Being the new guy I got the scrubbing sink. Glen or John manned the rinse station that was equipped with a sprayer on a hose. It was great fun to douse the new guy who responded with a splash of nasty scrub water. We screwed around a lot and got chewed out by the manager. Glen and John imitated the cooks yelling at each other in Chinese, right to their faces. They didn’t care. Measured irreverence can be a quality but now as an adult I see how mocking someone’s accent and mannerisms is over the top. Unfortunately many adolescent boys are nasty pieces of work and we were no exception.

One weekend night after cleaning the place and finishing up somebody, maybe using a piece of cardboard or tape, set the latch so the back door wouldn’t lock.  My friends gave me a ride back home late maybe around 1 am. All to the better, I wasn’t deemed daring enough to be included in the next part.  My friends returned in Glenn’s family car, a Ford Pinto and entered the dark restaurant. They plundered the place, loading the Pinto with massive cooking cleavers, containers of food, liquor from the lounge and a keg of beer. This booty they carried off to Glen’s basement rec room. Not a great idea in case the cops ever put two and two together. Oddly, even with zero attempt to conceal the evidence, nothing happened. No police investigation, no questions, nothing.

For the next few days Glen’s basement was home to a teenage bacchanal. All us ruffians chowed on roast pork, cold egg rolls and quaffed beer. Warm, flat beer because there wasn’t a chiller big enough for a keg and they neglected to steal a proper keg tap. They just knocked in the seal and poured. A keg is a lot of beer but we did our best to chug it before it went bad.

Soon after that my friends stopped going to work. No matter. My criminal friends were promptly replaced by a couple of Appalachian guys from the east side with thick accents. If you don’t know the region, the southern US has a culture with roots in Kentucky, Tennessee and all across the Appalachian Mountains. Those folks don’t really exist in the Upper Midwest and other regions. Definitely not in Alaska where I am living today.

Two details remain in my mind. One of the guys was known as “Froggy” because, no lie, he spoke in a frog like croaking voice with a Southern accent. The other was that they were always high on amphetamines and offered me white pills from a baggy, which I declined.

“Ya’ll oughter bah Froggy’s spaid,” one offered, trying to get me to buy the drugs. No deal.

We only worked together one or two nights, they were creeps and not cool co-workers. A disclaimer: although there seemed to be a lot of drugs around, it was the 70s after all, I was never really a druggie. I was good with warm flat beer shared with pals and that was about it.

Ok end of story. Not a long tale and lacking a moral about work ethic or responsibility apart from don’t burglarize where you work. That escapade could have turned out much worse.  Nonetheless, a worthy bit of sordid oral history in exactly 1000 words.