I went down to The Plaza and got a job washing dishes. The owner yelled at the staff through a microphone. To say it was not polite was really an understatement. I felt bad for the nice people that worked there, but decided I would rather not go to school than be abused all day. I quit. I did demand my 2 hours of pay. I was direct and forceful about it being abusive.

I walked up the hill towards Rockport and arrived at a place called The Super. I applied for a dishwashing job. The application had all sorts of information that was unneeded for a dishwasher including college degrees, foreign languages, etc. I filled in the foreign languages: Fortran, Assembly language (this was a stretch), PLC, Treble, Bass and Tenor Clefs.

The manager came out and said, “Its boring around here. Can you come here on Sunday?” I washed dishes for about 3 months. After the first week I stopped eating lentils with lentil sprouts every day. I also became a prep cook. All the veges in soups were cut fresh. I was required to sharpen my knife to the point of being able to shave every day. Half way through I had to recheck it. I worked there for two years.

We did use a slicer attachment on a Hobart for somethings, but other veges had specific shapes and sizes. Becoming efficient was a challenge. The other prep cook was probaby 20% faster than I was.

The garden and tomatos

It is common to value things with money. This car cost so many dollars. But as someone with a job it is often better to think of things as hours worked. Say you can get buy on a $24 dollar an hour job and that you clear $20. But you see a shiny new Iphone that you want and it will cost your $100 plus $40 more monthly. That would be 5 hours of work now and then another two each month over and above what you are already working.  In a year that is 29 hours extra you have to work to have the phone. It about 3/4 of a weeks work or two weekend’s work.

There was a Co-Evolution Quarterly article on this ages ago. I did  not read it. I heard about it from a friend. It talked about the cost in hours of driving a car for errands vs the cost in hours of using a bicycle. Another similar one compared hourly costs of a new car vs a beater car including time taking it too and from repair shops. It is a useful way to look at things. Often saving money is easier than earning it. Sometimes it is not.

Anyhow, in order to stay in school and succeed I needed to not spend much money. I did spend a few dollars on a book, “The No-Fad, Good Food 5$ a Week Cookbook”Caroline ACKERMAN 1974 .  The book was written by a mother who was worried about her children. She had gone on a hiking trip with them and their friends. My memory is that it was about 4 days. They hiked in for a day and dinner came. She ate it but thought, “no meat”. Well she figured there would be some the next day. There was none at lunch. At dinner when there was none she spoke up, “Where is the meat?”. The kids said, “No meat mom, we are hiking” . She said, ” We’d better go back, we are going to starve! ” They responded , “Mom, its two days back or two days to finish, we are not going to starve.”

Her children were about to go off to school and she was worried about them. She read, and although from Canada decided that they should know how to meet their minimun US Daily Adult Requirements for food.

I used the book as a guide and for a school year I kept track of expenses and spent $3.27 per week on average. During this time I was working at The Souper and  ate a meal there and brought home about a pound of bread ends.  The diet was mostly rice, beans and inexpensive vegetables including potatoes, onions, and cabbage. But I also purchase winter squash and pumpkin when it was cheap. A 10 pound pumpkin can be had very inexpensively the day after Halloween. I bought 6 eggs every week. I made yogurt from non-instant dry powdered milk which was inexpensive because of subsidies. I sometimes turned it into Labney, or yogurt cheese. The whey went into my bread that I baked.

I made tofu a few times. I bought almost no “prepared” food although I was using some margarine to save money. I did splurge on a stick of butter every few weeks. 

This is about the time my father started in on me, “You can’t survive as a vegetarian”. I do not think a year went by when he harassed me with this. I was never a vegetarian. I even at some turkey bought when really cheap and occasionally chuck steaks. But chicken showed up frequently. He seemed to start up when he was meeting my friends. It was annoying. He knew it.

About the time of his coronary bypass operation about a decade after his heart attacks his doctor told him, “You know, if you became a vegetarian you likely would not live much longer, but you would have a better time doing it.” I started introducing him. “This is my father, Joe. He is a vegetarian.”

Freshmand from the dorms on Sundays.