Ann's Diner: How hard could It be?

The summer before I stared college, I picked up a second job on weekends at Ann’s Diner in Salisbury, MA. I’d seen Ann’s ad in the local paper for a Friday and Saturday night grill man and applied in person. When she asked about my experience, I told her some things about cooking in the Coast Guard that were somewhat true and was hired on the spot. I figured, how hard could it be to fry a hamburger or grill a cheese sandwich? Friday and Saturday nights were when the drunks rolled in, and Ann’s regular crew hated to work those shifts.

Ann’s Diner had an interesting history. Originally, Ann and her husband Jim Evans ran a diner in Haverhill, MA. In 1948, they relocated it to Salisbury, where the business thrived. Two years later, they sold the old structure and had it replaced by a larger, custom-built model—Worcester Lunch Car No. 624. The diner has passed through several owners over the years. In 2003 the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

I never met Jim Evans. He died before I arrived on the scene. He’d suffered severe brain damage after crashing a light plane on the beach and passed away a few months later. Ann was left as sole owner of the diner. She was a tough—plainspoken, no-nonsense lady. She had one son from a previous marriage, and three sons with Jim. Of the three Evans boys, two were troublemakers in their twenties, while the youngest, Davie, had Down's syndrome.

Ann's diner was a hot spot. Almost every weekend a fight would break out between a couple of male customers. Usually, their friends would calm things down or at least move the combatants out into the parking lot. But there were times when Ann was expecting a crowd and didn't want to have to fool with belligerent drunks, so she would hire an off-duty cop to stand around by the cash register. The presence of a cop didn't help much. The drunks would try to impress their girlfriends by baiting the cop. Nevertheless, it was all good entertainment.

The night chef was Freddy Stover, a wizened, weather-beaten little man in his mid-eighties who had spent most of his life cooking for circuses and traveling carnivals. He couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds. He had bowed legs and walked leaning forward with hurried little steps that made it look like he was scurrying. He dressed in white cotton pants and shirt with a white apron and a white paper hat. His eyes were his most striking feature. He may have suffered from a thyroid condition because his eyes bulged out. Not only that, but one eye looked directly at you, while the other looked off to the side. We used to say people like that had, “One eye on the pot and the other up the chimney."

One of the many stories about Freddy concerned the death of his wife a few years earlier. One night he went home to find her dead in her rocking chair. The shock was too much for him. He went into denial, and like Jonah in the bible, he tried to outrun his fate by fleeing the city. He grabbed his white bulldog, got into his black DeSoto automobile and left town. The next day his wife was found and the police put out an APB on Freddy. It wasn't too hard to spot a little old man in a black DeSoto with a white bulldog in the front seat. The Pennsylvania State Police found him and convinced him to go back home and help bury his wife.

Freddy liked practical jokes. We had two waitresses on the weekend late shift, Evelina Foley and a personal friend of Ann's, Florence Le Sage. Florence was a very nice woman in her mid-forties. She was a religious type who didn't smoke, drink, cuss, or kid around with the customers.

One slow evening Freddy played a terrible trick on Florence. Two couples came in and took seats in a booth. One of the men was bald. About that time Freddy came out from the kitchen and stood in the doorway. When he saw the bald guy, he motioned for Florence to come speak to him.

“See that bald guy?” he said, “That's my old buddy Frank. I haven't seen him in years. Go over and tell him he would look a lot better if he parted his hair on the other side.”

Florence protested, “I can't do that, Freddy.”

Freddy insisted, “Oh, don't worry, he's a great guy, he will recognize the joke. Just tell him what I said and then point over here at me, and I will come over and say hello to him.”

Reluctantly, Florence went back over to the booth and addressed the bald man. “You know, you would look a lot better if you parted your hair on the other side.” The man turned crimson, and the three other patrons gasped.

"What are you saying?” the man demanded. “Why would you say something like that to me?”

“I'm sorry,” Florence pleaded. “Freddy Stover told me to say that.”

"Who the hell is Freddy Stover?”

“That man over there in the white apron—Freddy—don't you know him?”

“Hell no, I don't know him! Why would I know that old bastard?”

Florence was mortified. She frantically signaled to Freddy, but Freddy just looked in the other direction and casually took a drag on his cigarette. Then he turned and shuffled back into the kitchen.

It took a long time for Florence to talk to Freddy again. Ann was not amused when she heard about Freddy's dirty trick, but night chefs were hard to come by, and she couldn't afford to let him go.

Nor was Ann herself immune to Freddy's trickery. One evening Ann came in and said “Hi” to all of us out front. Then, back in the kitchen, she asked Freddy how he was getting along. He told Ann that he was alright except for a bad toothache. Ann called him back into her office. She unlocked a drawer, got out a bottle of whiskey, and poured him a generous shot. An hour later she asked Freddy if the shot helped. Freddy said yes, for a while, but the pain was coming back. Ann gave him another shot. The third time, as Ann was pouring the whiskey it dawned on her.

“Freddy, you son of a bitch.” she said, “You don't have a tooth in your head, do you?”

It was true. Freddy had false teeth.

We had more than our share of eccentric customers. Vern-the-coffee-urn would show up around 10:30 pm and drink coffee until closing. Coffee was 10¢ a cup and served in regular cups, not mugs like we get today. When we served a customer anything we would ring it up on their ticket. There was room on a ticket for about seven or eight items. We knew that Vern was going to drink at least 15 cups so we would try to get them all on one ticket. This meant ringing up each sale so the printed amounts overlapped each other. He was the only customer we had to do that for.

Mushy Hogan was another good customer. Mushy owned several properties on Salisbury Beach and was reported to be very wealthy, but you couldn't tell he had money from his appearance. He always wore the same scruffy tweed coat and badly stained tie. He would get food on himself and leave a big mess on the counter. That may be how he got the name, "Mushy."

There was another crazy who never failed to ask, “Do you have duck eggs?” When we said no, he would launch into a diatribe against hen's eggs. After making his disappointment known to all who would listen, he would order a grilled cheese.

Once in a great while, Ann would get Davie, the son with Downs, to come in and help wash dishes. In those days people with Downs were thoughtlessly called Mongolian idiots, and the syndrome was referred to as mongolism. Davie was low on the Downs spectrum, so he wasn't much help. He was mild mannered most of the time, but he didn't like to be teased. He would get furious if you asked him, “Davie, who stole the cheese?”

The story was that one time when no one was looking, Davie got into the walk-in refrigerator and took a big bite out of a wedge of cheese. It was obvious from the teeth marks what had happened, and obvious who had done it. They confronted him.

— "Davie, somebody took a bite out of the cheese. Do you know who it was?”

— “No.”

— “But you were right here. You must have seen who it was.”

— “No, I didn't see anybody.”

— “Are you sure you didn't see anybody?”

— “Maybe I saw somebody.”

— “Well, who was it?”

— "It was Mickey Mouse.”

Of course they shouldn't have laughed at the poor kid, but they couldn't help it. From then on, any mention of cheese or Mickey Mouse would set him off.

Everyone ought to work in food service for a while. It's an education. You get a chance to experience the general public; nice folks, bad actors, cranks, crazies, and types you never knew existed. I'm glad that my sons and grandsons have already had that experience.

In September the season ended, the tourists went home, and I went off to my freshman year at UNH.