Crazy Jimmy and the Yellow Tureen

I was fast asleep when Crazy Jimmy poured ice-cold water in my ear, from a yellow tureen I had bought a few weeks before, at a garage sale on Fountain Avenue.

Weeks earlier . . .
I reentered the legendary Palomino to see the Everly Brothers on their long-awaited reunion tour. Right away I thought, yes, I really could work here. It would be fun. Grungy, raucous fun.

The San Bernardino mountains seemingly within arm’s touch, there should have been a marquee flashing: “Lousy food, expensive drinks, great music.” I was indulging a closet fantasy to be a cocktail waitress: Years before, in Cleveland, sitting in a back tier at a Friday happy hour with teaching colleagues, in front of a trio playing good jazz, my dear old friend, Jo Lockley, was serving a tray of cocktails. I hadn’t seen her in many years. She was smiling and partying along with her tables—at least that’s what it looked like to me. How fun to help people have a good time. No responsibility, no teacher anxiety following you home each night.¹

Summer had turned into autumn in the City of Angels and a nearly depleted savings account. For weeks while sipping morning coffee and perusing through the Sunday LA Times, I had noticed regular ads for help wanted at The Palomino. So three days after the Everly Brothers rousing performance, I returned for their weekly Monday-morning cattle call. Three days later I was working there, wearing my requisite Palomino t-shirt every night and serving overpriced chicken or grilled steak dinners, grilled by the cook, Jaime.²

The first impression that comes to me in looking back on my waitressing days at The World-Famous Palomino Club is to compare its long tables extending lengthwise from the stage to the dining hall at Oxford at High Table. Think Hogwarts’s Great Hall, but substitute the master paintings of John Wesley, Cardinal Wolsey, and Henry VII with dusty eight-by-ten-inch autographed glossies of the likes of George Jones, Dottie West, and Conway Twitty.

Hired to serve cocktails and overpriced, undercooked dinners by maniacal owner Tommy Thomas, I chose my requisite two free Palomino T-shirts, one pink, one powder blue, both V-neck. Jenette, a tattoo-covered waitress before tattoos were the cultural norm, had walked me to the T-shirt closet in Tommy’s cramped office behind the front bar. Another “What’s a nice Jewish girl” moment.

I’d bet all my Saturday-night tip money that I was the only server in Palomino history who went to the public library to research cocktail names before showing up for work my first night. I had lied—and expected my mother to swoop down from the heavens and strike me—when writing on my application that I had cocktail-waitress experience, not that it ended up mattering.

Of course, I was outed the first night by Frank, the head bartender, who was as misplaced as I. He should have been lecturing in front of a college class- room, not behind the bar where they had filmed the Clint Eastwood–orangutan bar scenes in the Philo Beddoe Every Which Way and Any Which Way films.

Frank disdainfully corrected me when I, trying to act experienced, called a chimney a brand of scotch when giving him my order.
“A chimney . . . is a glass,” he sneered, under his elegant
mustache, as he set the tall glass on the pouring tray.

Busted.

(Don’t worry. We became fast friends when he realized I was smart;)

So anyway . . .

I was fast asleep when crazy Jimmy poured ice cold water in my ear, out of a yellow tureen I had bought a few weeks before, at a garage sale on Fountain Avenue,

Of course I was stunned. Feeling that one day he would snap, jealously, due to my working at the Pal, I had my Palomino t-shirts and hair blower ready to roll. (never left home without it) I calmed him down and convinced him to saunter over to the coffee shop on Las Palmas for to lattes.

All the while I was planning my ‘escape.’

As soon as I heard the second fire door shut, I bolted to my car, unfortunately turning my ankle as I fled. Another “What’s a nice Jewish girl like you” moment.

I knew right where I would go: Beverly’s.
Beverly was my closest Palomino friend.
She had long before invited me to sleep on her couch if the situation arose.

Prophetic.

I never made great tips because I didn’t buy coke from the head waitress, Carmen. She gave all her ‘buyer-waitresses’ the good stations.

I didn’t mind.

I showed up that night with two bruised black eyes.