In the mid-1950s, like many other students at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), I did odd jobs at the minimum wage of a dollar an hour. I was 18 then, supplementing the modest dollar allowance that the Reserve Bank of India permitted students studying abroad.
One summer vacation, I began as a lowly dishwasher at Tom Crumplar’s in Westwood. The restaurant, famous for its milkshakes, sundaes and thick malts, was frequented by Hollywood starlets and film-folk. I worked in a dark, dingy backroom from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.
There were occasional minutes of lull when I could come out and stand, half-hidden in my grubby attire, behind the gleaming steel and plexiglass fountain area where the ice creams were given fancy shapes and spigots would hiss with sodas and phosphates. There were bright lights and pretty waitresses in uniform.
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I used those minutes to closely observe the man behind the counter who was working with pink, green, blue and red ice creams, scooping them out and deftly placing them in ornate dishes and decorating them.
One evening, he did not turn up. Tom Crumplar learned that he was drunk. He was beside himself — how to get a replacement suddenly? I stepped up and said: “I can do the job.” I was given the nifty white togs of a parlour man and that chef cap that balloons up at the top and makes you look eight feet tall.
I was elevated. Those who prepare ice cream sundaes and so on are called soda jerks. I “jerked” with nervousness at first, but soon began to relax as the first few orders went off successfully. I was hovering in the lofty heights of soda jerks. The drunk defaulter was duly dismissed.
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There were idle minutes which I used to the advantage of the boss, to invent concoctions from the vast array of ice creams, syrups, juices, nuts, fruit ices and other goodies. I placed peach slices flush with vertically sliced banana. A customer gave an approving “yummy” sound, and asked “What do you call it?” I said it was “chef special”.
Kiss Miss
Over the summer, I concocted several ‘chef specials’. I looked east to Arabia and India and began naming them Schzerazad, Kismat and Kiss Miss (in which I used kishmish or raisins). ‘Salome of the Seven Veils’ had seven different ice creams. When I reached a dozen such new ones, a separate menu was printed. Tom used to put high prices, but the novelty drove up sales.
The most outrageous one I called ‘Gosh Awful Gooey’ in which instead of using the ritzy ice cream plates, I used the deep soup plates. Several ice cream flavours at random were put in the soup dish. The back of the metal device that is used to scoop up gobs of ice cream was pressed down smoothly, in oscillating hand motion. The smoothing gave it a semblance of homogeneity while the colours formed zigzag ribbons. It was topped with grated nuts and sometimes a sprig of mint.
I could never remember what I did the last time I concocted one. So every ‘Gosh Awful Gooey’ was different.
My final innovation used boysenberry ice cream, a non-milk ice known as ‘sherbet’ in lime flavour, and a Franilla scoop. I called it ‘Three Flavoured Blimp’.
Tom saw my note and since I spelt flavour with a ‘u’, he pronounced it “flavoor”. “What’s this three flavoor blimp, eh?” I tried to explain about the British spelling, but he said: “Aww, we’ll call it Three Flavour Blimp”.
As college reopened, Tom expressed surprise that I wanted to quit. “Young fella, my brother is a college professor and I pay more taxes than he ever will. Stay with me and be rich,” he growled. But I had had enough of gosh awful gooeys and flavooored blimps and quit just the same.
arundewdrop@gmail.com