ANOTHER BONEHEAD BACKSTORY!

Before I got into radio, like most young people I had a few different jobs. I drove a truck, worked in a retail store warehouse, sold stolen goods, but primarily my work days were spent in restaurants. If you’ve previously visited my humble blog I understand that you feel a little “dirty” for coming back but you also then already know that I’ve spent a few years working beneath the Golden Arches.

This is not a McDonald’s story however, and it’s written in tribute to a friend. It’s a long one, but I hope you’ll stick with it to the end.

I spent about a year working at a Pizza Stop restaurant in East Northport. It was a converted Pizza Hut location. Pizza Hut  had left the Long Island market in the early 80’s and a few of the restaurants were leased to local operators who tried to make a go of it. Most all of them failed miserably, and Pizza Stop was no different, Pizza Hut eventually returned in the later half of the decade.

Pizza Stop made typical New York style pizza and your typical Italian fare that was a small step above fast food. As it was 1981, there was the obligatory salad bar , and, unlike Pizza Hut, a fully stocked bar. It was owned by a small restaurant speculator who had a bunch of similar places throughout the region. Our location was nothing more than a tax shelter as the guy wanted the business to lose money for the tax advantages . What better way to do that than to put a handful of 19 and 20 year olds in charge of the place and then stock it with beer and liquor. Yes, this was most definitely the perfect job for Bonehead.

For a few months we did very well, as the introductory deal featured large cheese pies for $3.95, cheap even for 1981. Of course, the food cost alone averaged about $3.50 for an eat-in pizza, and $3.80 for a take-out (the boxes were about thirty cents each) so it was a loss leader, the idea being to get the customers in, sell them a cheap pizza and over-charge them for a mixed drink, cheap wine or a draft beer.

Seems like a reasonable business plan, however I refer you once again to who was running the place. We had a small staff, some waitresses and cooks, and four managers – Vic, Scott, Siobhan and me. Big Vic found a better job after a few months and then it was the three of us, Scott being the senior citizen at 21 years old. After Vic left, we got a quick phone call from the owner who said we needed to do away with the $3.95 pie and price it to a more typical $7.99 or so. That was the last time we heard from the big boss for six months.

Siobhan’s brother Sean was going to college in Ireland, and he came home for the summer. He was Irish, and a big time rugby player , so naturally, he was insane, also naturally, we hired him to help out for a few months.

If memory serves me right, it was probably only five months or so that he worked with us – but no matter how long, I can tell you that every day was filled with insanity and non-stop laughter. Once we raised the price of the pizza to $7.99 the restaurant lost its competitive edge and was simply priced the same as everyone else. Because the building was a stand-alone and not conveniently located in one of the three dozen strip malls in the area, we lost pretty much all of our business. Oh sure, occasionally the wayward traveler or local streetwalker would come in for a slice and a beer, but for the most part, it was just the workers, a manager or two, and the bar.

It got a little nutty.

 One Friday night, I think it was in early November the owner called out of the blue. Said we should turn off the beer taps and stop selling liquor immediately, he was coming out from the city and was going to pick up all the booze, wine and beer. Obviously, at the time I had no idea why this was happening, as I matured it became pretty clear – the liquor license lapsed and he had to get all of the booze out of the place to avoid a hefty fine should the state liquor authority  make a surprise visit.

This wouldn’t seem like so big of a deal until you realize we had rung about eighty dollars in bar sales over the past two months and had consumed enough to make Andre the Giant pass out. Now what?

I credit this crisis as the moment I learned to become a salesperson. I tore out of the restaurant, ran up the street and negotiated a deal with our buddies at the liquor store that saved all of our drunken asses. Sure, we paid for it in cash, weed and dates with our sisters, but they gave us some of the booze we needed to avoid certain felony charges.

By the time the owner arrived with a small panel truck – we had refilled the Jack Daniels bottles with a mixture of ginger ale and Pepsi, replaced most of the top shelf Vodka with Georgi and the well vodka with a water and vinegar mixture. Gin for the most part was water with a little perfume and cologne, while the Tequila was refilled with beer and lime juice. There was some Dewar’s in the Johnny Walker Black bottles and some Robitussen in the Yaegermeister bottles.

He took the pseudo booze and a couple of kegs of beer, leaving the ugly cheap Opici wine gallon bottles behind because well, nobody really wanted those. We all took a deep sigh of relief figuring that unless he we going to serve that shit at a party or drink it himself, we were off the hook.

A couple of weeks later, Sean came back to Long Island as the school semester was over. He came down to the restaurant one slow Wednesday afternoon along with a case of Guinness Stout. The real stuff , in the bottle with the yellow label and the residue. This of course led to more insanity.

Somehow we got to talking about a certain scene in the movie Animal House – you know the one; “Food Fight ”! We locked the doors and set about running amuck in the place. Scott, Siobhan, Sean and I grabbing squeeze bottles filled with Olive Oil, we also took aim with old dough, flour, yeast, pepperocini, rigatoni, you name it we threw it. At each other and all over the restaurant. It lasted for two hours and was exhausting. It also was about the longest and hardest I’ve laughed in my entire life. Literally, we did this from about noon till 2pm, when the phone rang.

Yup, like a sign from the asshole that came up with the Murphy’s Law theory, it was the owner once again. We were done, he asked us to lock the doors, not to make the daily bank deposit, and hang for a little while as he was coming to pick up the cash and give us a little check to help us manage through the holidays as unemployed alcoholics. He’d be there in about an hour or so.

Oops. Talk about a buzz kill.

The news sobered all of us up pretty quickly. Not Sean though, he was just visiting now, so he cracked the last Guinness from the case. The restaurant was a total disaster, there was wet parmegian cheese dripping from the Asteroids video game for chrissakes. We were also all soaked and caked with flour, oil and all sorts of other condiments and sundries.

I remember shouting “Red Light” in reference to an obscure Flintstones  episode in which Fred had to get the house cleaned up before Wilma got home. The four of us tore around that restaurant with brooms, mops, towels, cleaner and trash bags like our lives depended on it. Remember, Sean was a rugby player and had superhuman stamina. This guy ran around with a bottle of Guinness in one hand and a mop in the other and managed to make an area that was dripping with Marinara sauce sparkle faster than previously thought humanly possible.

Sure enough, it was around 4:30 and the owner showed up. We managed to make the place presentable, even changing our shirts to hide the evidence of battle. He took his cash, gave us each a check for a couple of hundred bucks and an address to mail the keys to. We were done. Pizza Stop was history.

Like you do when you’re twenty years old – you go your separate ways.

On December 21, 1988 all 289 passengers and crew aboard Pan Am Flight 103 plus 11 innocent residents on the ground were killed when it exploded over Lockerbie Scotland. The tragedy was spearheaded by Libyan terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrah.

Killed on that flight were John Mulroy – director of international communications for the Associated Press, his son Sean Mulroy and Sean’s new wife Ingrid. Also killed were John’s sister Bridget and her husband and son. All had been returning to East Northport for a holiday family reunion.

The Scottish government released the heartless piece of shit al-Megrah in August of this year on “compassionate grounds” due to the fact he was dying from cancer.

Compassionate grounds? Seriously?

Appalling!!!

I can only hope that his slow death from cancer is nothing less than excruciatingly painful. Not enough justice for my long ago friend Siobhan, her mom and bother who every year have to watch the news and be reminded of the senseless act that stole so much from them.

Die slow al-Megrah. In the name of nothing.

R.I.P. my wonderful old friend Sean.