However, in the meantime Brother Paul has recently stumbled upon a box that has been a veritable treasure trove of old family history, and in that box is a scrapbook that Ginny put together after the memorable summer she had in Yellowstone in nineteen hundred and forty six. After her freshman year in college she decided - like many before, and after her -she wanted to leave the Mississippi River plains of Rock Island, Illinois and find her fortunes in The West. And what better place to go than iconic Yellowstone? And thus it came to pass:
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| Big news in Rock Island! |
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| Heyy BooBoo! A pic-a-nic basket! |
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| this guy was going to have NO problems that summer.... |
and got a job:
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| $30/mo with a $7.50 bonus; that was....some money! |
as long as she abided by the code:
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| "Be sure your teeth are in good condition!" |
She got a job as a waitress at the Old Faithful Lodge, and on her days off she would do what people do in Yellowstone:
and she and her friend would hitchhike around the park and even down to the Tetons:
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| Much to her mother's dismay, according to a card Gertie sent that was included in the scrapbook |
Ginny later got a degree in journalism and became a writer, doing fun special interest stories for first the local Beaverton, Oregon paper and then the legacy Oregonian.
She even published a book:
That you can still buy, for only $4.25 (that's probably what it went for when it came out in 1978!).
What I didn't realize until now, however, was that Ginny was already a bit of a prodigy writer, even at a young age. She had a lot of experiences during her brief summer in Yellowstone (including a hilarious one that cost her a job!) but one as a waitress was good enough that she....created a blog post, probably 70 years before the term "blog post" even existed. it's such a gem that I transcribed it, with just a couple of edits. It's a gem; enjoy.
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| On The Beat! |
What I didn't realize until now, however, was that Ginny was already a bit of a prodigy writer, even at a young age. She had a lot of experiences during her brief summer in Yellowstone (including a hilarious one that cost her a job!) but one as a waitress was good enough that she....created a blog post, probably 70 years before the term "blog post" even existed. it's such a gem that I transcribed it, with just a couple of edits. It's a gem; enjoy.
One man who visited Yellowstone Park this summer probably
doesn’t have very happy memories of Old Faithful Lodge and of a certain
waitress at station number seven. I was
one of twenty college girls working in the big dining room out west for a
vacation. We didn’t pretend to be
professionals, but relied on the fact that most vacationers were not in a hurry
and were usually in the best of humor.
However, and then, there would be those who were in a hurry and lacked a sense of humor, and that’s where all
my trouble started.
This particular day in July started peacefully enough. Customers had been tipping ten percent, and
we hadn’t been too busy to have fun, but neither did we have to stand around
waiting for customers. Everything was
under control when the hostess seated a nice looking, middle-aged couple at my
four-seater. The man gave the orders and
I wanted to congratulate him when he made fine choices all the way down through
the dessert. When he politely asked if I
would please fill his thermos bottle with boiling hot water I politely said
yes, put it on my big silver tray, and sailed off to the kitchen. My two-seater had just finished and the big
eight table hadn’t filled up yet, so I could easily fill the thermos between
courses without getting mixed up.
After the nice couple had finished their appetizers, I
stopped in the kitchen to fill the bottle.
Quite unsuspecting, I let the boiling water run into the thermos and
joked with the busboys as they sped by, balancing nine meals on one tray. I turned off the spigot, picked up the cork,
and calmly stuck it into the neck of the thermos and….POP. I’d never taken chemistry or physics or
whatever it is that teaches that compressed steam will exert pressure enough to
blow the cork off a thermos bottle. The
cork shot up into the air and I tried to watch its flight, but it
disappeared. The coffee boy offered to
look for it while I served the entrees .
The eight-seater filled up; I took their orders. Someone sat down at my two-seater, and I got
their orders, served their entrees, and got dessert for the thermos bottle
couple, and in between each trip I frantically searched the kitchen for the
missing cork. The whole kitchen crew of
cooks, dishwashers, salad girls, and pot washers got ladders to look on the
rafters, got brooms to sweep under the cofffe urn, and crawled around under the
tables to search for a suddenly-valuable piece of cork.
Station number seven was by now waiting for their desserts, their
bill, and their themos bottle, but their waitress was in the kitchen
desperately trying to find another cork.
I finally got rid of the other ten people (at the other table) and
avoided the eyes of the bottle man as I rushed through the swinging doors
again.
It was no use. The cork
had gone up, but it had not come down.
Cooky (the cook) said the night watchman would find it and that I should
tell the man to return for breakfast.
So, reluctantly I approached my customers and told them the fate of
their bottle stopper, trying to throw in the hope that it would be found that
night. If not, I told him that I would
be glad to pay him for the cork and he could buy another one when they got to
the nearest town, which was many miles away.
He wasn’t angry, just annoyed and mildly grouchy. His aristocratic wife looked bored with the
whole affair. It was a comfort to me that she probably felt as I did that the
matter did not demand more than a casual apology. However, when I presented the bottle minus to
stopper to her husband he said: “What good does this do me now? I wanted it for tonight!”
Now I was mildly annoyed.
“I’m sure it will be found tonight, sir. Will you be in for breakfast?”
Rather grumpily, he guessed that they would have to be, but
their cabin was 291 in case it was found that night, because they had wanted to
get an early start the next morning. He
probably would have gone up to the kitchen to look for himself had his wife not
stood up to go.
“Tell the girl we’ll be in tomorrow morning”, she said,
disdaining to speak directly to me. “You’ll just have to get along without it
tonight.” That seemed to definitely end
the matter for the time being, at least, and she started down the aisle. Her husband made a point of putting some
money on the table, mumbled something about seeing me early the next day, and
hurried after his wife.
I was very surprised to find a 75-cent tip on the table and
took it to mean that he was partially paying me for the ultimate return of his
cork. His great concern for such a
seeming trifle puzzled me, and I guess I’ll always wonder what he wanted with
that hot water.
The next morning at breakfast the affair had almost been forgotten
until That Man appeared at my table again, this time alone.
“Well?” he leered expectantly. His intense dark eyes were almost hidden in a
deeply furrowed squint. I surmised that
he wore a perpetually worried look to have such deep wrinkles.
I rushed into the kitchen again, but was told that the night
janitor slept until 1pm and was not to be wakened. It took courage that time to inform my irate
customer that he would have to wait until noon if his cork meant that much to
him. I fervently hoped he would choose
not to wait, but his long-controlled temper burst into display. “I’ve
seen that geyser blow up twenty times, and I’m tired of it! Can’t you do
something about it?!”
I barely contained myself from telling him to go jump in the
geyser, but restrained myself and asked him to do the same, meanwhile praying
that the janitor had found something more than dust under the tables.
He hadn’t. At one
o’clock sharp he strolled in, and when I pounced on him, he shook his
head. I knew what I had to do, but I was
scared. I wanted to ask the hostess to
break the news, I thought of burning my finger, of spilling soup on my apron,
fainting…anything so I wouldn’t have to face That Man again.
But I fortified myself with the assurance that this was the
last time I would ever behold his frightening countenance, took a deep breath, whizzed
out of the swinging doors, up to the ogre, and said:
“That cork never came down!”
Even today, I am haunted by that man’s accusing face, his
voice keeps ringing in my ears: “Where’s
my cork!?!” I my dreams I hear that
fatal POP and watch the cork sail on up and up, and I always wonder why the
laws of gravity had to fail at such an inopportune time.
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