TRICKY DICK'S COFFEE HOUSE: 4) THE EARLY DAYS
A Throwback Thursday Serial About Living in London in the '70s
To reach the toilets in the basement, customers would stumble around partitions into semi-darkness where, more often than not, they'd find themselves face-to-face with Jonathan, a Rasputin lookalike, who’d be fudging chocolate cakes, grinning, often chuckling maniacally to himself.
Jonathan worked at a theatre moving sets in the daytime, nights at the bake house, fudging two or three large racks (multiple layers) of chocolate cakes, from eight till midnight or beyond. He'd reach into a big mixer of fudge, plop a thick dollop on the sponge cakes from a nearby rack and smooth the fudge around with a flat knife, twirling the cake on a dolly.
Tricky Dick's customers, taken by surprise on their first meeting with Jonathan, would sometimes stop and watch him perform as he fudged with a flourish, as if it were an art form.
Then, during his break, Jonathan would run mousetrap patrol, searching for mice that had been baited and caught in traps—and set them free.
The contrast between the two zones on either side of the partitions prompted my high school buddy Bob M to say, "Gee, your restaurant is like a movie set."
If it seemed like Tricky Dick's was a cover for something, well, that’s because it was a cover for a cake-baking operation
The landlord did not anticipate that we would open a restaurant—and he wasn't buying what we had thrown together. His spies reported cake fudging and he promptly phoned my dad. "You're making cakes in there!" -- the landlord.
"Only for the restaurant!" -- my dad.
"A hundred and fifty cakes for your restaurant? -- my people counted!"
"They serve a lot of cake!"
Several nasty letters threatening legal action were received—and filed in the waste bin. Then my father caught the landlord standing outside the restaurant scribbling notes as cases of canned apples were delivered and carted into Tricky Dick's for storage in the basement. My father chased him down the street. Another letter from the landlord's lawyer soon arrived, this time accusing my dad of "manhandling" his client.
Ronnie the counterman lasted about three weeks. I was paying him 26 pounds, say, fifty bucks, a week, which at that time wasn't too terrible a wage for London. He wanted a raise. By then I had learned how to handle the counter and, more important, I’d gained enough confidence to run the place on my own. And I was tired of having to drive Ron home every night. Weekdays we stayed open till one a.m. and weekends three a.m., too late for public transport and Ron didn't have his own car.
So I took command of the counter and hired an ASL buddy, Dickie W, to bus tables and wash dishes for a buck an hour.
On quiet nights, early in the week, I'd do everything myself. The Slanis brothers were in the North Sea on a rig and most of my friends were still at ASL or had returned stateside for college.
Only Monday was my own; the one night of the week Tricky Dick's did not open. I would take a red double-decker downtown, usually to the Marylebone High Street pubs and drink beer by myself, reminiscing more convivial days, lamenting the departure of so many friends now spread around the USA. One day, I vowed, I would pack a bag and bum around the continental United States, visit them all.
Part of me didn't want to let go of the magical autumn of 1971 and James Taylor's Mud Slide Slim.
Most days I slept past ten and spent early afternoon picking up supplies. I'd go into Tricky Dick's at five o’clock, mop the floor, brew coffee, cut cakes, butter bread and stock the fridge. My assistant would come in at six. We'd open an hour later.
Takings were slim in those early days. Customers would order a cup of coffee, maybe a slice of pie, nurse it for an hour or two.
Then one April evening we were suddenly deluged with a group of American students from Rome, Georgia. They were billeted up the street at Westfield College on a three-week exchange program and they couldn't stomach the English cuisine served in the commissary: bangers and bash, egg and chips, jellied eels….
So they'd pile into Tricky Dick's for BLTs and grilled cheese sandwiches. And being Americans, they'd start early, eat and run.
The first pack would arrive at seven and be long gone by eight; another large contingent would arrive to replace them... on and on through the night like clockwork, as though they had organized dinner shifts between themselves, hour-to- hour.
We'd get an order all at once for 12 grilled cheese and eight BLTs, and I'd stand behind the counter churning them out two at a time on my small sandwich press.
One night, at five minutes before closing, a delegation of Georgians ordered a whopping 25 grilled cheese sanwiches to go (serious munchies back at the dorm).
I fell in love five times; those female southern accents tickled my heart. One of them, Emily, I wrote a song about. She wrote poetry and I loaned her a book of poems she never returned.
Another: An outgoing blonde in a frilly suede jacket I nicknamed "Cowgirl." She had a booming voice, but it didn't matter to me what she said or how loud she yelled it, as long she hollered in her Rome, Georgia accent. And I vowed one day to visit Rome, Georgia. (I eventually did, six years ago on a road trip through the South, another story.)
I had no cash register. I added bills in longhand, counting columns. Eventually I developed a knack for adding seven or eight figures in my mind by merely glancing at them—this, from someone who was terrible at math. One of the southern boys was blown away by this procedure, which for me had become a necessity because I had so many tasks to do at once.
Three weeks later the southerners were gone and Tricky Dick's went quiet again, if building a regular clientele between 11p.m. and 1 a.m. They'd sit around for an hour, order nothing, and I'd eventually turn off the music, stack chairs, turn out the lights and, when they still didn't go, I'd say I was leaving and if they weren't out in two minutes they'd be locked inside for the night.
Kate H, a Canadian not much younger than I, became my assistant, and she hung in there for a good amount of time in contrast to other friends for whom Tricky Dick's was a first taste of post-school reality.
In mid-May we made an addition to the menu: Our Bar-B-Q Beef Sandwich.
Sanford's, a butcher two doors down, would cook a brisket and slice it up for us. I'd soak the meat overnight in a tangy, pungent sauce created by my mother. When someone ordered a sandwich, I'd zap a portion of meat in the microwave, like we used to do with pastrami at Applebaum's, two slices of toast and… voila!
To enjoy the Bar-B-Q myself, I had to blot from my mind Sanford's stocking habits, which we dubbed Sunday Night Slaughterhouse Delivery.
On most Sunday evenings, usually after dark, a huge truck would park outside Sanford's, dominating the view from our picture window. During the next two hours, carcasses of all types, of dubious origin, were carried across the promenade toward the butcher's basement.
We always wondered, Why would anyone have their meat delivered on a Sunday night?
Old Sanford and son offered the cheapest prices around. We could only speculate that something was not quite kosher about their operation.
One story that made the rounds was about a lady who bought a roastbeef from Sanford's for a dinner party. She cooked and displayed it to assembled guests for slicing. The carving knife sunk in, then abruptly stopped, refusing under pressure to sink further. The carver applied a good strong thrust—and popped a large boil within the roast, spraying blood on everyone.
It was not a story we repeated while serving Bar-B-Q beef.
Barney first appeared soon after the arrival of our Bar-B-Q Beef sandwich and, once initiated, came in every night thereafter for months.
Barney drove a Volkswagen Beetle, the orange denim model, and the night he discovered our existence he pulled up in front, about ten o'clock, sat in his bug for almost an hour, doing what, I never knew.
Then he wandered in, tall, thin, afro-curly hair, aquiline nose, glasses—and fell in love with Tricky Dick's at first vibe.
Barney was in London to attend film school and Tricky Dick's became his second home because it was the quirkiest place he'd ever been. And because his real home, a bedsit in Highgate, was smaller than his VW.
Barney soon became infatuated with Kate H, whose father had produced a big action movie called The Dirty Dozen.
Love is brutal, we all know. Kate could not mutualize those feelings, and instead Stephanie B fell in love with Barney.
Stephanie knew how to party; she was the jolliest person in the world; not a mean compulsion in her soul—and Barney sort of let her become his patron: meals, a place to stay (his own bed, I think), and she just smiled and loved being near him.
Stephanie's wealthy parents took to Barney too, and they'd sit at the dinner table waiting an hour for him to arrive before eating. They wanted him for their little girl.
Barney, meantime, became good pals with Kate's brother, Greg, another film fanatic, and they'd cruise London's West End in Greg's funky Land Rover, looking for new movies to see.
I drove down with them once and saw Charles Bronson in Mr. Majestyk, but Barney and Greg got on so well together, I felt left out. Here I was, creating an offbeat, quirky venue for artsy people to meet—and then they'd stray elsewhere for fun while I got stuck watching the shop.
I watched with envy early one evening when my brother Michael and our friend Pete L crossed Finchley Road to catch a red double-decker bus down to Edward's and the pubs of Marylebone. I wanted to go too; drink Carlsberg Special Brew, whoop it up, kiss pretty girls... and I had to stay and work, six nights a week, no relief. Except Monday night, the deadest night of all, when no one wanted to party.
By this time my deputy was Bob M, my first pal at ASL; we had gone out with sisters.
Bob was serious, given to short bursts of exuberant humor, and into Johnny Winter. His ambition was to start a blues band.
Mostly due to to Bob M's influence, our background music became the movie soundtrack from American Graffiti, providing Tricky Dick's with a 1950s feel.
I usually closed up shop by myself and walked the two blocks home alone with a cashbox full of the night's takings, never more than 50 bucks.
We'd close the joint at 3 a.m. on weekends, and by this time it was late May, so 3 a.m. was dawn, and we'd grab a six-pack and drive a mile to Primrose Hill and its panoramic view of the London skyline.
Primrose Hill is literally man-made, a mass gravesite for the victims of Bubonic Plague. Many a night I would frighten a girl into clutching my elbow with stories of how people disappeared on this hill; how arms would reach up from the tall grass and pull folks into the ground.
On these early mornings, with all of London quiet and serene before us, we'd drink beer and listen to the lions at the bottom of the hill in Regent's Park Zoo awaken and roar for their breakfast.
Then off to our own breakfast at The Great American Success on Heath Street, Hampstead. This place stayed open later than we did but never attracted characters because they enforced a minimum charge, meaning everyone had to eat or pay up anyway.
We never did that at Tricky Dick's. The difference was this: We never set out to make money. We achieved our objective by merely existing, a front for a bakehouse.
More Americans turned up at Westfield College during the summer, including Lee R from Miami. He would thrust his tongue into his upper lip and act retarded, shouting, "Why'th everyone thtaring at me?”
In the middle of all this, I got accepted to Boston University. I'd always wanted to live in Boston, attend BU, and now, offered a place against all odds, I felt intimidated at the prospect of attending a school of 25,000 students. (The American School in London, which I loved, had only about 650 students, K-12.)
I'd heard nothing from Cape Cod Community College, a small two-year college in West Barnstable, Massachusetts and it suddenly appealed to me. I loved the sound of Cape Cod. When I was a kid my family used to go to Disneyland three times a year on my father's free passes, and we'd sometimes go to a nearby seafood restaurant called Cape Cod. One of its walls featured a mural of the Cape upon which I gazed longingly as a ten year-old.
So I called the community college to ask about my application. Their admissions officer could not understand why I wanted to attend their junior college, having been accepted to BU, not being from Cape Cod nor having ever set foot in Massachusetts.
But that's where I wanted to go, absurd as it sounded, and they accepted me, not into their Law Enforcement program, which I wanted, but into their Marketing program. I didn't care. I just wanted to live on Cape Cod. I've always assumed there's a reason for the impulses that direct me to certain places.
I sent my regrets to BU and began cutting plans.
Barney was going home to Montreal for the summer. My plan was to fly Air Canada to Montreal on a cheap ticket, mess around with him for a week or so then Greyhound south to Boston and the Cape.
And so around mid-July I turned Tricky Dick's over to my brother, Michael. He wanted a stab at the place until he put his own college plans in order. I was happy to unload it.
Assisted by Adrienne, his girlfriend, Michael added homemade coleslaw and freshly squeezed lemonade to the menu, and hired someone to mop the floor each evening, a task I’d routinely tackled myself. I thought he was being lazy, and told him so, but he just sassed me back, and anyway, after reading On the Road for the third time I was eager to hop the big bird westward.
Great read