kitchen sub cultures

The mark of a kitchen is what type of music is played at 6 am while you 're prepping. Bakers play loud rock, at least the ones I know, at 4 am to stay awake. Four is their midnight. Over the lase few years I have dropped in, for financial and entertainment gain, to work in kitchens. Usually I am the oldest one there, unless the owner is there or the full on chef. I have discovered a new culture, the kitchen groupies, those who work from kitchen to kitchen, migratory cooks within the city. Morning folks tend to be young women, thinking of going into the profession, and full of light and happiness. The evening shift varies with the restaurant. For the upscale, they tend to be culinary students, with an eye on the prize, the skillet, the future restaurant. For the upscale vegetarian one I worked at last year, it was a whole new set of values. Talk was of the discordant political view, the sideways slant of militant vegetarians who were convinced the government is out to screw us with pesticides, and bunnies in cages. Militant vegetarians seems an oxymoron, you would think if you were not ripping meat with your canines you might be a happy muncher of greens and smooth out. However, not to be, I learned a whole lot about anarchists, the dope scene among cooks from midnight to four to come down from being amped up after cooking, the floater bands they followed, and the incestous sexcapades between all their casual trading-dating. I just hung in there with the conversations, kept my mouth shut about being a teacher which felt like I was a narc-o-plant, or I would not have learned a thing. And, I had fun. I morphed back to my college days with my own sexcapades, harley riding boyfriend and vegetation. As we chopped, diced, pureed and whipped, so did the stories, coming out in bursts like: "Hey, remember the band last week that...wait, is the sauce done, no thicken it, anyway, the band was really radical about their...is that your timer?" Somehow I followed it all. Now the breakfast girls are something else instead, they all are about 20.5, and keep telling me I do not look 55. Yeah right, but gotta love them. Their talk instead is always what they are going to do when off, and how they catch up on their sleep. One is engaged, and truly has saved herself until marriage, so we talk about this in quiet voices to not carry out into the dining room. These young women are experienced in ways I never was at 20, I had other experiences, I had lived abroad, knew Leningrad, London, Frankfurt. These women have live in boyfriends, are taking snorkling classes, maintaining their gardens, one left school at 17 to travel South America with her guy. They set up, I cook, we nibble the food and lift over and over, heavy racks of hot dishes to put away. It is physical work. At ten the housekeepers come in with cigarettes, stories of hard lives with men, the bikers, the landlords, the kids, the stepkids. They grab some cookies and go into the basement to fold and stack heavy loads of linens. They take a smoke break at 11 and I realize I have bene full on working since 6 without a break so step outside for 5 minutes in the cool air. I haven't sat down, I have gone up and down the basement steps to the pantry many times, I have lifted racks of dishes, fielded three cups of cold coffee and chatted with the gals. And yet I have been more myself, turning out food that is a tangible product compared to education where you don't know if anything takes, than I am in my English classroom. I like the anarchists, the road weary cleaners, the young women with their lovers, the rock music, and the chatter. I am a voyeur, and I am only passing through.