Chef Jeff

In the lobby that morning, I walked by Jeff De Jond, the Yarrow’s head chef, and complimented his traditional white chef’s hat that resembled a culinary crown. He seemed pleased at my observation and we both shared displeasure about the current fashion of young chefs and cooks wearing baseball caps right side up, backwards, forwards and upside down. He shook my hand in warm and sincere appreciation and we parted with his comment that although he might dress in traditional cooking attire, his cooking was everything but that.

1943-45
Sontag’s Drugstore
First and Pine
Long Beach, California

My first position at Sontags, at the then innocent age of fourteen, was washing pots for Ernie, Sontag’s head chef, who also wore a traditional white chef’s hat that resembled a culinary crown.

Ernie was a macho type chef, probably eight feet tall, weighing 250 pounds, sporting a thin moustache, and fully in charge of the kitchen staff. He was kind to me and I think appreciated my efforts to move out of the kitchen and into the fountain for a nickel an hour raise. Before I jerked sodas, I spent a brief time washing dishes. With a lot of hard work and drive, I eventually elevated my position to a bus boy, the ultimate job for a young male, part-time, Sontag employee. My highest wage was fifty-five cents an hour.

Along the way sometime, Ernie, trying to be a surrogate uncle I guess, tried to get me “educated” by a negro woman who washed dishes. She laughed at the prospect and refused.

Blackie, the store drunk and full-time pot washer, one time came at Ernie with a company butcher knife and was quickly subdued by the head chef’s fists. These often violent confrontations happened quite frequently, with Blackie always taking the heat and the black eyes. Bacon was rationed during the war and I did steal one pound. Sailors waited in lines for cigarettes and I waited in lines for Levis.

On the afternoon of September 2, 1945, the war ended in Japan and we all exited the restaurant to join the celebration on Pine Avenue. I saved about $1200 working at Sontags, which I used to purchase my first car, a brand new 1947 Kaiser. My dear father earlier had talked me out of buying a 1929 Ford Model T.

Sontag Gang. April, 1945.