Things about Drake's, which you might find interesting or amusing even if you never went there:
1. There was a "chicken loaf" which would periodically have to be sliced and made sandwich-ready. Only employees 18 and older could use the chicken loaf slicer. One night when I was working, my co-worker S. had her inaugural chicken loaf slicing experience (I had removed myself from the task on grounds of vegetarianism - but did the loaf contain meat?) in the basement. Mr. Tibbals, grouchy old man with expressive cane/owner of Drake's, came in later that evening and saw that the chicken had been sliced. "Where are the scraps?" he demanded. "Scraps?" mused S. "The chicken scraps! For the chicken salad!" "I threw them away, sir. I didn't know." Pause. Tap of cane. "Well go get 'em!" Then he watched wheezily as S. dug bits of chicken out of the garbage. We warned customers against that batch of chicken salad, unless one of our sworn enemies came in. You know how many enemies I had back in the day.
2. Mr. Tibbals arrived by cab around 8:00 or 9:00 each night. He mostly sat in a little room in the basement, smoking and...we didn't know. I feared he was lost in the sad mists of "good-old-days" style nostalgia as his punk rock employees freely stole from the cash register (I didn't though! honest!). He'd usually still be there at opening time the next morning, then be taken away by cab shortly after. Whoever opened had to go make sure he was still alive.
3. Mr. T. believed that girls should wear skirts with our Drake's t-shirts. So we would wear our regular clothes and then frantically get changed into skirts just before his arrival time. Once Steve O., who had long hair, wore a skirt, and Mr. T. thought he was a girl. Mr. T. also thought S. was a boy because she had short hair. She went with it because then she didn't have to change into a skirt.
4. Mr. T. insisted that we put mayonnaise on everything (Note: I have a total repulsion towards mayonnaise and have since I was a kid), even peanut butter and jelly. He also had a one-scoop-per-shake rule. These rules made the food bad and so were followed only when he was sitting at the counter over his Campbell's clam chowder.
5. Drake's was famous for the limeade and the lime ricky (limeade with fizzy water).
6. We paid ourselves out of the antique cash register each night, some more freely than others (see #2).
7. All the employees were heavy smokers. I was not. All the other employees were basically on a smoke break the whole time. I was not.
8. There were lots of kinds of teas and they were served in little orange plastic pots.
9. There were jars and jars and flat thingies of candy, some of which had clearly not been opened since the 30's or 40's (anything anise was dusty-looking), others which had to be refilled regularly (like the turtles and the malted milk balls).
10. Downstairs in the basement was the "chocolate room" where all the backstock of candy was kept. It was an exciting place to be, all quiet and sugar-scented.
11. Mr. Tibbals told a story about a time in the 50's or 60's when the bread was still homemade. It would be left to rise overnight. One morning, a lady (in a skirt, I'm sure) baked it and then sliced it, and blood started squirting out. Turns out a rat had climbed in and slept there as the dough rose, then had been baked into the loaf. Telling this story was the only time I saw Mr. T. laugh.
12. Customers wrote their orders on an order form and left it on the counter. When the slackers behind the counter had prepared their feasts, perhaps some olive salad on toast, cut on the diagonal into fourths, or a Princeton double-decker sandwich (I'll have to dig out my souvenir menu to remember what was on that one), the order was yelled out for the patron to come fetch.
13. You never really knew who was there, in the high-backed booths, but chances were Prince-of-Wales Tea guy or White Chocolate Covered Pretzels Guy or any other number of regulars were there.
14. The olive salad was a can of olives pressed through this metal grinder that looked like a pencil sharpener. Of course, it was then mixed with mayonnaise (I can't write "mayo." Sounds too collegial, like I'm using a pal's nickname). Sometimes I'd leave out the mayonnaise for my own personal delicacy.
15. Then there was The Drake's Five. Quite a dramatic sitch. Mr. T. could barely see the clam chowder in front of him, poor man, let alone tell genders or sexual orientations apart (#3, above). So when two very butch women were sharing a bowl of soup, Mr. T. flew off the handle and kicked them out (side note: he kicked some people out for singing once when I was there, too). Why did he kick them out? He had a strict rule against people sharing tea or whatever. You had to get your own order. But the two women insisted they'd been kicked out for being gay, and soon a sad little picket line formed outside of Drakes. Some former Drake's employees counter-protested. The whole thing is hilarious to think about.
16. Awesome old phone booth in back, plus the Walnut Room and Martian Room, both upstairs, the Martian Room all space-age 1950's, only open when the main floor booths were full (rare by the '90's). The Walnut Room was used for storage but was a swank ballroom dance venue in its day.
17. I could go on, but... is anyone still reading??? Now who's lost in the "sad mists of 'good-ol-days' nostalgia" (see #2)?
