Finding the Rosewood

When does childhood start to slip away and the world of responsibility begin to intrude? There are as many answers as there are people. For me it began when I was twelve.

Dad had always been a small business owner, a serial entrepreneur before such a thing had a name. At this time, he owned a wholesale produce business delivering fruits and vegetables to a variety of customers, restaurants, small groceries, hospitals, nursing homes.

Early one evening Mom suffered a gallbladder attack. Dad took her to the emergency room, leaving me to look after my younger siblings. Later, Dad called from the hospital and said she would need surgery.

Mom, a mother of five, was our full time caregiver. Dad as a small business owner was a one man show. Neither had a ready backup for their jobs. In Dad’s case, if you weren’t there, the customers would soon go elsewhere. They needed fresh supplies every day.

Improvisation was the order of the day. Mom’s twin sister lived only a mile away. She and her husband, who had five children of their own, graciously took us kids into their home. Dad’s work-around was more convoluted. Since he remained with Mom during and after her surgery, someone had to run his route.

Dad’s high school friend Jack could drive a two-ton truck with a forty foot trailer attached and back it into tight spots, no small feat. He would drive, explain the personnel changes, take the orders and collect the money, but he didn’t know the route and the idiosyncrasies of each customer’s site. So, Dad asked me to be Jack’s guide.

On school free-days, Dad often took me on the route making me familiar with the customers and their locations. Now I was being asked to navigate the entire route and not make any mistakes, not forgetting even a single location?

As the oldest, my sense of responsibility was strong, and I was keenly aware of how difficult it was supporting a large family as a small businessman. As early as age seven, it was my job to polish Dad’s work shoes so he would look his best, an early role in support of the family business.

Jack picked me up at 4:30 in the morning. He was driving the truck and trailer. Soon after we pulled into a truck stop restaurant and got two coffees, black for him, cream and double sugar for my young palate. In those days, take out coffee was served in a twelve ounce glass milk bottle with a cardboard tabbed top. To keep it from burning your hand and your throat, you would wrap a cloth or a handkerchief around the bottle and hold it out the window, resting it on the bottom support arm of the west coast mirror until it cooled. No margin for error here, a mishandled bump could leave you thirsty and with a burned hand.

We began checking off our list of stops, Jack explaining Dad’s absence, taking orders, unloading the heavy items, hundred pound bags of potatoes for example, and me handling the lighter stuff, lettuce, tomatoes, fruit. He would collect the money and we’d be off to the next stop. Jack had only a sheet of paper with a list of names of businesses we were to visit that day. My job was to show him how to get there--from memory.

Each stop had its own peculiarities. Some wanted us to use only a side door and not block their alleyway with the trailer, others would not accept deliveries during the lunch hour, their busiest time. Still others would accept no deliveries after four p.m. We had to stay on schedule.

As the day progressed, the euphoric feeling of having so far succeeded, was mixed with the dread of making a mistake, getting temporarily lost or worse totally forgetting where a customer site was located. Jack was a close friend of the family so we joked about how much we needed each other. He didn’t know the route, and I didn’t know how to drive.

The FarmHouse was one of my favorite stops. This restaurant was literally an old farm home converted into a restaurant. Space in the kitchen was limited so all the baking was done in an outbuilding behind the house. Every time that door opened, the fragrant scent of fresh baked goods cascaded over me. A clutch of ladies worked all day long around a huge rectangular table, making their famous pies. One of them would always slip me a large slice to go. Today I asked for two, one for Jack. Every job has its benefits.

Our next stop was Angelo’s. This corner diner near the university had been a downtown fixture since 1948. There was no alley so all deliveries were made through the side door. This meant that the truck and trailer were double parked on a downtown street. My job was to stand by the front of the truck and charm any ambitious parking enforcement officers who happened by and to assure drivers whose cars we had blocked that we would be departing shortly. On duty from the minute we arrived until we left, it was quite the introduction to public relations and a scary experience.

Next we went to Jack’s Market, a tiny grocery located in a building from the last century. Were it located anywhere else, this place would just eke by. But in a college town, three blocks from campus, business was always good. Problem was that I couldn’t exactly remember how to get there. Panic started slowly and increased with each block we passed. Surely, it was somewhere around where we were. Unfortunately, in an old town like this, many of the streets just stopped, or changed names. After a few circuits, my clue, the car wash on the corner, came into view. The grocery was farther down that block, disaster averted.

Dad loved to order take-out lunch from our next stop, the Old German restaurant where the specialty was schnitzel and fried potatoes called kartoffeln. Today our timing was just right. Jack placed our order as soon as we arrived and then we took care of business. When we were done, we picked up our order and headed to our next stop. Take-out there was alway served in what looked like Bento Boxes, a separate drawer for their famous kartoffeln, another for the vegetable and a larger tray for the entre. We worked hard, but we ate well.

Darkness fell and we were finally headed for our last customer, the Rosewood, a roadside diner that was the perfect distance from anywhere, meaning it was always full. People had to eat somewhere. Located on a lonely stretch of highway, it was a long drive from our previous stop. Time had passed and still no Rosewood on the horizon, worry began to set in. Then it started to rain and became very foggy. Jack must have sensed my hesitancy. He slowed down as we examined every inch of the road, not wanting to miss it.

More miles went by and still no Rosewood. They would be depending on us to fill their produce needs and so far, we hadn’t missed a stop. Could we have passed it? Thoughts of asking Jack to turn the truck around and retrace our steps, crept into my head. There were no landmarks nearby to clue you that it was close.

It was late and we were tired. I took a deep breath and turned to ask him to turn the truck around. Then a vehicle in the distance approached with it’s flasher indicating it was intending to turn left. We couldn't see what was there, it was too foggy. As we crept along, we saw lights on the right set back from the road.

“I think that’s it,” Jack said.

A few minutes later it emerged from the fog. We looked at each other and cracked uneasy smiles of relief. We’d found the Rosewood, made our last delivery of the day and were headed home.

The day was a success, for Dad’s business and for Jack. For me it was more, it was a watershed moment, never before having had such responsibility. That day was my first on the road to adulthood.