It
was March 1956 and I had arrived in Miami Beach after being discharged
from the Marines in California and hitchhiking to Florida. Someday I
will have to blog about that trip but here I was twenty years old, not a penny in my pocket, (don't stop in Las Vegas with mustering out pay in your pocket) and my last ride had been on the back of a truck hauling fish.

I
hadn't seen my aunt Flo in 7-8 years and here I was knocking on her
door, smelly, exhausted, broke and hungry. She managed an apartment
building right off 5th Street and Washington Avenue in Miami Beach and
she gave me one of the apartments paying the first month's rent. She
stocked up my refrigerator with food, gave me linens, and kitchen
supplies, told me that I had two weeks to play tourist and then I would
have to go to work.

Two weeks later I
was a bellhop at the Sea Isle hotel on Collins Avenue--a job I didn't
particularly like.  Flo was working dinner at a small Italian
restaurant on Collins just down from Al's Luncheonette where she was
also a waitress at breakfast and lunch in addition to her managing the
building--she was not a slacker and she expected the same from her
nephew!!

Flo
came knocking on my door one early evening and said that I was about to
become a pizza pie maker! Their regular pie maker hadn't shown for 2
nights in a row, was on a bender, and the boss decided to fire him. My
aunt told him I was a fast learner and he told her to get me. And that
night I became a pizza maker, working in a small section in the front
of the store where the pizza oven was and people could look in the
window and watch the pizza pie man--ME!!!--make pizza and it wasn't
long before I was throwing the  dough in the air, twirling it around,
making a show, using  flair  putting the tomatosauce and cheese on the pie and adding the other ingredients-- I WAS A STAR!!

My
'star' turn lasted for about 3 weeks. It was hot in that little pizza
room, my aunt and the other waitress in the restaurant was making more
money than me and working less hours. I wanted to be a waiter! Flo
taught me how to handle 6 cups of coffee in one trip, how to stack a
tray and put it down on a tray stand. In between making pies I would
help her and the other waitress take orders, serve food and be their busboy.

On
our night off Flo's boyfriend, whom she would eventually marry, took us
to a restaurant at 101 Collins Avenue, just up from the Miami Beach dog
track, called Picciolos. On the way out, just on instinct, I asked the
host if they were hiring waiters and he told me to come in the next
day.

It turned out that the host was Vince Piccolo, who with his brother Don, worked for their parents, Sam and Dorothy Piccolo, who owned one of the best restaurants on Miami Beach.

I learned a quick restaurant lesson, as when I was hired at Piccolo's
I gave the boss at the other Italian restaurant two weeks notice, which
Flo insisted I do. The boss fired me the next evening when I came into
work. Flo quit 10 minutes after he did that and settled down to just
doing two jobs, the one at Al's luncheonette and managing 'our'
building. After it happened a second time--my giving notice and then
being fired the same or the next day--I didn't give notice on futurerestaurant jobs.

I
went to see Vincent, explained what happened, and he told me to come
into work the next day. I was to start and end my career as a waiter
in  Italian restaurants and it was atPiccolo's that I got an education that would serve me over the next 30+ years.

To be continued--part 2--what I learned from Sam, Dorothy, Vincent and Don Piccolo about the restaurant business and how came to love being a waiter!