Wastin’ Away Again… From Shucker to Wheel Man (Part 1)
On The ROAD to Technology..
Key West—where the sun shines bright, the drinks flow freely, and life moves at a different pace. I arrived in this tropical paradise via Greyhound bus, weary from the road, covered in dust, with nothing but a backpack, hunger, wanderlust, and books by Kerouac, Henry Miller, and Henry Rollins. Over the last year, I had been writing my own book of poetry and prose called One Dead Year, cataloging my journey from New York to Seattle, to Anchorage, to San Francisco, to South Lake Tahoe—all with a broken heart after leaving the love of my life at the time behind in Brooklyn, setting out on the road to nowhere and everywhere, where I had no place to go but everywhere to be.
But before I arrived in Key West, I woke up early, as I did every day in CALNEVA, a place in the high mountains of South Lake Tahoe where you can stand in the middle of the road with one foot in California and the other in Nevada. Sublime’s “What I Got” was blasting in my ears on my portable CD player, as it did every morning at that time. I stood at the Heavenly Ski Resort bus stop in the pitch black outside the cabin where I was living. The only lights you could see were from the resort bus when it finally arrived. I had been spending the winter up to no good, having the time of my life in the frozen terrain.
Those early frozen mornings, combined with having recently been in Alaska for the summer, made me think of Key West, a place I had always wanted to go. Having recently been at the northernmost point in the United States, I felt a pull toward the southernmost point in the Lower 48, as they called it in Alaska.
So that morning, I decided to drop everything. I called my old friend Tom, and we hatched a plan. Days later, we met up at Miami International Airport with everything we owned on our backs and boarded the Greyhound, heading as far south as you can go on Highway US 1.
The Greyhound bus drops you off downtown on Duval Street when you arrive in Key West, so this is where I found myself in this tropical paradise of very long nights filled with very short days. I had to find a place to live, which I had become good at after being on the road. In San Francisco, I moved from welfare hotel to welfare hotel every two weeks, as that was the limit you could stay in those places at the time.
In Key West, I would move four times, but the first place I found was a small inn on Angela Street, just off Duval. Next up, I needed a job, and that’s where the fun began…
I went up and down Duval Street, going from restaurant to restaurant looking for work. I landed jobs at Planet Hollywood and Sloppy Joe’s. Sloppy Joe’s was the first to offer me work, as an oyster shucker. I didn’t know at the time that this was the bottom of the bottom in this establishment. On my first day, they handed me mesh metal gloves and a shucking knife and showed me how to do it. For the next two weeks, I shucked every day, eating all the free food I could get. I can’t say if it’s still like this, but back then, in any kitchen job, you could cook and eat as much free food as you wanted. This was a huge perk after coming off the road for a year where hunger was an everyday occurrence.
I got tired of shucking very fast, and with no career path ahead of me, I went back out onto Duval Street and walked into Margaritaville—the place that would change my life, set a new direction, and carry me forward for the next 12 years until I left Florida for good.
At Margaritaville, things moved pretty fast. I started on the line, first in salads. Then the fry person quit, and I got a slight promotion from salad to fryer—a lot more work. Every day, I was cutting and blanching endless buckets of fresh-cut fries. It was a terrible job, but a lot of fun. Margaritaville has a vibe all its own. Everyone was laid back, smoking cigarettes and sneaking quick beers in the walk-in freezer.
Then the “Cheeseburger in Paradise” guy quit or got fired, and I was asked to fill the role. I did that for several weeks or months—it’s hard to remember precisely. But just like the song by Jimmy Buffett, “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” I was the guy, cooking a thousand burgers in a shift. A flat top grill with what seemed like half an inch of grease on top. Grease burning my arms and stinging my face, sweat dripping and burning in my eyes.
When you work the line, the topmost role is the wheel man. He takes the tickets, mans the grill, and is in charge of the fry cook, salad prepper, and the burger maestro to get their food up at the same time.
Then guess who quit this time? Not me—the wheel man. I was asked to step up and very quickly became the best day shift wheel man they had at Margaritaville. So much so that, after not a long amount of time, I was asked to move to nights. We have touchdown, the big show, the glamour, the acknowledgment, and the pressure. And Margaritaville at night was a pressure cooker. And the waitresses were hot 🙂
More to come in Part 2 about Key West, but it is 2am in the morning and I havent been able to sleep and this story popped into my head.
More about me can be found on my LinkedIn page @ www.linkedin.com/in/boehmjesse
Email me @ IAM@jesseboehm.com
