Excerpt from my memoir manuscript, "The Year of 14 Jobs"
Job 3: Waitressing at the Bum Steer, Harwood Heights, Illinois, 1969 (formerly Aunt Jemima's Pancake House)
The street sign itself should have been a tip-off. Who named a restaurant “The Bum Steer?” Was it based on a really bad inside joke? Naming a restaurant “The Bum Steer” was like naming a used car dealer “Rip-off Roger’s” or a tile store “Chipped Charlie’s.”
After my day delivering phone books, it was tough to find another job. It seemed as if every prospective employer I spoke said, “Do you have any experience in this line of work?” Whether it was for a job selling shoes, slicing meat or working a cosmetic counter, how much experience did they expect a 16-year-old girl to have, anyway? Soon, I went back to what I did have experience in – waitressing.
The Bum Steer occupied a wide building on Harlem near Montrose, formerly Aunt Jemima’s Pancake House. It had been there for years. The facade always reminded me of a columned plantation manor when Aunt Jemima had been there. It stayed as it was after Bum Steer took over.
I remember when the Aunt Jemima Pancake House previously hired a black “mammy” to dress up as Aunt Jemima. Sporting a do-rag bandana and huge apron, “Aunt Jemima” lavished southern stereotypical greetings on northwest side, lily-white Chicago customers. “Land sakes, you folks come right on in and set down. It’s chow time,” she’d say, or if sleepy-eyed Sunday morning customers walked in, it might be “Wake up, Jacob, day's abreakin' -- yonder comes a hare with his tail ashakin'.”
The term “Aunt Jemima” itself might indeed be considered a kind of inside joke, if certainly a racist one. Someone told me, I'm not sure if were a black or white person, that it was a personification of “Ain't Yo Mama,” which is dialect for “I’m not your mother.” Slave women could have said this to plantation owner’s children they were placed in charge of. If the children didn’t see their real mother as often as their black nanny, they might begin to look at her as their real “mammy.” “No honey, I ain’t yo mama, I’m your Aunt Jemima.” Of course, having a black “mammy” in costume, holding court in a restaurant or any other venue today would surely be labeled as racist.
When the Aunt Jemima Pancake House chain finally went out of business, each former restaurant locale transformed into something else – a bridal salon, an auto parts store, or in this case, another restaurant. i.e. “The Bum Steer.”
I filled out an application. The manager Gus called me in. I landed a part-time position. I studied the menus along with guidance of Hazel, the head waitress. Hazel was a tall, robust, forthright woman in her late 40s, who also wore her hair back in a chignon, ala Rose from Rose Grill (Harlem & Higgins), but in a lovely auburn shade and without it looking nearly as much a Rose hair helmet. She was a full timer who had spent some years working for Aunt Jemima’s as well.
As we skimmed the menus, I was glad that The Bum Steer didn’t serve the old man, pick-yer-butt roast beef and gravy sandwiches that Rose Grill had. Hazel explained that the breakfast menu matched Aunt Jemima’s old breakfast menu nearly verbatim, right down to the berry syrup for the pancakes and waffles. “The breakfast customers loved Aunt Jemima’s and hated to see it close,” said Hazel. “We want to keep those same Aunt Jemima customers loyal to Bum Steer.”
In addition, Bum Steer kept the same woman who had fulfilled the role of "Aunt Jemima" as the restaurant hostess on weekend mornings, since so many people knew her. Gone was the outfit, she wore her own clothes. Everyone was thrilled she was part of the new restaurant. I never found out her real name, or at least I asked her and soon forgot it, since Hazel always called her Aunt Jemima. She didn't seem to mind. Hazel even suggested that she wear the "Aunt Jemima" get-up again on Mother's Day, every restaurant's busiest day, but she said the outfit went by the way of Aunt Jemima's and they had repossessed it.
Besides Aunt Jemima in street clothes, I always felt bad for a Mexican-American cook at the restaurant who also worked weekends. He lived so far on the south side of Chicago that it was too far and too late for him to take public transportation home on Saturday night, and too early on Sunday morning to make it back and get enough sleep in between. Because of this, Bum Steer let him sleep in one of the restaurant booths overnight so he could be ready, bright and early, on Sunday morning to cook breakfasts. I'm sure it was totally illegal, and they bent the rules for him. But I thought it was just downright sad someone had to travel so far on three buses to get employment. I wrote a poem The Egg Man about one of the Mexican-American cooks at Bum Steer.
BTW, in later years, I came to realize that The Bum Steer might have been a financial cover for a mob-owned business. Italian-American "managers" from California who knew nothing about the restaurant business would come and go occasionally, as would the capped "owner" and his entourage of henchmen.
After The Bum Steer went out of business (after I had left, haha) it next became the "Earl of Old Town on Harlem," a folk club for all ages. I had later gone on a date there with a guy who teamed up with the comedian Andy Kaufman in California and became the character Tony Clifton in his touring duo.
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BTW, in later years, I came to realize that The Bum Steer might have been a financial cover for a mob-owned business. Italian-American "managers" from California who knew nothing about the restaurant business would come and go occasionally, as would the capped "owner" and his entourage of henchmen.
After The Bum Steer went out of business (after I had left, haha) it next became the "Earl of Old Town on Harlem," a folk club for all ages. I had later gone on a date there with a guy who teamed up with the comedian Andy Kaufman in California and became the character Tony Clifton in his touring duo.
