Yosemite Sam

It's funny how so many of the strange and outlandish characters that I meet, turn out to remind me of cartoon characters. Maybe it is because I have watched way too many cartoons for my own good. Maybe it is because they do things that 'normal' people 'in their right mind' just don't do. There are times that this recognition takes a while to examine and realize. Other times it just clicks.

Dendorff is Yosemite Sam. He was the rootin-est tootin-est dog-gone-shooten-est cook in the East. And he would be sure to tell you. On first sight, I almost lost it and came close to falling over in a sheer fit of giggles. Imagine if there were no censors on cartoons and that is what he sounded like, except trade the Southern Drawl for a Western New Yawk accent. Brash, brutal and hilarious. One of those guys that you have no idea why women put up with them but they end up in bed with him anyway. The type of guy that wouldn't think twice about regaling the room with hie sexual exploits even if his grandmother was standing beside him.

Example:

Dendorff: "So last night I was lickin' this chick's asshole..."

Disgusted fouteen year old Dishwasher: "Ugghh!!"

Dendorff: "What? It tastes like suckin' on a penny. All coppery. I'd lick a fuckin' snakes ass if it stood still long enough!"


And I believe that he would.

Every time he got angry, I expected there to be six-shooters at his waist to suddenly fire at lest fifteen times in rapid succession lifting him off the ground in the process. Dendorff ripped the phone off the wall once. He then stomped outside and drop-kicked it across the parking lot. Came back in with his whole head flaming red, looking like there would be great bursts of steam shooting from his ears at any second, and grumbled at one of the young dishwashers to go get the phone.

Functioning Alcoholic. The only person that I have ever known to drink more than Dendorff was his brother. The owner of the Catering Company always complained about Dendorff's 'funny aftershave'. By the time that I worked with him he had mellowed out considerably. He talked wistfully of the days when, after the early parties had been sent out, the cooking staff would lock the dishwashers in the building and head down the street to cash their paychecks at the local pub. I guess liquidate would be a better term than cash, since it would be several hours before they returned.

Smoked like a chimney. We had a little 'office' in the kitchen that was just a corner by the wait-staff station that someone long ago had thrown a desk under a cabinet that was there, in theory, to hold cookbooks, ordering supplies, and other such things. It was in reality nothing more than a catchall that Dendorff turned into his personal ashtray. We were making meringue pies one day. Not real Meringue, that fake powder stuff you throw in a blender with some water. We get through topping all the pies with the fake meringue and Dendorff goes over to the 'office' and starts rummaging around in the mess of a cabinet. Trundles back over with a hand-held blowtorch to brown the meringue with. Lights the torch, tosses the match into the trash, pops a cigarette in his mouth, lights it with a torch then continues on his merry way running the torch over pie tops. He conscientiously made sure to hold his cigarette away from the prep table. You always see that sort of Lunch Lady Doris/greasy spoon stuff in the movies where the cook is smoking while slinging hash but I wasn't prepared to see it in an actual kitchen. Even worse was the Twice-Baked Potato incident but that is a story for another time.

Regardless of all this, Dendorff was a great cook. As long as he could keep it together to show up for work, it didn't matter what state he was in. Rough and tumble with a harsh word never spared, he put out some fantastic food. I learned a lot working with him. A great deal of it I took as cautionary tales of what not to do, but there was an equal amount of technique and method that I picked up. Dendorff's downfall was always the pressure of being in charge of the whole kitchen. It would eventually wear him down each time that he came into that position at the Catering Company.

This time around in the revolving door of Catering Company employment, his leaving in a drunken fugue was brought on by the death of his father. Dendorff started showing up later and later. Then more inebriated. Then sometimes not at all. He tried to apologize when he finally made an official leave. I told him that he should have been gone weeks before and to call us if he needed anything.

Of course his departure left me and another nineteen year old, James St. John, in charge of running the kitchen. We knew it was gonna be a trial by fire, but experience is the best teacher and we really liked the owner, Roger Kaufmann. We wanted to help keep things going as well as we could until he found a replacement for Dendorff.

We rehired Dendorff a few more times over the next five years but never really replaced him.

I was kind of promoted by default.