The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak: A New Orleans Family Memoir (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography) by Randy Fertel

Author:Randy Fertel
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2011-09-01T14:00:00+00:00

10.6 Mom at her desk.

Mom located her desk at a table near the bar and front door where she could keep an eye on everything, including the till. She’d clear her desk to use for diners only on the busiest of nights. People also got to keep an eye on her, to see how hard this slip of a thing from the Delta worked, half glasses poised on her nose, the paperwork neatly arrayed before her, the daily sales receipts and private customer accounts. Customers loved to display their low Chris Steak House account number: it was a badge of honor to have been Ruth’s customer for so long. Her personal phone book lay open at the ready. A giant-size jar of Cremora awaited the next fresh pot of coffee.

Long hours of keypunching for Dr. Burch made Mom sure-handed on the desktop calculator. A foam rubber cushion tilted the calculator toward her hand. A question would come up: Mom would lean forward in her swivel chair, crunch the numbers, and offer the answer. Before hand calculators became common, waitresses would bring her page-long bills for large parties, and in a glance Mom would add up the numbers in her head, starting at the left column and moving right. It’s faster, she’d explain. She never lost the knack.

In later years, many long-time customers would invoke the image of Mom with a full ashtray at her elbow and a game of gin spread in her left hand. Her other important “desk” was the table in the corner used for receiving her challengers with endless sheets of Hollywood Gin. Hollywood Gin is played with three simultaneous games in three columns, your second score added to the first and second columns and so on. Mom liked a challenge and a gamble: at a dollar a point (called a penny) or five dollars a point (called a nickel), a sheet of Hollywood could add up to hundreds of dollars, and a night of Hollywood to thousands. Men came to make their bones by challenging her. Her winnings she often put into the tip pool the waitresses shared, a regal gesture that managed to rub the loser’s nose in his loss when the chorus of waitresses chirped their thanks.

Mom once beat the nephew of Carlos Marcello at gin. Carlos Marcello was the head of the Louisiana Mafia and, in the minds of some, the man behind the Kennedy assassination. In my mother’s telling, Carlos brought his nephew into the restaurant and wanted Mom to play him one sheet of gin for $15,000. Mom said, “I don’t play for those kinda stakes.”

But Carlos pressed, so she played, “and I had him skunked in ten minutes.” Carlos then insisted that she give his nephew a chance to get his money back. She did and another ten minutes later, she had won $30,000.

“So Mom,” I asked, pulling the story out of her, “what happened?”

“Well, Carlos was slow to pay.”

“So what did you do?”

“I called Carlos and he sent my money over.

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