Disclaimer:
It's long
It has several characters
It is only 50% of the whole story, but it will have to do.
I went to and gratuated from a private HS in OKC which made much of this story memorable.
While in college I was a waiter at OKC’s only 4-star restaurant during the last 16-months of the “Iranian Hostage Crisis”. It was located on Grand Blvd between 23rd & 36th streets. Nightly, Ted Koppel would urgently report on the day’s events.
This restaurant had 8-waiters that served between 6:30 & 10:00 pm. Generally, each waiter, with the exception of HS prom season, was allocated 23 -26 persons per night. It was very exclusive for OKC in the late 70’s & the clientele was the who’s who of OKC social & wealth circles plus an influx of UK oil investors & bankers on a weekly basis.
I was one of 2-waiters that were not Iranian. The buss staff were all Iranians including the Maitre De’. He was a petroleum engineer that had been denied a job due to his being Iranian. He was a great, great guy & ultimately wound up as a major talent with Halliburton.
The kitchen staff was composed of Sam, the main cook, a black man of 64 years with a wife & 2-girlfriends. Two others were 2- gay sous chefs preparing the Hors d'oeuvres & basically stirring up $hit. The main bartender was a redneck biker that considered himself a chess “master” dating the head waitress who was a daughter of an OKC oil magnate at the time. I and others (my Iranian collegues) regularly beat him and his wrath was legendary.
The restaurant was situated on a small lake that was full of fish. I would regularly show up for my shifts early and use my stashed fishing rod to catch a few big perch for Sam to cook for his dinner. In return he provided me any menu item I wanted for free. Hella deal.
The owners were 2-brothers descended from a thoroughbred breeding & racing family from OKC/Nichols Hills. One was violently heterosexual & the other was violently gay. The gay one’s boyfriend was also a bartender at the restaurant.
Let’s just say that particularly on Friday & Saturday nights there was significant sociologically insanity on display behind the kitchen & bar doors.
The gay one would show up for the Friday rush freshly off his homo injections from a Dr. that would be a regular on Friday nights in the restaurant.
The homos would try to tell chef Sam how to cook their butt buddies’ food and chef Sam would not say anything but would spit on their food if it was grilled. They never figured it out.
I was a newbie engineer at OU and trying to figure out FORTRAN and my Iranian colleagues were all computer science majors mastering all the bada$$ computer languages like COBOL, PL1, etc. FORTRAN was child’s play for them. They wrote my weekly programs between customers at the waiters’ bar nightly and I was extremely grateful. They were great guys all around.
Somewhat regularly I would have patrons, mainly the man of the table, ask what it was like to work with Iranians especially in light of the hostage situation. I told them what I stated above. They weren’t idiots & understood that the Ayatollah was in the wrong. These guys literally loved America for multiple reason including the “morally casual attitudes” of American women college students. Touche’
There is so much more but I believe I’ve gone over my limit on Iran related issues of the 1970's.
The Ted Koppel era.
It's long
It has several characters
It is only 50% of the whole story, but it will have to do.
I went to and gratuated from a private HS in OKC which made much of this story memorable.
While in college I was a waiter at OKC’s only 4-star restaurant during the last 16-months of the “Iranian Hostage Crisis”. It was located on Grand Blvd between 23rd & 36th streets. Nightly, Ted Koppel would urgently report on the day’s events.
This restaurant had 8-waiters that served between 6:30 & 10:00 pm. Generally, each waiter, with the exception of HS prom season, was allocated 23 -26 persons per night. It was very exclusive for OKC in the late 70’s & the clientele was the who’s who of OKC social & wealth circles plus an influx of UK oil investors & bankers on a weekly basis.
I was one of 2-waiters that were not Iranian. The buss staff were all Iranians including the Maitre De’. He was a petroleum engineer that had been denied a job due to his being Iranian. He was a great, great guy & ultimately wound up as a major talent with Halliburton.
The kitchen staff was composed of Sam, the main cook, a black man of 64 years with a wife & 2-girlfriends. Two others were 2- gay sous chefs preparing the Hors d'oeuvres & basically stirring up $hit. The main bartender was a redneck biker that considered himself a chess “master” dating the head waitress who was a daughter of an OKC oil magnate at the time. I and others (my Iranian collegues) regularly beat him and his wrath was legendary.
The restaurant was situated on a small lake that was full of fish. I would regularly show up for my shifts early and use my stashed fishing rod to catch a few big perch for Sam to cook for his dinner. In return he provided me any menu item I wanted for free. Hella deal.
The owners were 2-brothers descended from a thoroughbred breeding & racing family from OKC/Nichols Hills. One was violently heterosexual & the other was violently gay. The gay one’s boyfriend was also a bartender at the restaurant.
Let’s just say that particularly on Friday & Saturday nights there was significant sociologically insanity on display behind the kitchen & bar doors.
The gay one would show up for the Friday rush freshly off his homo injections from a Dr. that would be a regular on Friday nights in the restaurant.
The homos would try to tell chef Sam how to cook their butt buddies’ food and chef Sam would not say anything but would spit on their food if it was grilled. They never figured it out.
I was a newbie engineer at OU and trying to figure out FORTRAN and my Iranian colleagues were all computer science majors mastering all the bada$$ computer languages like COBOL, PL1, etc. FORTRAN was child’s play for them. They wrote my weekly programs between customers at the waiters’ bar nightly and I was extremely grateful. They were great guys all around.
Somewhat regularly I would have patrons, mainly the man of the table, ask what it was like to work with Iranians especially in light of the hostage situation. I told them what I stated above. They weren’t idiots & understood that the Ayatollah was in the wrong. These guys literally loved America for multiple reason including the “morally casual attitudes” of American women college students. Touche’
There is so much more but I believe I’ve gone over my limit on Iran related issues of the 1970's.
The Ted Koppel era.
