1) Who was eating the meal? The doctors and nurses, the private patients who got the best we had, the public patients who might even be welfare, but ate less expensive food, or the colored dining room where all colored workers ate, even if they were doctors or licensed nurses. They got a lot of soul food and cornbread. Almost all of the domestic help were black. A fifth menu was made in the special diet kitchen in categories depending on the person's illness, but I was not knowledgeable enough to be a part of that.
2) Each recipe had a cost label according to the time of the year, whether it was in season or not.
3) Each recipe had a yield. Some recipe's for 100 would not quite make that many servings, but others would make more, even up to 120 servings.
4)Then there was the popularity factor to figure for the recipes to be made for the doctor's dining room. Doctors and staff dietitians could eat in that side of the room. All others, nurses, secretaries, therapists, assistant dietitians and everybody else who worked there had to eat on the other, larger side with the two serving lines separating them. Anybody in the huge room could bring guests for lunch and dinner, charge it on an account. Seconds were served, even thirds!
The first mistake I made was going in at the same time one Sunday as my Bishop and his wife. He was a faculty plastic surgeon, and I just automatically sat down and ate with them. Mrs. Martin saw me and let me know the very next morning that I should never sit on that side. Word got around that Mrs. Martin frowned on the assistants socializing with the staff. There were twelve staff who had masters degrees and taught in the intern program. I knew of one who broke a date when she discovered one of us would be along. The staff were mostly single as we were, and they had their own house that backed on our back yard. When summer came Mrs. Martin asked me to move over to the staff house, because she had hired two girls right out of college who had been accepted as interns for the fall, and they were unsuitable to live with their teachers, so I had to drag all my stuff in my arms through the lot. Nobody over there would speak to me. Every time I came in somebody shrieked like I was a strange intruder.
I had a tiny bedroom centered where I could hear their conversations. Two were discussing their weekend at the beach with dates. One commented that her date didn't drink, so she had refrained all evening. She said it was nice to wake up and be able to remember what she did the night before. I was shocked, and then I thought,"and you think you are better than I am!"I continued to spend most of my free time with my friends around the corner. The girl who got my bed loved the job and decided to postpone her internship. She and Chris and I became very close friends for many years. In fact, by the time I left to be married they had both decided to do an internship and they spent a full 12 months at Charlotte Memorial.
In my last semester at East Carolina I had taken a math class where I had learned some very complicated algebra formulas which worked wonders with all the factors, and I was cranking out the menus in record time. She was never pleased with them, and I never got one back she hadn't changed. I thought mine were better, usually. One day she put Waldorf salad on the same meal with apple pie. When I had some extra time she would send me to sub for someone out sick. One day she was getting ready to find some extra work for me. The work schedule was posted on the door. She got out of her chair saying, "Let's look at the schedule", but not imagining she would want my input, I stayed seated. She got there and yelled, "I said, let's look at the schedule". So I hopped over.
A few days later she said,"Let's look at the schedule". so I followed her. She whipped around and asked," What are you following me for???"
Having experiences with the different areas paid off. The relief dietitian resigned and I asked to transfer. Maybe she thought it was not a good idea to have two red heads working so close anyway. I got a couple of extra days off each month and it was never boring. I was in charge of the doctor's dining room when Chris was off, I spent a couple of days each week in charge of the main kitchen, I did the night dietitian's job and usually had someone interesting to talk with. I supervised the service to the rooms one day or two each week. I was surprised at the people from home and college I ran into. One day I saw my math professor from a few months before, there for major surgery, Miss Louise Williams. When she was well enough to bother with my work I ran down to get some of the menu sheets and showed her how the formulas she taught me had worked so well. She was so pleased she cried, saying she often wondered if her students ever used what they learned in her classes. When she left she gave me all the flowers people had sent her. We had plants blooming for months.
Duke has always been one of the best hospitals in the south. It had about 600 beds, a medical school. We had a royal princess, sister to Prince Machabelli who had a perfume named for him.
After the summer was over one of the girls moved to the dorm with the new interns and I moved back. None of the staff ever spoke to me. It was a weird experience, and I could not see that I was making progress in my job. I began to think I would enjoy teaching and started looking around for openings in public schools. I gave a month's notice, but Mrs. Martin considered me a traitor. She asked me if I would help her out on weekends, so I did for a while.
The very first weekend I didn't work is when I met a soldier, Ted Warner, at church.
