Yerington Stories: How The Flu Helped Get Me To College

Yerington Stories: How The Flu Helped Get Me To College

by Chere L. Brown

In the words of Sophia of the Golden Girls, “Picture It” the year was 1965. 

I was a 17-year-old school senior at Yerington High School in Yerington, Nevada.  I had been working as a waitress after school and on weekends for two years at John’s Cafe.  John’s Cafe was the town’s main restaurant, and one block from the high school. All the teens and town folks hung out there.  After high school, I had plans to attend college, and needed to earn as much money as I could.  So one day I muster every ounce of  courage and asked my boss, John Young, “When I graduate from high school, can I get what the other waitresses are making?” You see high school students could be hired at $1.00 per hour, but minimum wage at the time was $1.15 per hour.  John had been drinking that day and became very insulting to me for asking for a raise. I quit, and my brother, Dan, who was working as a dishwasher, also walked out with me.

Now quitting a job in our little town of under 5,000 people was very serious.  First off, there not many jobs to be had, and second off, everyone knows everyone and a bad reference could be equal to being blackballed. You might never get a job in that town again. I just knew that I would be going to college completely broke.  I was heartbroken.

 However, as luck would have it (or should I say as catastrophe would have it?), a serious flu epidemic hit our town.  My mother, a nurse and hospital administrator, was out of town at a hospital convention.  I was left in charge of my two brothers and sister in her absence. The flu hit all three of them, as well as most of our classmates.  I spent days playing Nancy Nurse to them. They closed the school for a week, as they are doing now. I was one of the few in our town who did not get the flu.  I never understood why.  On the same day that my mother returned home from the hospital convention, I received a call from John Young.  Apparently most of his waitresses had the flu as well. He was asking me to come back to work, and yes he would give me my raise. I worked for John’s Cafe up to the day I left for college.

Yerington Monday: John’s Fine Food

Yerington Monday: John’s Fine Food

Every time I return home to Yerington and take a drive down Main Street, I feel a big hole in my heart when I pass the building that use to be John’s Fine Food.  It is now an insurance company.  It looks so dead, so plain, so blah.  As a kid in Yerington, John’s was a hub of the community.  It was full of life and fun.  It was breakfast, lunch and dinner.  It was where all the businessmen came for a coffee break.  It was where single miners, construction workers and cowboys came for dinner.  If they came for breakfast, we would make them a bag lunch and put it on their tab. Yes, regulars could charge their meals.  It was where families would go for special occasions or a weekend dinner treat.

John’s was like the Boys & Girls Club of our day.  As teenagers we would go for coffee and sweet rolls before school.  At lunch we walked to John’s for a lunch of hamburgers and homemade french fries. On Friday & Saturday nights we would hangout and watch our friends drag Main Street.  It was the “place” to go after the game. We often danced to the jukebox.  There was two pinball machines, if you got bored.  And if you were 21, there were two slot machines that were “tight as hell”.  Yes, John’s was a happening place in those days.  Now it sits like a tombstone on top of a grave.

When I was fifteen, I lied and told John I was sixteen (as that was the legal as to hire minors) when I applied for a position as a dishwasher.  I worked for him until the day before I left for college in September 1966.  By the time I was really sixteen, I was waiting tables.  I worked lunch hour and after school.  In the summers, I worked full time.  Both my brothers, Dan and Dave, worked for John as dishwashers as well.

 
Scookie John's Cafe Yerington NV 1965

Shannon, my boyfriend John's Cafe Yerington NV Oct 1965

Boys at the pinball machines John's Cafe Yerington NV Aug 1965

Sue Johnson, Red Hatton , Sue Hatton , Gayle, Chuck Parrot John's Cafe Yerington NV 1964

Qwen & Sue Hatton John's Cafe Yerington NV Oct 1965

Sue Hatton & Tom Rodney John's Cafe Yerington NV Oct 1965

Gayle B, Chere Barnett and Cindy Franks John's Cafe Yerington NV 1965

Band Boys of the Centurions from Reno with Wesley Gilbert of the Quids John's Cafe Yerington NV Oct 1965

Waitress John's Cafe Yerington NV 1965

Chere Brown & Linda Steel horsing around John's Cafe Yerington NV 1964

Waitress John's Cafe Yerington NV Oct 1964

Sharon Andrews John's Cafe Yerington NV 1965

Louise, the cook John's Cafe Yerington NV 1965

Sue Hatton, Mike, Richard John's Cafe Yerington NV 1965

Naomi, John's wife John's Cafe Yerington NV 1965

Ron Carey teasing a customer John's Cafe Yerington NV 1965

Terry & ?? John's Cafe Yerington NV Aug 1964

Terri John's Cafe Yerington NV Oct 1964

Terry and Chere Brown having pie fight, John's Cafe Yerington, NV 1965

John Young, owner John's Cafe Yerington NV Sept 1964

Mary Hood & Gale B, John's Cafe Yerington NV Oct 1964

Linda Steele, John's Cafe Yerington NV Oct 1964

Waitress John's Cafe Yerington NV Sept 1964

Chere Barnett John's Cafe Yerington, NV 1964

Gayle & Sookie John's Cafe Yerington NV March 1965

John Young & Terry John's Cafe Yerington NV 1965

Steady Customer and Chere Barnett,  John's Cafe Yerington, Nevada 1965

Louise, the cook John's Cafe Yerington NV 1965

Dawnette Humes and me John's Cafe Yerington, Nevada August 1964

There was a few months of unemployment from John’s, when he fired me for asking for a raise.  I wrote about this on my blog on how I was fired and rehired. See below.

How The Flu Helped Get Me To College

http://thecrackerladyshouse.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-flu-helped-get-me-to-college.html

When I first started washing dishes for John, this song was played on the jukebox almost hourly.  Everytime I hear it I am transported to the back kitchen of John’s, where I was either washing dishes or peeling a 100-lb sack of potatoes for those famous french fries.

Dusty Springfield - Wishin & Hopin 1964

https://youtu.be/gAdTsAKvVTU