As promised yesterday, this is a
continuation of my hapless adventures in Atlanta. For those of you
who didn't read yesterday's blog – and shame on you – I lived in
Atlanta, Georgia with my dad for the summer during the 1996 summer
Olympics. I lived downtown, right on Peachtree Street and wandered
the city, unsupervised, to my fifteen year old heart's content. As I
wrote yesterday, I had a gun pulled on me and assuming it was a joke,
laughed at the guy and walked off. Turns out he really was robbing
people during the night and he made the morning news. I however
didn't get mugged or shot because I was too stupid to know he was
serious. Ignorance is truly bliss. I met this unsavory man at a
little greasy spoon I was a waitress at called the Copper Kettle. It
is exactly like a Waffle House, down to the yellow square tiles with
black letters on the sign. Also you can order pancakes at the Copper
Kettle whereas you are limited to waffles at Waffle House.
One day, as fate would have it, I had
to go to the restroom while on duty. To go to the restrooms from the
dining room, one goes through a swinging brown door with a smoke
stained, greasy plexiglass circle window in it and behind that is a
hallway. The layout of the hallway was as follows: on the right hand
side was a door immediately opening into the store office, then a bit
further down the hall was the woman's restroom and then the man's
restroom just past that.
Background: This Copper Kettle was
owned by an enormous Holiday Inn that was next door and every day
someone from the Holiday Inn came down to our restaurant, chatted
with the manager, Margaret, and they would empty the safe and the
Holiday Inn employee would presumably return to the hotel where the
hotel management would make one large bank deposit at the end of the
day. I had seen this transaction time and again and knew what was
more or less happening because Margaret had taken the time to explain
this procedure to me. It happened every day and I never thought much
about it.
Back to having to use the bathroom:
So, I opened the swinging door and stepped into the hallway and
movement in the office caught my attention. There were two men
kneeling on the floor in front of the open safe removing money from
it. I said hello and told them to have a good day, one guy waved a
little at me, then I went to the bathroom, handled my business,
washed my hands and came back out. I continued doing my job, earning
money for my first car. About ten minutes after I had used the
restroom, Margaret came flying through the swinging door, her dark
curly hair flowing out behind her, yelling “We got robbed! Oh
shit! We got robbed! The safe is EMPTY! OH MY GOD, WE'VE BEEN
ROBBED!”. I immediately knew the two guys I had said a cheerful
hello to had been bad guys robbing us blind and not the nice hotel
employees I had taken them to be. I was completely panic stricken
for a few minutes. I couldn't say anything. I was fifteen and had
no idea what the police would do to some airhead who said hello to
thieves and then told them to have a good day. Hell, if they had
asked I would have probably made them a waffle and gotten them a bag!
I waited until everything cooled down out front and then pulled
Margaret in the office and told her what I'd seen. It turns out I
was right to be terrified because she asked me if I was F***ing
stupid and I pretty much had to say that yes, in fact I was. That
was one red faced, fire breathing, angry little woman! How could I
have thought they were with the hotel? I had no idea. Why didn't I
come get someone?! I thought they were with the hotel. How could I
have possibly thought they
were with the hotel?? I had no idea.
Well
of course the police came and I had to give them a statement and try
to recall anything I could about the two guys that I welcomed so
warmly as they were robbing us clean. That was a horrible part too,
because they didn't look like bad guys. They were just guys. There
was nothing remarkable about them, they weren't even tattooed and
pierced, they were just guys in polo shirts. I think one had brown
hair. “Yes officer, they were in polo shirts. One had brown
hair.” “Well thank you ma'am, that's a huge lead! That narrows
it down to under four billion people! Good job!”. Somehow I
didn't get fired, but probably only because there are laws against
firing people with obvious mental deficiencies.
Also,
just to wrap things up... One night my dad and I came back from
romping all over Olympic Park and decided to pop into the Copper
Kettle for a evening breakfast. When I came walking in the door,
shouts and exclamations were hurled in my direction, the cook and a
waitress both gave me a hug and one of the waitresses was crying as
she hung around my neck. Another cook yelled at me “Where the HELL
have you been?” and that was followed by similar questions from all
of the restaurant staff. I was told I could have at least had the
decency to call at least half a dozen times and the gay assistant
cook said now that I was safe she was going to kick my ass. I just
stood there a minute blinking at all of them. I looked up at dad and
he looked down at me and we just looked back at them. I said “I
was off tonight, I worked this morning”. Then someone smacked the
counter with her hand and said “THE BOMB?”. Again I stood
looking at her without the slightest comprehension of what she was
talking about or why I would need a bomb. (“You da bomb” wasn't
a saying yet). As it turned out what everyone was so upset about was
the bomb that had gone off in Olympic Park thirty minutes prior to my
dad and I arriving at the Copper Kettle. In fact, the last place we
had been was the exact spot where it was set off. We didn't have a
clue. I had heard no sirens or any explosion or noticed any more
activity than what is usually going on in downtown Atlanta. Dad and
I were completely oblivious to the whole thing, but since this was
before cell phones were so commonplace, we hadn't been reachable
since we weren't at home. They all knew I adored going to the park,
I collected hundreds of those pins and spent all my time there. I
suppose they all figured I'd been blown to smithereens. Nope. Not
me. I was probably too busy wandering around seeing if I could hold
a door open for a serial murderer.
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