The Scurvy Ridden Scanty Dancers Expertease

Hello, and welcome to all who are welcome here at the Expertise Knowledge Podcast. Our audience tonight is made up of folks who eat fancy. And Danno Sullivan, since you are an expert in the art of garnishing, I thought we could probe your area. I beg your pardon? Of expertise. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong. The podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Oh my gosh, ladies and gentlemen, we are excited today. I can hear stomachs rumbling across this grand nation. Because you know, as we say, you first eat with your eyes, then lips, then teeth, then tongue, then throat.

It is a long, long, long process, this eating thing, this thing we call eating, that just brings so much happiness to diners around the world. Thanks for having me here, Clare. Danno, we have a slew of questions here from our readers, but I know that you first wanted to give us a quick sort of background on how you went from being just, you know, a slinger of hash browns to a garnishing genius. I mean, what you do with the parsley... No, no, no, you're giving me way too much credit, Clare. I was a slinger of hash before a slinger of the hash brown, and in fact, that was a little bit of my evolution into this wonderful world of garnishment.

You see, I was working at Nancy's Airport Diner. Right. Girls, girls, girls. Girls, girls, girls is right. I was the line cook in the back. Line cook. Oh, look at the jargon behind the scenes. You hear that bell ring, order up, and that was me passing the hash right through the door. Yes. And I'll never forget January 1975, Clare. Hmm. Sorry. Oh, yeah. Sorry. No. I was just reminiscing. It was a great month. So the thing about hash, Clare, at a diner, it's what people expect. They're called hash joints for a reason. Hash joints. And I actually was making a little money on the side selling some hash joints.

Some actual hash joints to the girls, girls, girls club next door. And you know, I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it one more time. We would scoop it up in an ice cream scoop. And what is less appealing than a scoop full of hash slung onto a plate, pushed through a plywood paneling window over to a greasy counter, out to an overweight waitress who sidles across the grease-covered floor stamping at roaches as she goes. I used to sell those too. Right. To the girls next door. It was me, Clare. I'm the one. I take full credit. I said, the problem with hash, it's got a reddish tinge to it.

It's unappealing. Mm-hmm. Red food. Nobody orders red food. I said, what if you browned the hash? What if you took the hash and made hash brown? Hashtag brown the hash. So here you are bringing out crispy, browned, meaty colored hash. It changed the world of diner food immediately. Right. We went from the Blue Plate Special to the Blue Ribbon Winner overnight. You know, if I may, while this was groundbreaking, it certainly set the pace for what you were going to do next. I know I'm here to talk about myself, but I do feel a little self-conscious. Are you familiar with lemon juice, Clare?

I have heard of lemon juice. Yep. Sure. I'm sure if not, then at least you're familiar with the lemon. Yeah. I'm sure you're familiar with the lemon. Yep. Comes off of a tree. It's a citrus. That's right. Okay. You know it well. So cut one open, squeeze it, and that's lemon juice. What I discovered was that people in my little diner just really loved flavor. Ah. Prior to that, there'd been a lot of saltiness. There'd been a certain amount of texture, both pleasant and unpleasant. Right. Right. And I started just adding a little bit of lemon juice with that squeezed fluid from the solid lemon onto some of the foods.

I don't know. It was like sunshine on food. Sunshine. And if I may say, too, we're not unfamiliar, and I know you're being humble, but I mean, it really cut down the cases of scurvy in your town. Oh, gosh, Clare. We were called the scurvy capital of the Midwest. Yeah. Right. And the Midwest was known as the scurvy capital of the greater district. That district was known as the scurvy capital of the nation. Yeah. Yeah. So it really just zeroed down directly to our diner, our kitchen. The scurvy outbreaks week after week, it was embarrassing, frankly. Well, and I know that the place next door, Girls, Girls, Girls, with scurvy, they just removed the S and it became Curvy Girls, Girls, Girls, and their business also boomed.

You know, a little lemon to the food is like a little lemon to the life. It provides zest and sunshine, both to diner customers and filthy striptease dancers at the joint next door. Right. They were high on hash joints. But I really do want to get to your most groundbreaking move. And we're all wondering, where did it come from? Let's talk Parsley. Let's talk Parsley, Clare. Come on. We're so excited over here. Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. I don't want to give the wrong impression, but I did have a working relationship, emphasis on the working, with one of the Girls, Girls, Girls from next door.

Okay. Of course. Denise, she had a boyfriend, Dennis. Sometimes I was glad that Denise was a stripper because Dennis had such long hair. I couldn't tell them apart unless one of them was naked. Oh, right. Which I'm guessing that would happen sometimes. Denise was one of the strippers. And she was extra curvy because of scoliosis brought on by scurvy, which was a bit of an attraction, of course. Yeah. There are some people who enjoy a bit of scurviosis. That was the way they spelled it. That's good for pamphlets. Pamphlets was not working there at the time I was there.

She had already left and moved on to the bigger things. So Dennis was a drug dealer, and I'm letting you in on kind of the dark side of the underbelly, which was one of our fabulous dishes at the diner, if you have not had the filthy underbelly. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Dennis was peddling drugs. And, you know, it's the old army game. He would cut the drugs with whatever came to hand, lawn clippings, flour. It's getting really dark, yeah. You asked and I'm telling. I did. We want to know. We want to know the whole story behind the art of garnishing. Dennis comes to me one day, fully clothed at this particular juncture in the story.

Denise, I don't know about at this time. You know, she's- Probably working. We had very thin walls between the diner and the dancer. So I could usually tell when she was on. She would dance to Shake, Shake, Shake, Shake, Shake, Shake. Right. Casey and the Carter Band. And I lent her some salt shakers to use as part of that dance. It was, God dang, I miss those days. That is cute. It was cute and sexy, you know. So Dennis comes over. He and I had gotten kind of friendly. He would let me borrow his bike for food deliveries. God, I would just do anything for a dollar in those days.

Oh, yeah. Well. And he would just hang out at the club, refilling the salt shakers, which is not an expression, you know, it was literally- I can't even think what that would mean. You don't want to think what that could mean. Right, right. Believe me. I've seen some dark, dark things, Claire. So yeah, on this night, Dennis comes over and he says, Hey, man, I've oversold my supply. And he was talking about, you know, his- Not salt? No, no. He was peddling pot, cocaine. The darker salts. The darker salts. And he comes to me one day and says, Hey, look, man, I've oversold what I've got.

I don't even have any filler material. I mentioned the thin wall between the two clubs. And he had been pulverizing the plasterboard to mix in with some of his drugs. So at this point, the wall is completely torn away. Oh, my gosh. Like an infestation of termites has occurred. That's going to take your A rating right down. Oh, and that happened to Denise. Her A rating dropped and, you know, so did her tips. And he says, Look, man, you got anything I can mix in? And I'm thinking all the time, I'm always thinking about my customers, you know, bringing sunshine to their taste buds.

Making life happier, making life better. And I sort of think that Dennis was doing the same thing, you know, in a different way for a much higher profit margin. I go over to the condiment shelf, shuffle through. What's looking out at me? You know, one of those big, big deluxe jars, parsley. It was parsley. So he cut his product with parsley, cuts the parsley right into whatever it was he was selling. I never asked. I didn't know. A lot of our customers were families with small children. I'm going to say that a family who goes to an airport diner is looking for a certain experience.

I would I think next to that shares a wall with the girls, girls, girls. Mostly what they're looking for is to see some airplanes taking off and landing. So I think I guess that too, I guess that too. The scurvy-ridden scanty dancers really caught a lot of them by surprise. And you know, that's when you bring out the sunshine. Let's distract those taste buds. Now I see. This is what got you thinking, I have to elevate my food as the planes are elevating above me so nobody's looking at the hole in my wall. Well that's very poetic. I was not thinking about elevating at that time.

I was thinking about distracting. That's a form of elevating, I think. There was a Mr. Bo Hanson who apparently is a big landlord in that area. And Mr. Bo Hanson brought his family in dining. I could see him looking over the heads of the three small children directly into the scanty dancer area. He's got out his cell phone. His digit is poised over zero for operator, operator, get me the police, police. Let's shut this place down. Your heart must've been pounding like you had just taken some of Dennis Hopper's cocaine. There's nothing I can do. You know, my only tools at my command are my brain and my food.

Right, right, right, right. Yes. Like a ninja now. You're poised behind that little plywood hole in the wall. Yep. Dish up that scoop of hash Claire. Little bit of juice of the lemon, a little bit of what's this close at hand? It's green. It might be a new flavor to distract Mr. Bo Hanson. I sprinkle it on in quantities you would not believe nowadays. You would not call it a garnish. You would call it a meal, but I slide that in front of Mr. Bo Hanson. His eyes light up and his stomach says, howdy. When you said you had encrusted his hash browns in a green coating, I thought you had served the family some kind of hot bellied hash browns that sent them into a happy frenzy.

That's exactly what happened, Claire. Mr. Bo Hanson instantly took the children over to the strip club next door. Wound up leaving the children there. They grew up into dancers themselves. Okay. But without scurvy, because next door to your now thriving diner, a free lemon juice, free parsley. This was not only the beginning of the garnishment trade as we know it today. All those beautiful flavors, flowers. And I mean, it's all down to you. It all comes from you. But that was not only the beginning of the garnishment industry. It was the beginning of slightly more family friendly strip clubs.

Back in the seventies, kids were not allowed into strip clubs. Are they now though? In Florida. Oh, in Florida. I'm forgetting that we're talking about. Yes. Nancy's Airport Strip Club. We've combined now. So it's Nudity and Garnish is the new name of the place. Listen, we have a lot to thank you for. That fascinating look behind the scenes that, you know, why do you have that piece of parsley on your plate? I think we have the answer now. And Claire, just imparting, I'd like to ask, why do you have that piece of parsley in your teeth? Oh. You just got a little.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's why podcasts are not videotaped. It's not a joke. You really got a little. I got to say, it's been great being on your show. It feels really good to get some of this out in the open. I think it's a story people need to know. I don't think anyone needs to know this story. In fact, I think that I am worse off after having heard it than I was before I had you on as a guest. I'm dumber, I'm darker, and I'm feeling a little scurvy in my bones. Oh, I've got just the solution for you. Do you know what lemon juice is? Tell me. The Expertise, spelled wrong, podcast is free, and like the Amish, all are welcome.

Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.co and follow us in your favorite podcast app, like the expert podcast listener we know you are. It was always at the airport. I don't know what the attraction was of having a diner at the airport with a strip club. I guess the Randy Pilots. He's my favorite of all the pilots.