A long, long time ago for a couple months I worked the grill at Howard Johnson’s on the Mass Pike near the Natick exit. I had the crazy idea that I could work the 11pm-7am shift and look for a “real” job during the day (this was just after college). The graveyard shift paid more than the day shift and included a cast of characters that I’m sure were more colorful than the ones you’d find in the daylight: plow operators who had been scraping snow off the Pike since it was built probably, a regular group of State Troopers, my co-worker who had just completed Marine boot camp, and various regular customers.
One of these regulars was the Poached Egg Guy — a dignified but rumpled older gentleman. Looked kind of like William Burroughs now that I think about it. He would show up about 5:45 or 6:00am and at the counter directly across from the opening to the grill area. He would always order two poached eggs and then sit there thin and motionless in his suit, white shirt, non-descript tie, and a hat eyeing me across the stainless steel shelf and heat lights while I juggled his out-of-the-ordinary order with piles of bacon, home fries, and scrambled eggs.
Poaching an egg required a whole bunch of special operations. Getting the awkwardly large and oddly heavy aluminum pot off the wall, filling it with water, lighting the burner, checking the water for boilage, and then, worst of all, dropping the eggs in and monitoring their progress — all while seeing the Poached Egg Guy out of the corner of my eye. And of course, I had never even poached eggs before. I liked to imagine that he worked for some big ad agency in Boston; the kind I wanted to work at. Maybe he wrote slogans for Buick or managed the Pop Tart account. Maybe he would hire me some day if I slid a resume and a few samples his way with perfectly poached eggs. That little silly thought kept me going.
I was always very happy to have the challenge of getting those eggs done just right and keeping the customer happy. I presume the eggs were good; good enough at least that he continued to show up every day and order them without fail.
And now? That Howard Johnsons is an Arby’s or something and I’m the guy ordering eggs during the graveyard shift — only now it’s a Grand Slam at a Denny’s in Lawrence, MA that has free WiFi and I’m surrounded by what I presume to be club-goers after the clubs have shut down for the night. And I wonder, is that Poached Egg Guy is still out there somewhere?