I worked at the Red Carpet shortly after I arrived bag and baggage with my kids on my mothers door step. I had no experience at much of anything except having babies and being a punching bag for some man. I had 2 jobs at the time. One was washing dishes in the middle of the night at the Blue Grill and the other was waiting tables at Skaets Steak Shop evenings. Neither paid enough to live on and pay a baby sitter so when I saw the ad that Bob Bailey would train someone to cook, I was all over that.
I took my 97 pound self down to 13th and Main and he and I came to a consensus that I needed a job and he needed someone to do things his way. A match made in heaven began and I began my life as a short order cook working evenings. Soon I was adding skills such as baking bread, then baking wedding cakes and then decorating wedding cakes. Next came meat cutting. Then the morning cook quit and I moved into her position. It paid better. I made all the gravies, sauces and such as well as specials such as chicken and noodles with noodles made fresh. I was in my element. But this is not about me, it is about a lady who worked as the salad "girl" and it is about domestic violence.
I will not use her name. She was a very timid woman and always on time for work and left reluctantly when her shift was over. She rarely smiled and seldom had anything to say. I will call her "Nadine". Nadine had a husband and 3 daughters ranging from 12 to seventeen. Since we worked side by side and we had lulls in the work we talked a little. She was married to a construction worker. Big, handsome man who brought her to work and picked her up after.
I began to notice that she sometimes had bruises on her arms and once a black eye. She explained that she had "fallen" or pulled a pan down on her head, or some other "accident." I also caught the smell of alcohol a time or two. Oh, that was her mouthwash that smelled like alcohol. She had tripped and fallen. Always something that was her own fault.
I had been to her home a time or two when I was just passing by and stopped. Her husband was always home and he was always charming. Nadine was like a little mouse around him. I never dreamed what her life was really like, but I would soon learn.
One morning she came in looking like the wrath of God. She was very subdued and her right arm hung like it was not part of her body. I finally called her husband and he came and picked her up and took her to the emergency room. Her arm was broken! How had that happened? She said she had fallen on the concrete porch that morning on her way to the truck to come to work.
Since she could not work, she did not come in the restaurant. I did drive out to see her, but she was always subdued and her husband was always home. I do not know when he actually worked, but she said he did. Several weeks went by before I got back to see her. This time when I arrived she was in a bed in the front room unable to speak. Her husband explained that she had suffered a stroke. I figured he should know.
It was not until her daughter showed up on my doorstep one evening that I learned the dirty little secret that she had hidden so long. She told me her dad had beaten her mother and that was why her arm was broken. She said it had been going on for years and the last beating had given her a brain injury and she could not talk any more. The daughter was afraid of her dad and afraid for herself and her sisters. Now, I am no stranger to domestic violence, but this was a whole new level and I was at a loss for an action to take because the daughter was afraid to go to the police because they would "not beleive her". She was right!
That is how it was back in those days. A man could beat his horse, his dog, or his wife. He could beat his kids and that was just how it was. I am glad to see that things have changed and women are now actually humans with feelings, but that was then and this is now!
To wind this up, Nadine died in her bed shortly after her daughter had come to see me. There was no funeral. Her life was sad and her husband pretty well got away with murder. If I could go back to that time in my life, would I do things differently? I doubt it. Until the laws were changed and women were no longer chattel there was nothing that could be done. If Nadine had presented herself battered and bleeding to the police station, maybe she could have been saved, but she "loved him" and did not want him to get in trouble. So ends the tale.
I worked at the Red Carpet for 5 years leaving there when I opened my own restaurant and then moving to Colorado. My Red Carpet experience gave me the skills I needed to survive on my own out here in Pueblo. Nadine gave me the strength to leave an abusive marriage. We all learn little lessons as we traverse this path called "life". I like to think that my life in Kansas made me the empathetic woman that I am today.
My late husband knew what my life had been back then, because I told him. It made him sad, but then my mother explained it to him this way: "We are all a product of where we have been and what we have done before. What does not kill you will make you strong and that is what makes Louella who she is today."
And that is how it goes here in my world. I thank God every day that I came to Colorado and that my God allowed me to survive to be in my little house with no broken bones and memories of only the good times.
Everything in its time and place!
