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New home, new roomies

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I’d hand them a pamphlet and charge them thirty bucks. By then I’d usually have a small curious crowd and I’d soon be out of rocks and ready to go to the nice warm basement to make more.

Around the time that it was too warm for people to be interested in hot rocks, our friend Jeff from the ground round, told me about a cooking opportunity. He had been working at a nice place in South Burlington called The Potting Shed.

The owner of that place, Walter, had leased a building not too far away. He was planning on opening The Five Reasons Dinner Theater. I applied for and got the head chef’s position. Since construction hadn’t started yet, I got to help build the place and design the kitchen.

We would be serving the food buffet style, with a carving station at each end of the line. One of us would be carving roast beef and one would be carving a whole roast turkey. The rest of my crew would be serving the buffet food.

While we set up the food service end of the house, Walter’s sons were getting the lighting and sound set up for the stage.

Opening night came. We and been listening to the cast rehearsing for about a week. They were good! Walter had a lot of contacts in New York city. The two leads in this show were from the city as was the director. The rest of the cast was local talent. The show came together well as the finishing touches on the buffet line and John had the bar well stocked and ready.

Lynn was an added bonus. She was there to run lights and sound and she was stunningly beautiful. Very tall with long raven hair and eyes the color of the blue Caribbean waters I had sailed through during my first navy cruise so long ago. Lynn was also smart and funny. A pleasure to be around.

As we set up the line and the patrons got their first drink of the evening, cocktail Allison sang ballads and show tunes.

“Good evening, I’m Allison Bigelow and I’ll be entertaining you before the show and while you get your food from our scrumptious buffet. Over here we have George Hard on the piano.”

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