We ducked into Rick's Restaurant one morning recently, looking for a hearty breakfast and hoping to get, in the bargain, a visit with old friend Jan Fawcett, who we knew to be a regular there.
We turned out to be way too late in the morning for Jan, but we did get that breakfast, and our timing, in the lull between the breakfast and lunch crowds, was actually perfect for an interview with one staffer - and for a sampling, in the process, of what Rick's is known for: a constant easy banter and camaraderie among staff, and between staff and customers, many of whom seem to have known each other for years.
Our own experience that day started off even before we'd sat down, when Cyndi Bennett waved to us in greeting from a spot at the far end of the counter, where we promptly joined her.
Cyndi was on a proper busman's holiday: a waitress herself at Ruby's Restaurant, she was taking a breather that moment, she told us, from the task of moving, which, she said, was leaving her feeling a bit overwhelmed. (She's moving to a house she's bought in Wells, but she'll still be at Ruby's.) But she laughed when we proposed interviewing our Rick's waitress in the same way we'd interviewed Cyndi, once, at Ruby's, when we first met her.
Which is exactly what we did after we finished eating and after Cyndi left.
Our Rick's waitress was the lively and accommodating Lauren Merrill, 28 - and the banter started immediately when, after we asked how long she'd worked there, she answered, a little hesitantly, "I don't know - three or four years," and another staffer, needling, jumped in amid much laughter with "It just seems longer."
Lauren turned out to be a connoisseur of wait-staff experience (and of other job experience, too), and, we should say at the outset, one who ranked Rick's tops on her list. "I like the people I work with," she explained, this time with no hesitation, "and I like the customers, and I've become friends with them." Rick's, in fact, she termed "probably the best place I've ever worked."
Which was saying quite a lot, because, though Lauren didn't seem to us to be in any way a slouch or otherwise deficient, she told us that, since graduating from Traip Academy in 1997 (she was born in Eliot but brought up in Kittery, and she lives there still), she's worked at: house painting; night-time office-cleaning; care, in an institution (in Barrington, N.H.) for people with traumatic brain injuries; auto-parts delivery (for Foreign Auto Parts in Portsmouth); and as a junior-high-school cheerleading coach (at Kittery's Shapleigh Middle School).
AND her waitressing jobs have included stints at The 99 Steak House and at Momma D's, both in Portsmouth, and at Cap'n Simeon's in Kittery.
When we asked, early on, about any highlights from childhood, she spoke immediately about a trip she'd made to London when she was a junior at Traip. She'd been a cheerleader in school, and at a summer cheerleading camp at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, she and another girl, Stephanie Lonergan, qualified to represent the U.S. on a cheerleading team being sent to help the Brits usher in the 1996 New Year with a London parade. She and Stephanie were sent costumes and a video to learn a dance, and each had to raise $2,000. The trip itself lasted a week, from the day after Christmas to the day after New Year's, and it included, in addition to some practice sessions and the parade, side trips to St. Paul's Cathedral, Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum, Shakespeare's digs in Stratford and Oxford. And quite by accident, Lauren said, she also got to see the royal family when they passed by one day.
Though the weather that week was, said Lauren, "very gloomy, with no sun," and though it was frustrating to have an 8 p.m. curfew ("so our chaperones could go out drinking"), the trip was, in sum, "a lot of fun," and Lauren would like to return to London again some time, though next time with just one other person.
As she was telling us all this, a fellow staffer brought a dinner plate and placed it on the counter before Lauren. On the plate was one miniscule pancake, no more than an inch across, and in the middle of it was one lone blueberry.
The message, delivered from the kitchen with much giggling, was, in essence, "just for you."
Shortly thereafter, Lauren had to pop up to get back to work and a man sat down at the counter two seats away.
His waitress knew him by name.
"Hi, Pete. What's up?" she said.
"Not much," he answered - and when we sidled up to him and began asking questions, we learned that he was Pete Flint, that he comes to Rick's for breakfast or lunch just about every day, and that he's been running the redemption center next to the former Fazio's for the past year-and-one-half.
That facility, he wanted us to remind folks, is closing as York Hospital buys the property, and he's setting it up again (the redemption center, that is) in Eliot, at 236 Julie Lane, with a phone number that remains 363-6789, spelling, Pete pointed out with some pride, "36-EMPTY."
That day, Pete was ordering his usual - chicken fingers with fries, sweet and sour, if we heard correctly - "plus two Pepsis, light on the ice."
"I cut back from three," he turned to us and said, "I'm on a diet."
"True?" we asked.
"No. I'm just kidding."
And he volunteered: "Pretty much everything they have here is good. And the entertainment is free."
Then he became, himself, some of the entertainment.
"What else do you want to know? My age? I just turned 60."
Waitress: "You don't look it."
Pete: "I know I don't. I take care of myself.
Pause.
Pete: "Do you know what today is?" Answering himself: "The tomorrow you were worried about yesterday."
As talk turned to the past, Pete said that, some years back, at a time when he was leaving early every morning for work in Portland and Rick's was being run by its founder Rick Ciampa, "Rick would have my breakfast ready for me before I even got in and sat down."
That led to talk about who among all present had come when.
"She started working here when she was just a kid," Pete said, pointing to waitress Teri Bold, and Teri confirmed: she'd been working there for 21 years.
Current owner Marge Curley came out of the kitchen and joined the talk. She bought the place six years ago, she said, and waitressed in it for 15 years before that -"just a little longer than Teri," she said.
Lauren then said to us then, unprompted, of Marge, and with a seriousness belying the baby-talk: "She's the bestest boss in the whole wide world. And she's not only a boss, she's a good friend."
Teri chimed in: "When we get a way from here, we have fun with her. She's a riot."
The trio wanted us to mention another long-termer who wasn't present: Mimi Stevens, who's waitressed at Rick's for an astounding 26 years. Right now, Marge reported, Mimi works lunches on Wednesdays and Fridays only, but puts in more time in the summer. Winters, she added, Mimi also works at Smarti-Pants Preschool. And Marge told us something that we already knew - that Mimi was wife to long-term York Water District Employee Gary Stevens, and that they have four children.
At the far end of the counter was an older man named Al, they said, who sat alone quietly reading a paper - and we were told something that we didn't know: that he was Mimi's father.
As the place began to fill up with lunch customers and the staff got busier, we could hear their greetings.
Teri: "Hi, darling. Missing me?"
Customer: "Oh, terrible!"
Teri: "Oooh, I'm all fuzzy inside!"
"We're one big happy family," Lauren said to us before we left.
"It's the truth," said Teri, passing by.
"We're just dysfunctional," Lauren added.
Teri: "We're the original dysfunctional family. We have fun. We fight. Then we make up and send each other flowers. It's a fun place."
No arguments there.
We asked Lauren to pass along our greetings, the next morning, to Jan, and left.
