Waitresses Are Crying…
For another lost friend
Having supper the other night with a couple of friends, I got frustrated because every time I launched into a story, our waitress would jet over to see how we were doing.
It’s not her fault. She was doing her job. I knew that and I know it now.
My stories weren’t important: wondering how an acquaintance could have dared write about his family in the way that he did; explaining the reason why I decided to buy the latest Neil Young archived concert album (Carnegie Hall 1971).
And the confusion, fear, and grief accompanying my learning that yet another friend, someone younger than me, had died of lung cancer. A lifelong smoker and the alcoholic child of alcoholic parents — the first set of parents I knew to drink beer openly in front of us. They loved Schlitz and always poured some salt in it to make it foamier.
When I heard that this old friend, Jane, had died, I at first thought that the “Jane” was my mother’s oldest friend, who had defeated cancer twenty years ago. I felt intense nausea — feel it even now as I write — so what was it I felt when I discovered my mistake, that it wasn’t my mother’s best friend, but instead a girl I once spent so much time with that I considered her my best female friend? She dated my mother’s best friend’s son, who is one of my best friends, and I know this is confusing and almost incestuous (not in the biological sense).
Grief takes all forms, and though I felt a small relief, I couldn’t move so quickly into anything I could name. I had not seen this friend for fifteen years, and before that last time, it had been over 25 years since we had last spoken. Her life took strange turns, many of which I never understood, and even more that I never knew about. I had no idea she had moved to Georgia, less than two hours from me.
But I couldn’t finish this story the other night because we kept getting interrupted by an earnest woman trying to serve us (how dare she?), and had she been more aloof, at least one if not more of us would have been complaining the other way.
So, maybe this is why I have always related and semi-understood, and wondered even harder, about the Neil Young songs that mention waitresses, and really, these are two of my favorite Neil Young songs, though I sometimes forget about them, so awash in the music that I’m buying and trying to find.
The first:
“Country Girl,” from the CSNY album, Deja Vu: (Don’t you love the double colon?)
“No pass out signs on the door set me thinking: Are waitresses paying the price of their winking? While stars sit in bars and decide what they’re drinking, They drop by to die cause it’s faster than sinking….”
I want to say that Jane liked this song, too, but I don’t know that and think I’m making it up. If you’ve ever seen the debut album by Rita Coolidge, that’s who Jane looked like:
This album was a contemporary to Deja Vu, and so much of what we all listened to back then, what we were all struck by; what I can’t forget. Folkie, country rock. Our roots.
And here’s Neil’s song:
“Country girl, I think you’re pretty Got to make you understand Have no lovers in the city Let me be your country man.”
Ok, maybe not heady stuff, but since when is romance and yearning heady anyway?
The second waitress song comes from On the Beach’s “Ambulance Blues”:
“All along the Navajo Trail Burn-outs stubbed their toes on garbage pails. Waitresses are crying in the rain. Will their boyfriends pass this way again?”
Often, when you’ve patronized a bar or a website or a doctor’s office, you’ll get a survey asking if the vendor met your expectations or made an effort to get to know you. I find it hard to care and don’t want to get to know people in such exchanges — not that I feel snobbily superior, but that I’m waiting for my coffee or colonoscopy and want to get on with it.
But maybe Neil’s point is why I try to be more patient, more considerate, or at least why I try to be a good tipper.
I don’t know what I don’t know about their lives, these people who bring me burgers with bleu cheese crumbles, who strive to do right in most cases, and even the ones who interrupt a semi-good story. I do lack patience, and I know this.
I also lose track of old friends, though I think I’m more diligent than most in that sphere of life.
Crying in the rain: I get that. I’ve done that.
And look just outside my door:
It’s raining again.
Thank you for reading.
I hope The Riff makes you as happy as it does me, so please read the brilliant stories by these artists, too:
Kevin Alexander, Keith R. Higgons, If Ever You’re Listening, Nicole Brown, Rob Janicke, Jessica Lee McMillan, David Acaster, Alexander Briseño, Paul Combs, Pierce McManus, Danielle Loewen, Sarah Paris, Taylor Moran, Chris Zappa, Steven Hale, Michael Hall, Jim Mowat, Reuben Salsa, TheWellSeasonedLibrarian, Kathryn Dillon, Karla Clifton, Bonnie Barton, and Alex Markham.
Here’s one from my latest series, too:
