The Summer of '72

So here we are back in Connecticut after a year of "seasonal work" in northern New England.  We weren't really excited about this move, but for the time being we just needed to make the best of it.

We put all our furniture back into storage in the barn at my Mom and Dad's house in Andover and moved into to Peter's Mom & Dad's house in Wethersfield. Yikes !!!  The room over the garage with no AC!!!!!

We were fortunate to get work right away.  Peter had a school chum that was now the Executive Chef at the Waverly Inn in Cheshire CT.  So Peter went to work there.

I was able to go back to work for J. Blake Caldwell at the printing plant. We had stayed in touch, and he was delighted to have me back if even for only the summer. On the weekends I worked in the kitchen of the Waverly Inn.  A very interesting job for me as I had never worked in a high volume restaurant.  Wow, we made garden salad in trash cans (clean and sanitized ones of course) for the banquets they would do.  I had to cut & serve a wedding cake for over one hundred guests one night, I had never done more than take a little bite out of our wedding cake,  nothing like on the job training!!!!! 

Trying to pass our dog off as our child!!!

Living with Ma & Pa Schroll wore a little thin during the summer, so we decided to find a place to rent.  We did however, have an Old English Sheep Dog.  The dog did make it a little more difficult to find a rent.  But we succeeded! We found a one bedroom apartment in Newington Ct.  We took our mattress, cardboard boxes for our clothes, a bean bag chair, tv, kitchen table & 2 chairs, and minimal kitchen ware.  We did not plan to live in Newington, Ct for very long!!!!!  We hardly remember much about the apartment, but we certainly remember lying on our mattress in the bedroom, watching the Summer Olympics held in Munich; the US Basketball team loosing to the USSR, Mark Spitz gold metals in Swimming and the terrorists attacking and killing the Israeli wrestling team and listening to Bob McKay talk for hours trying to make sense of what was happening.

Peter had always dreamed of working in Europe.  However, if you don't have European experience, you can't get a job in Europe.  Well Duh, that makes it hard to pursue your dream, doesn't it.  Someone in the business told him that if he could get a job outside the continental US he would have better luck getting work and experience in Europe!   So with this in mind, in July, Peter responded to an ad in the Boston Globe.  Sonesta Hotel was holding interviews for cooks for their Bermuda property, Sonesta Beach Hotel.  He met with the assistant GM in Boston, but was told he was too qualified for the positions they had available, but would keep his application on file.  Heard that line before haven't we ?!?!?!?

Well, lo and behold, a few weeks later he got a call back from Sonesta offering him a sous chef's position at the hotel in Bermuda, and believe it or not he also got an offer for a position at BlueBeards Castle in Saint Thomas that week as well!!!  Feast or Famine !!  In a 48 hour time frame we flew to both locations for an opportunity to see the properties, housing etc.  Unfortunately, you couldn't fly from Bermuda south, so we had to fly back to Boston from Bermuda and the next morning fly to St. Thomas!!!  We loved Bermuda, the assistant GM, and everything about the island.  On the other hand we couldn't find anything we really liked about St. Thomas.  So the decision was easy. BUT, getting the work permit wasn't.  It took almost 2 months to get the paper work  passed through Bermuda immigrations.  We kept hearing from the hotel saying that they expected to receive our permit that week, so we would give away refrigerated foods, pack our bags and be ready to go to the airport only to have to wait another week.

When we finally arrived on the Island in September, customs officials treated us very poorly.  I guess it was obvious to them we were not "seasoned" travelers, and charged us over a hundred dollars for the items we were bringing into the country.  (We learned later that it was a scam, but there was nothing we could do about it).  So when we hailed a cab to take us to the Sonesta Beach Hotel we didn't have enough money with us to pay the cab fare.  Great way to start out.  We also hadn't gotten  permission to bring our dog with us. Oh well,  we had arrived at the Sonesta Beach Hotel in Bermuda for our next adventure!