Christmas at Henry's

For whatever reason, I was wandering around downtown, broke, hungry and looking unkempt on Christmas morning this year. I noticed that Henry's happened to be open. One of the staff was outside smoking and he told me they were open on Christmas morning offering free breakfast to anybody. He told me to go inside and I resisted, saying I really do have a home and a family to go to- that I was really just out there walking around- you know- for whatever reason. The guy was so nice. "It's ok," he said "We're open for everyone no matter what." He seemed very sincere and convinced me it would be ok even if I just wanted a cup of coffee. So I went in and took a seat at the bar. The waitress gave me coffee and asked if I wanted breakfast. What the hell, I figured. Sure.

The place was populated mostly by men of limited means, by all appearances. The guy I sat next to at the bar told me a little about himself. Basically he was a career dishwasher. 62 years old. He said he works at a restaurant on Williston Road. He has no car so he has to bus or walk to work. He talked about how hard he worked. How many hours he had to work at a low wage just to survive, and about some of the horrible conditions he had experienced at different resturants in and around Burlington over many years. He made constant reference to what life is like "when you're alone." He said that he had been given a free Christmas turkey by a charity, but that it was too big for him to eat, being alone and all, so he turned it over to the food shelf. He talked about the very high turnover rate in his profession, and of all the young people he's seen hired that quit almost immediately, or who would call in sick on a busy weekend when it was obvious they were just calling in so they could go out to the bars and get drunk. He talked of why parents work double shifts to support their kids, and of how one could never just quit, being alone and having nothing or nobody to fall back on. He had a real work ethic and took pride in his work. "Dishwasher is the backbone of the restaurant," he said "if we don't work- nobody works, and the wait staff, chefs and managers all know it." he said with some satisfaction. Oddly, he said his one hobby was watching women's basketball. "They work together as a team better than the men." he said. And he talked about that for a while.

The man left an impression on me. Here was a fundamentally decent, honest, hardworking- true native Vermonter, I might add, whose life, as far as I could tell, just totally sucked. He said he wanted to work until he died, because at this point in his life the labor was the only thing keeping him alive. He said he had seen others at his age and in similar situations die quickly after they stopped working.

Yep. There was a lady working there I could just sense was the owner. I introduced my self to her, and she said her name was Naiomi. She was one of the 'new' owners who had taken over Henry's since Roberta Goldstein passed on. She said they do this free breakfast every year. I thanked her and told her I would write about it. I left a five dollar donation for Camp Takumta and went home.

*BurlingtonPol Trivia- I myself have washed dishes in a number of resturants around town, including at Henry's itself in the summer of 1991. Yep.