A few days ago I was reminiscing with some coworkers about raising kids, etc. I told them I was a stay-at-home mom until my five children all were in school and then I worked part-time as a waitress in a little coffee shop in Geneva, Illinois, called the Colonial.

Because the manager was a friend of mine, I was able to choose the hours that allowed me to start after the children left for school and get home before they did. I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed this job! The customers were very friendly and tipped nicely considering the size of the coffee shop and the limited menu, but all the food was pretty top notch.

One of the other older “tenured” waitresses felt I was somewhat privileged and getting too many tips and complained to the manager that I should only wait on customers that sat in the back section. There were four sections in the place, and the back section hardly ever saw a customer during the hours I was there. To my surprise, the manager relegated me to the back section for the week. At that point I thought of quitting but decided to stick it out.

On Valentine’s Day, 1967, in comes a very tall, handsome, terribly handsome, blonde, blue-eyed man with several ladies. That handsome fella looked very familiar and then I remembered that he was Jeffrey Hunter, the movie actor. He was appearing at the dinner theatre just down the road from the Colonial that week. Well, anyway, he and his friends went way over to the back section because it was quiet, not another customer around, and did give them some semblance of privacy. Needless to say, my tenured waitress friend turned green and her jaw dropped.

I nonchalantly walked up to their booth and greeted them politely and gave a menu to each of them. They just ordered coffee and hamburgers. I took their order to the cook and while she made their hamburgers, I prepared their plates with chips and pickle slices. As I looked at the pickles, I thought, “This is Valentine’s Day – I’m going to carve these slices into hearts and put them on their hamburger buns".

I brought their food to them and Jeffrey looked at the pretty pickles, then at me, and all I could say was, “Happy Valentine’s Day!” The rest is a blur, I don’t remember how much he tipped me, or even if he did. But I do remember that when I told my family about Jeffrey Hunter, my teen-aged daughter shrieked, “Did you get his autograph?”

Sorry, Honey, I never even thought of it.