BLACK COW PRESS: "Over the years, aproximately how many times a week would
you say you dined at Yoken's?"
GENE NICHOLSON: "We ate there a lot... a whole lot. I won't tell you we didn't get
sick sometimes, either. Boy, there was a spell in the early 70's when we were coming out a' there
real, dog sick more 'n half the time. Salmonella, E. Coli, Giardia, Bunions."
BCP: "But you kept going back?"
GENE: "Yes, sir."
BCP: "Now I'm having trouble grasping this. You say the food made you, quote,
'dog sick,' yet you returned day after day? Is this the whole 'what doesn't kill me
makes me stonger' thing at work?"
GENE: "That's right. It's like I remember asking one of the gals - Christy, who
worked in dining room four - how old the potato salad was. And she told me she couldn't
rightly say because she'd only been there three months."
BCP: "Hmm."
GENE: "You see they'd had that same pail of spud salad in the kitchen - gelatinous
mayonaise 'n all - for at least three months because... well do you know why?"
BCP: "No."
GENE: "Because people don't like change. See, folks had grown to know that potato
salad, they'd embraced it. And who was Yoken's to change it on 'em?... in any way?"
BCP: "What was your favorite entree from the dinner menu?"
GENE: "The fish."
BCP: "What kind? Sole, Flounder?"
GENE: "It's not like it mattered. I'd just tell Christy, or one of the other gals, that I
wanted fish and they'd bring me something. I figured out pretty early on it didn't make no
difference if you ordered up Haddock, Sole, Flounder. It was all the same creature they were
hackin' up back there in the kitchen- might not even have been fish at'll. Might have been
goat."
BCP: "The kitchen: Did you ever get a peek back there?"
GENE: "Dear me, no. Sometimes it's best you don't know too much about what you're
puttin' in your belly. I heard through my wife's nephew it was a rough and ready place, though.
Always a card game going on back there, old sailors armed to the teeth, dancing girls, dozens of
industrial broilers roaring like jet engines all day and all night, smoke so thick in there it blinded
you. State health inspectors wouldn't go near the place. That nephew of ours did two tours of
duty back in '87, '88. He's got legal problems now."
BCP: "Did he ever mention anything about a methamphetamine lab in there?"
GENE: "I won't say he did, and I won't say he didn't."
BCP: "So if the food was unclean, and folks were scared of the kitchen, how do you
explain the secret of Yoken's huge success?"
GENE: "Well the people were nice, once they got to know you; there was an aquarium
for the kids to look at; and you could smoke. They also made out good in the gift shop. Folks'd
come up from Boston or New York and just not be able to pass up a box of salt water taffy or an
airbrushed lampshade with the whales on it. They made a real pretty penny in there. They also
had a deal where your meal was free if you could beat your waitress at arm wrestling. They didn't
have to pay out too many times on that one, though."
BCP: "I understand you're upset about the old Yoken's sign coming down?"
GENE: "Yeah, I'm pretty tore up about it. I'm gonna' miss that sign terrible. That
whale, and the little spurt of foam they did with the neon tubes. We tried to raise money to
protect it, but people are so damn heartless these days. Care more about their own selves then
Yoken, who's been here, faithful, over fifty years."
BCP: "I'm sorry."
GENE: "Yeah, it's gonna be tough without Yoken."
BCP: "One more thing: Is Yoken the name of the whale, or the name of the founder, or
what is it?"
GENE: "It's all of those things. Yoken is the whale, but Yoken was also the man. That's
how the place come to be known as Yoken's. You could say Yoken's is more than that, though.
It's a safe place. I always thought of it as a haven from the storm."
