Topless Delivery
The Myrtle Beach Experience
A Novel Idea By
Bill Lawless
Copyright © 2008 Bill Lawless
Smashwords Edition
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This book is a work of fiction based in part on the author’s personal experiences. The names, characters, places, incidents, dialogue, and plot are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or companies is entirely coincidental.
ASIN (Kindle): B0027A8RB0
ISBN13: 978-1-4581-3051-8
Website: ToplessDelivery.com
Blog: ToplessDelivery.blogspot.com
Cover design by Bill Lawless
INTRODUCTION
Looking out through a large full-height window from the second-floor of the Chicago Circle Center on a dark, stormy Thursday afternoon in the middle of May and watching the sea of humanity scurrying about on the crowded walkways below, it’s very hard for me to imagine how quickly another semester has come and gone here at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Two long years of hard work and many personal sacrifices have all come down to this week…my final round of Final Exams. After two grueling exams and a presentation earlier this week, I am one final exam away from completing my degree. My name is David Lawrence and this is my story.
After staring out the window for about 20 minutes, I walk into the Food Court with my backpack slung over my left shoulder and enter a relatively short queue at Subway. Once I pick up my late lunch, I look around and find an empty table. Once I lay out my textbook and class notes on the large circular table, I eat my lunch while preparing for my last Final Exam as a graduate student at UIC. The exam is scheduled for 7:00 tonight, just three hours from now. There is a whirlwind of emotions swirling through my mind right now while I look over my class notes to make sure there is nothing that I may have missed in class. As the exam time draws near, I feel much more confident. After acing the dreaded Econ 500 the previous semester, tonight’s exam should be a relative breeze.
Just after 6:30 pm, I pack everything up for the short walk over to Stevenson Hall to take the last exam. After taking my usual seat in the 2nd floor classroom and receiving the exam, I get down to business. Just before 9:00 pm, after double-checking my answers with my calculator, I sign and turn in my exam paper with roughly 10 minutes to spare. With a sense of relief…and accomplishment, I take a walk through the pouring rain to the parking garage on Halsted Street, where I start up my car for the long drive home to my parents’ house in the suburbs.
As far as my personal life goes, there is surprisingly little to tell. At 39, I am still single and unattached. My weekend delivery job at Papa’s Pizza… as well as my part time job as a Graduate Assistant and a full course load at UIC…leave me with very little time for a social life. Besides, nearly all of my female classmates at UIC who I find at least marginally attractive are married. The rest are either in committed relationships or simply don’t want to be bothered. What is the world coming to when we can’t even check out the beauties on campus, much less go up to one of them and ask her for a date, without the serious threat of being brought up on charges...and not necessarily by the woman herself? I know about this situation first hand because I served on the committee that would have heard such charges during my senior year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Dean of Students convenes the committee only when charges are brought against a student that could result in either suspension or expulsion from the university. Only once during my tenure on the committee had that happened, and I had to sit that one out because I was in Washington, D.C. on university business. Additionally, the defendant was a friend of mine. He transferred to DePaul soon after being expelled from the U of I and that was the last I ever heard from him.
I was born in Chicago, but moved to Toronto when I was a small boy because my parents were morally opposed to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, in which each had lost a brother. I lost a third uncle several years later due to his exposure to Agent Orange. He got himself killed in Vietnam and never even knew it. Cancer stripped him clean to the bone. Besides, my father started his teaching career as an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Toronto is a very beautiful and peaceful city, where my mother told me that she could even take my sister and me out for walks through Yorkville, Toronto’s so-called “red-light district”, at night without fear of harassment or violence. The violent crime rate is much lower than that of any major American city. My sister and I broke down and cried when my parents told us we were moving back to the United States. I just ended my sophomore year in high school when we returned to Chicago. The move forced my sister, Cindy Lynn, to break up with her first steady boyfriend only a month after they had attended our high school’s Junior Prom. Several years earlier, President Jimmy Carter declared a general amnesty for all Vietnam War draft resistors like my father, which enabled him to consider bringing the family back across the border. It takes a lot of courage to stand up for one’s principles, especially in the face of powerful resistance.
To this very day, I still think more like a Canadian than I do like an American although I love both countries very dearly. After all, my mother is Canadian by birth and my parents, older sister, and I all hold dual citizenship. Patriotism is a very personal matter to most Canadians. Unlike the Americans, Canadians have no “Pledge of Allegiance.” They have only the national anthem, which they usually sing only at hockey games or major political functions, such as the Opening of Parliament or whenever the Prime Minister or the Governor General shows up. While I love America just as much as does any other American, I am not nearly as demonstrative about my patriotism as many people here would like me to be. The pride is inside.
After being diagnosed at the age of 16 with Asperger Syndrome, a neurological condition on the mild end of the Autism Spectrum, I went to therapy sessions twice a week after school. My brain is wired differently from those of Neurotypical people, or those who have not been bitten by the “Horrible Asp”, as I often call this condition. Therefore, my mind processes information very differently. I have always been very uncomfortable in most social situations, and have great difficulty making friends or fitting into the greater Neurotypical society. Unlike most people who learn social interaction skills instinctively, I have to learn them cognitively. If the world is a stage, then please hand me a copy of the script. Throughout my life, this condition has resulted in a great deal of rejection from peers, potential dates, and employers, resulting in a lifetime of loneliness and depression. Through the use of cognitive behavior therapy and counseling, I have been able to develop coping techniques in order to interact somewhat successfully with others, although I would prefer to be alone or with a small group of trusted friends. The behavioral symptoms are most likely to surface in times of stress after my traditional coping techniques have failed or are otherwise unavailable to me. I never wanted to be the center of attention, preferring instead to work behind the scenes.
As a result of the behavioral irregularities resulting from Asperger Syndrome, I was the kind of guy who got absolutely no respect from those around me. No social clique would accept me in high school or college. There were quite a few girls who thought I was a very nice guy, but were unwilling to risk their reputations to be seen anywhere near me. The last thing any of them wanted was for their boyfriends to know that they were even talking to me. Guys have always hated me because I treat their wives and girlfriends better than they do. My mother taught me to treat everyone with respect.
In college, I had to deal with a lot more of the same. No fraternity would accept me and no woman on campus, especially one belonging to a sorority, with any regard for her reputation wanted to be caught dead anywhere near me. The few friends I had were fellow outcasts. We affectionately referred to ourselves as “Lab Rats” because we spent most of our free time in the computer lab. I mostly kept to myself and studied in my dorm room or in a campus computer lab as much as I could. The members of our little “Rat Pack” were really a great bunch of guys. We stood by each other no matter what happened. If any one of us had a problem, then every one of us had that problem and we worked together to solve it. We learned to hate most fraternity guys with a passion because they judged us as inferior to them. If that was the case, then why did we have a higher GPA than did many of them? Their girlfriends may have been better looking and more socially popular, but the girls we actually dated were smarter and were deep-down better people. They were willing to stand by us to the very end. Those qualities mean a lot more to me than do their hot, sexy looks or their social status.
The rejection continued after graduation from college. After sending out thousands of resumes and cover letters to companies all over the country, I could not get even a single interview. After years of trying to land a computer job without any success, I stumbled upon pizza delivery as a way to earn quick cash in order to support myself. I have been making a good living at it ever since. This career has taken me many places I could never have expected to go, including Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where I worked as a guest driver at Papa’s Pizza for each of the last 7 consecutive summers.
After getting robbed and beaten up at gunpoint on a delivery in my former neighborhood about three years ago, I decided that the time had come to make some serious changes in my life’s direction. It was then that I started preparations for graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Two months after the robbery I took the Graduate Management Admission Test, also known as the GMAT. I did very well on the test, scoring in the 86th percentile nationally. That was very impressive…especially after working 11 nights in a row.
Two weeks after receiving my test scores, I was formally admitted to the Liautaud Graduate School of Business at UIC. I started attending classes in August two years ago. Returning to school after many years requires a very strong faith that one can complete the program. Once I started my first class at UIC, I learned to apply my faith and things only got better from there. Attending graduate school was a very difficult situation at first because it had been 15 years since I last sat in a classroom of any kind. The following two years were very stressful, with graduate school and my regular job at Papa’s Pizza. Fortunately, I was able to transfer to a Papa’s Pizza shop near the UIC campus whose scheduling policy was flexible enough to accommodate my class schedule. The General Manager scheduled me to work mostly day shifts so that I could attend my evening classes. He even allowed me to bring my laptop computer to work and study between deliveries once I completed my daily food prep work. That really helped. I commuted from my parents’ house in the suburbs every morning after the rush hour to Papa’s Pizza near the UIC campus. To save on parking expenses, I left my car in the Papa’s Pizza parking lot after work and walked to class. After class, I walked back to Papa’s, retrieved my car, and drove back home to the suburbs late at night. It was a very good arrangement at the time.
During my second year at UIC, I successfully applied for a Graduate Assistantship to pay for my tuition and fees. In addition to working part-time at Papa’s Pizza, I am also working for a rather interesting gentleman by the name of Dr. Jim Eisenberg, who is the Dean of the Liautaud Graduate School of Business at UIC…and the Public Address Announcer for the Chicago Cubs. He is popularly known as “The Voice of Freedom,” whose rendition of the national anthem is well known throughout the sporting world. I first heard him sing at a Chicago Blackhawks hockey game at the old Chicago Stadium on my first Christmas Day since moving back to the States. Now, 23 years later, I’m working for him at UIC. This bearded, bespectacled gentleman with a booming baritone voice is a class act and I feel privileged to have worked for him this past year. It was after acing a couple of his Management classes last year that he had taken notice of my talents and abilities. With his encouragement, I published several major papers in the annual UIC Research Paper Showcase. My Graduate Assistantship officially ends tomorrow because I graduate on Saturday.
It was at UIC that I learned the very important principle of mastermind groups. Napoleon Hill once defined the mastermind group as the coordination of two or more people who work toward a definite purpose, in the spirit of harmony. Many of my major assignments here involved working in teams; a foreign concept to me. I have always been a loner. With respect to team chemistry, I did better work with some teams than I did with others. With my very busy schedule of working and studying, I had precious little time for any kind of a social life. Dating was pretty much out of the question while in graduate school. Besides, nearly all of my female classmates who were at least marginally attractive were very much spoken for. I learned to keep a very respectful distance from all women. I made it a very strict rule to never be alone with any woman…unless she was someone I was dating at the time…in order to prevent any possible appearance of impropriety on my part. For the time being, it suffices to say that I had some unfortunate incidents regarding false allegations. The last thing I needed was another nasty confrontation with a jealous husband or boyfriend. I was taking no chances.
Two years of hard work, strict discipline, and determination later, I completed my MBA degree with a 3.75 grade point average. My major definite purpose at the time was to earn my degree, and that is exactly what I did. Let the celebration begin.
GRADUATION WEEKEND
It’s a beautiful Saturday morning in the middle of May at the UIC Pavilion, a perfect day for a graduation ceremony. The UIC Pavilion is a 10,000-seat arena on campus that was built primarily for hockey, but also currently used for UIC Flames basketball and volleyball, university convocations, and big-name concerts. Today, that arena is filled to capacity and all of the campus parking lots in the vicinity are full. I take the 45-minute drive from my parents’ house in the suburbs to the UIC campus early in the morning in order to find a decent parking space. My parents, sister, and brother-in-law ride along with me for the ceremony. They walk with me to the staging area in the Pavilion at about 9:00 am, where my sister, Cindy Lynn Morgan, hands me the plastic bag containing my cap and gown. I hug each one of my relatives and tell them to look for me right in the middle of the floor. They then take a walk around the campus to kill some time before they return to the Pavilion and make their way to their seats.
I walk over to the staging area for the MBA graduates, as guided by one of the marshals, and put on my black cap and gown over my grey pinstripe suit. One of my classmates helps me out with getting my Master’s Hood positioned correctly. I then return the favor for him. A few minutes before we march out onto the main floor, a bunch of us huddle into a circle for a brief prayer and a few pictures. Dr. Eisenberg, along with a couple of other professors from the Business School, comes up to chat with us for a few minutes before moving up to their positions in front of the processional line. I also worked as his Graduate Assistant during my second year here at UIC. The moment we’ve all been waiting for is finally upon us.
Promptly at 11:00 am, in two straight lines we walk into the main arena to the UIC Concert Band’s performance of Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” followed by the singing of the national anthem by Dr. Eisenberg and the Invocation by a local pastor. After we take our seats, we hear a couple of speeches by the University President and a student speaker. At about 12:30 pm, our big moment of glory approaches as the MBA graduates march over to the side of the stage. A few minutes later, I walk across the stage to receive my MBA degree from the Liautaud Graduate School of Business at UIC. After receiving my diploma cover and shaking hands with Dr. Eisenberg, the Chancellor of the UIC campus, and the President of the University of Illinois, I raise my fist to the air on the way back to my seat.
To conclude the ceremony, we all stand together as Dr. Eisenberg leads us in the singing of the UIC Alma Mater, and then we put our caps back on and march back out of the arena in the recessional march. It took me two years of hard work, both on the job and in the classroom, to earn my degree with a 3.75 grade point average.
Tomorrow morning I pack up the “Clipper”, my nickname for my grey 2003 Mitsubishi Eclipse convertible with the Illinois license plates that read “UIC MBA 7”, for the 17-hour drive to Myrtle Beach for my 8th…and hopefully final…summer season as a driver for Papa’s Pizza. I have made most of my money for the whole year during this summer season, enabling me to focus on my graduate studies and other pursuits during the rest of the year. After the ceremony, we pose in the Concourse Area for pictures with our friends, spouses, relatives, partners, and each other.
The husband of one of my MBA classmates comes up to me and says, “David, if it weren’t for you, Megan wouldn’t have made it through Econ 500 and we wouldn’t be here today. We thank you for all your help.”
Megan Foster is a tall, leggy brunette who was in several of my classes at UIC. She tutored me in a couple of Finance classes and I returned the favor in a couple of Economics classes, including the dreaded Econ 500. The textbooks used in the Finance classes were very difficult to fully comprehend for they had nothing but case studies when I was looking for basic concepts and related mathematical formulae. I had a major-league crush on Megan and had I not known that she was married, I would have at least considered putting a move or two on her myself…and she knows it.
I shake his hand and reply,” Jim, if it weren’t for all of Megan’s help in Finance, I wouldn’t be here either. It all evens out in the end.” Jim’s really not such a bad guy after all.
We all introduce each other to our loved ones, exchange phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and socialize with each other like normal human beings for the first time since we started the program. By about 3:30 pm, it’s time for all of us to go about our separate ways. While I’m chatting with my classmates, my parents are chatting with Dr. Eisenberg and a couple of my professors. My dad is a Professor of Business Administration at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago and my mom is an attorney specializing in Employment Law at a big Chicago law firm. We all expect her to become a Senior Partner there within the next year.
My family and I walk to my dad’s car, a black 2005 Chrysler 300C, and we go to a classy downtown restaurant for a celebration dinner of steak and seafood. Once we are seated and order our drinks, I raise a toast to thank all of them for their love, support, and encouragement though a very stressful time. We discuss my road trip to Myrtle Beach and I explain that it would be the perfect place to end my pizza delivery career and start a new life. My brother-in-law and I walk over to the bar to watch the Cubs game on the big screen TV while waiting for our dinner. About 45 minutes later, after the Cubs win the game, we return to our table just as dinner arrives. After the lovely dinner with my family, we return to my parents’ house in the suburbs and get some badly-needed rest.
Sunday morning, I get up early for the 8:30 am mass at St. James Church, and after mass take a “final” cruise up and down Lake Shore Drive with the top down and the sun shining down on me. The temperature is about 28 C and the sky is crystal clear. Wouldn’t you know it? On the radio I hear one of my favorite songs, “Lake Shore Drive” by Aliotta, Haynes, and Jeremiah, as I drive southbound on LSD at about 70 km/h. How appropriate! I see a whole bevy of scantily-clad beauties lying out on the beaches to my left. There’s nothing like taking a trip on LSD...as many of us Chicago natives like to refer to Lake Shore Drive…on a bright sunny day. After my nice little trip on LSD, I drive back to my parents’ house in the early afternoon just in time for my MBA Graduation Party, a modest affair with a few friends and relatives.
After talking to as many of the guests as I could in such a short time, I go down to the basement with my dad, an uncle, my brother-in-law, and a few other guys to shoot some pool. Every once in a while I like to go downstairs and play with my balls…all 16 of them…and my long wooden stick. However, it’s even more fun when I play with them with a group of my friends. I am actually a very good pool player, mainly because I had played a lot of practice games on this table. After a few games, we return upstairs to the main party where I set the radio to the Loop 97.9, “Where Chicago Rocks!” A catered dinner is laid out in the kitchen and ready to serve. The queue forms. I wait a few minutes before joining the queue. After loading my plate, I find a seat at a picnic table outside with a few of my friends and classmates from business school. We toast our successful completion of another semester as we eat our dinner. I stand and address the crowd to thank everyone for coming out to celebrate my graduation. I propose a toast to my niece, Lauren, who is about to graduate from 8th Grade in a couple of weeks. In her white dress and high heels, the slender, dark-haired Lauren looks a lot older than her 14 years and is taller than I am… and it’s all legs! Oh my!
I turn to my brother-in-law and tell him, “You’d better keep a close eye on that daughter of yours, Bryan. She’s what you would call a walking bundle of dynamite! I have a feeling that she’s going to break a lot of hearts as she gets older.” Lauren sure grew up awfully fast. Where did the time go?
Bryan replies, “Don’t I know it, David! I have to fight like crazy to keep all these high-school guys away from her!”
I also take a moment to propose a toast to a classmate whose wife is expecting a baby very soon; therefore she is unable to attend the party. After dinner, the conversation turns to my upcoming trip to Myrtle Beach for the final summer of pizza delivery and fun in the sun. The crowd starts to thin out around 9:00 pm as many people have to work in the morning. After I say my final goodbyes to all of the guests, I head upstairs to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day, with the task of packing and preparing the Clipper for the long journey ahead.
With less than 24 hours remaining before departure, I get up early to clean up my room and take the Clipper in for an oil change and pre-trip safety inspection. All is good. After the pre-trip inspection, I stop at the bank’s ATM and deposit the cash and endorsed checks I received as graduation presents, and then drive over to the Shell station for a fill-up and a car wash on the way back to the house. One advantage of driving a convertible is that loading it up is far easier than is loading a conventional hardtop. Soon after I return to the house, I bring all of my stuff out to the car, put the top down, and start the intricate process of loading my stuff into the car. An hour later, the car is loaded up and ready to go. All that remain are my laptop case and my gym bag, which I will put up front just before I leave tonight.
Anyone who has ever taken a road trip with me knows how thoroughly I research a road trip, right down to the exact time of departure and the time and place of each rest stop along the way. After going online to check weather and traffic conditions in the various cities along the entire route, I determine that midnight is the optimal time for tonight’s departure. Rain and thunderstorms are in the forecast for tomorrow morning up here, and I want to get out of town before it starts raining here. Besides, I want to avoid rush-hour traffic in the major cities through which I will pass along the way, including Indianapolis, Louisville, and Knoxville.
After an early dinner of minestrone soup and a salad, I go through a final check of the fully loaded car. By about 4:00 pm, I go upstairs to bed. Tonight the journey begins.
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
As I have traditionally done on past road trips in order to avoid rush-hour traffic in the major cities through which I pass such as Indianapolis, Louisville, and Knoxville, I leave Chicago right at midnight on Monday under a cool, clear sky. As I mentioned earlier, loading the car with the top down is much easier than loading a conventional hardtop. The Clipper has a new tool in the toolbox for this year’s trip, a GPS navigation system built into the new in-dash 5.1 surround sound system I just bought a few months ago. Because the oceanfront studio condo I rented is fully furnished and equipped, all I need to load are my clothes, roller blades, critical electronics (laptop computer, cell phone, all-in-one machine, electronic keyboard), and my black Oscar Schmidt acoustic guitar. The Clipper is fully fueled, loaded, and ready to go.
The trip starts off right on schedule and the traffic is clear. The night sky is clear and I see the stars with the top down. What a beautiful night for a road trip! Cruising down I-65 at 120 km/h under a starry sky is a good time. After crossing into the Eastern Time Zone, I reach downtown Indianapolis about 3 hours into the trip (4:00 am Eastern time) and I-65 appears to be practically deserted. Two hours later, I have to remind myself to get into the far right lane as I approach the John F. Kennedy Bridge over the Ohio River because the exit ramp to I-64 comes up before I even get off the bridge. I make my first pit stop at a truck stop shortly after crossing the Ohio River into Louisville just before 6:00 am. The truck stop is huge. I pull up to a gas pump, swipe my check card, and fill up the gas tank before parking near the front door, next to a bunch of handicapped spaces, and grab my laptop and enter the restaurant buffet for a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, wheat toast, an orange, and a glass of V-8 at the buffet. The food is surprisingly good and at a good price. I power up the laptop to check my e-mail and enter this morning’s check card transactions into my electronic check register. Afterwards, I grab a Coke and some travel snacks, return to the car, and go back on the road again.
The Kentucky hills offer some very pretty scenery as I travel eastbound on I-64 out of Louisville. As I am about to drive directly into the rising sun, I put on my sunglasses, put some extra sunscreen on my face and arms, put the top back down, and jump back on I-64 towards Lexington. Horse breeding and racing are a major part of the Kentucky economy. I pass many horse farms along the way. The aroma from the horses is overwhelming here.
Shortly after I pass through Lexington on I-75, heading south towards Tennessee, my luck runs out. There is a 35 km long stretch of road construction in the really hilly part of Kentucky, reducing the speed limit to 90 km/h from the normal 105 km/h. There is a minor delay but nothing catastrophic. I notice the rolling hills turning into mountains as I approach the Tennessee line and a 110 km/h speed limit. I knew this couldn’t last very long because the speed limit drops to only 90 km/h as I-75 snakes through the mountains approaching Knoxville.
As lunchtime approaches, I start to look around for a good restaurant along I-40 coming out of Knoxville and into the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee. On previous trips, I would have stopped for the night in this area. However, having limited time and money on this trip, I have to settle for a nice lunch break at another truck stop. I stop at a gas pump, swipe my card, and fill up the gas tank. After parking the Clipper and putting the top up, I grab my laptop and walk into the restaurant. The food in the buffet is well worth the price and there is a relatively short wait to get a table.
Before I continue my journey, I power up my laptop computer to check my e-mail and enter the check card transactions for the day into my electronic checkbook register. I rarely use paper checks or registers anymore. So far, all is well. As I continue eastward on a winding stretch of I-40 through the mountains of western North Carolina approaching Asheville, I notice some ugly storm clouds forming in the sky behind me. When the skies are clear, the view of the mountains from I-40 is nothing short of breathtaking. However, driving through the Smoky Mountains in a rainstorm is definitely not my idea of a good time! I just hope that I can cross into South Carolina and out of these mountains before it starts to rain. My luck barely holds out. I start to feel raindrops falling on my head just as I pull into a rest area immediately after crossing into South Carolina on I-26. After using the men’s room and grabbing a can of Coke from the vending machine, I continue southeastward on I-26 towards Columbia. The light rain quickly turns into a monsoon, causing me to slow down to about 60 km/h in the heavy traffic. Fortunately, the top doesn’t leak at all. Once I finally reach a truck stop in Columbia on I-20 that I have always liked, I pull in for another pit stop for gas and dinner at the buffet. This time, I bring my laptop with me to check my e-mail and the weather report for the final leg of the trip to Myrtle Beach. Things do not look good the rest of the way. As I am getting very tired from the long drive, I decide to take a rest break and try to ride out the storm.
After a rest break of about an hour and a half, I continue eastward on I-20 to begin the final 250 km stretch of the journey. At about 10:00 pm, I pull into the shelter of the 5-level parking deck of the Palace Resort, grab a cart from the lobby, and unload the Clipper. It takes two trips to bring everything up to the rented 21st floor studio condominium that will serve as my home for at least the next few months.
The Palace Resort is a 23-story oceanfront resort on the south end of Myrtle Beach that was built in 1985. Among the many amenities at my disposal include 2 swimming pools, 5 hot tubs (including one on the 22nd floor), a putting green, a small exercise room, and a restaurant that serves pretty decent food. My landlord owns the restaurant so I can simply drop off the rent check at the hotel bar each month. The Palace is one of the tallest buildings in Myrtle Beach, although there are a couple of buildings under construction on the north end of town that, once completed, will be even taller. I live in a well-appointed studio condominium on the 21st floor facing the ocean. The view from my balcony is absolutely stunning. My only complaint is the relatively long wait for one of only 3 elevators in the building…located on the opposite end of the corridor from my unit. I get plenty of exercise walking down the corridor to or from the elevators.
MYRTLE BEACH: A BRIEF OVERVIEW
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, often referred to as the “Redneck Riviera”, is one of the Atlantic Coast’s most popular summer holiday destinations. A permanent population of about 25,000 in the city, and just over 240,000 in Horry County, swells to about 500,000 during the summer tourist season. The population of Horry County is rapidly growing, and is expected to double within the next 20 years. Myrtle Beach is the largest city in a region known as the Grand Strand, a 100 km long stretch of coastline that goes from Georgetown to the North Carolina state line.
Traffic is an absolute nightmare from May through August. I am from Chicago, but even the worst rush hour traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway is nothing compared to what I’ve seen here. Myrtle Beach has all the major stores, chain restaurants, hotels, and nightlife one would find in any major city. The population seems to be growing more rapidly than is the infrastructure needed to support such growth. The great majority of all tourists come into town by car, yet there are no Interstate highways coming into Myrtle Beach at the present time. Two such highways, I-73 and I-74, are in the planning stages of development and will hopefully be built within the next few years. The natives here can hardly wait for that to happen, although some family homes and farms will be displaced or broken up as a result of the construction of these highways.
In the 15 years since the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base was shut down, the city has undergone some major changes, including some substantial growth. The former base now consists of single-family homes, upscale apartments, townhomes, and condominiums, as well as a beautiful park area, the new Market Common and Coastal Grand shopping centers, the new Myrtle Beach International Airport, and a new campus of Horry-Georgetown Technical College, the local community college. Officials in other cities that have lost military bases would be wise to look to Myrtle Beach as a model of how to convert their former bases into prime real estate and their potential for commercial and residential development.
Unlike the lakefront beaches in Chicago, all of which are owned by the Chicago Park District and close at 11:00 every night, the beaches here are open 24 hours every day. It would be nice to go for a nice moonlight walk along the beach with someone special. There are many socioeconomic contrasts in the area. You may see a run-down trailer park directly across the road from an exclusive gated subdivision surrounding a private country club. Nearly everyone here is either filthy rich or dirt poor, with very few people in the middle. Finding a low-wage seasonal job in one of the many hotels, shops, golf courses, and restaurants is relatively easy. However, the professional jobs that I am seeking are much harder to get. The business community in Myrtle Beach is very close-knit and does not take kindly to the presence of outsiders…especially Northerners like me. It is not enough to have the right degree and many years of proven professional experience. The right social and professional connections are also an absolute must.
Finding an affordable place to live here is also a challenge. Many of the seasonal workers I met here live four to a motel room, and still have a hard time making ends meet. Rates for hotel rooms are at their peak during this time of year. Few landlords will rent out their apartments for terms of less than a year, and those who do charge a premium for the privilege. I was very fortunate to find one who would be willing to rent out a condo to me on a monthly basis. Many oceanfront hotels have a very strict policy against renting rooms to local residents because of problems related to drugs and prostitution occurring within rooms on their properties. Yet, these very same locals keep many businesses open during the off-season. Because many of these locals make too little from their hospitality jobs to afford market rental rates, homelessness is a rampant problem in the city. Never before have I seen so many street people in one place.
Driving along Ocean Boulevard, I often see at least one prostitute on nearly every street corner south of the downtown area. Many of these ladies are not even worth looking at, although I will occasionally come across a few hot foxes that I may have tried to pick up had I not known better. Over the years I delivered a few pizzas to some of these ladies at their motel rooms and have learned a lot about why they do what they do. Many of them are basically good people in very bad situations. One particularly attractive brunette, whom I had met on a delivery last summer, lost a good accounting job and couldn’t find another job…of any kind. Others turn to prostitution to support themselves and their children after leaving abusive relationships. Tragically, a few of these ladies are working to feed a drug habit or to pay debts related to drugs. Some of them also work at one or more of the nearly two dozen strip clubs in the Myrtle Beach Area.
Golf is very big in Myrtle Beach, with well over 100 public golf courses in the area. Millions of people come to Myrtle Beach every year just to play a few rounds of golf. Where do many of these visiting golfers like to go after a long day on the links? That’s right, the friendly neighborhood strip club.
The sex trade in Myrtle Beach is huge, as evidenced by the two dozen pages of ads for escort services in the Yellow Pages and the two dozen or so strip clubs in the area. There’s even a club on 10th Avenue North just for the ladies, featuring male dancers. Except for the all-nude Derriere’s Club on Seaboard Street in the industrial part of town, all of the other clubs feature topless dancers. Several of these clubs let locals in for free. Another nickname I have for Myrtle Beach is the “Sodom of the South” because every kind of decadence and every kind of perversion can be found here if one has enough money and knows exactly where to look.
Ironically, my very first delivery at Papa’s Pizza during my first season was to Derriere’s Club. The company’s uniform policy prohibits us from entering such establishments while in uniform, so the doorman would meet me outside the front door and take the pizza inside to the customer. The most generous tips usually come from those customers who live on tips themselves, such as waitpersons, bartenders, caddies, exotic dancers, escorts, and even fellow delivery drivers. During my previous seven seasons here, I have been propositioned a least two dozen times by female customers while making my deliveries. I actually had gone on dates with a few of these lovely ladies and learned quite a bit from them about how things work here. I learned to not judge them so harshly, as they do whatever they have to do in order to survive. Some of my regular customers who asked for me to personally deliver their orders were gorgeous dancers and escorts, and they tipped me very generously. Not all of the tips were in cash. Several of us drivers, male and female, have gotten laid while on a delivery at least once in our careers. I know of one driver at a rival pizzeria in town who actually met his future wife while delivering her pizza.
This season, Wave 104.1, Myrtle Beach’s classic rock station, has a competition for the titles of “Hottest Pizza Man on the Beach” and “Hottest Pizza Woman on the Beach”, to be determined by the customers. The winners will be announced on the air during Labor Day Weekend. I’m really looking forward to what should be a very interesting summer.
ARRIVAL IN MYRTLE BEACH
After carting my clothes and electronics up to my rented oceanfront studio condo on the 21st floor of the 23-story Palace Resort, I bring the cart back down to the lobby and drive over to Papa’s Pizza, just a few blocks away from the resort. I had already faxed my updated license and insurance information to them before I left Chicago, so all they have to do was put my data back in the computer system and reissue my blue uniform shirts.
A.C. Williams, the General Manager of the Myrtle Beach store, summons me to the store office for a little “Welcome Back” chat. Much of it has to do with getting me back up to speed with all the new buildings and streets in the area which are popping up, “like incidences of herpes from a $5 hooker” (his favorite expression about the area’s recent building boom). Well, speaking of hookers, they are everywhere in my neighborhood along Ocean Boulevard. Many of them are not even worth looking at, but there are a few really hot ones I would have tried to pick up had I not known better. During tourist season, they really blend in well with the crowd. This reminds me of how a friend from college died from AIDS a few years ago after such an encounter with one of the four exotic dancers at his own Bachelor Party…despite his safe sex practices. We’ll discuss this in more detail at a later time.
The first concern I have is making sure that the maps on my GPS system are up to date. A few of the other drivers gather around to gawk at the Clipper. I come out to chat with some of the guys like Tony, a hot-tempered “Italian Stallion” from Brooklyn, New York, built like a pro football linebacker; and Rico, a crazy Mexican kid from Houston who occasionally likes to drive a pimped-out flame-red 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Z-28, one of three cars he owns. Brianna, a gorgeous petite blonde-haired phone girl I very fondly remember from last season, comes up to me and gives me a big hug. She just graduated from high school a few days ago.
Spotting the wedding ring on her finger, I ask her, “So you and Ray finally got married, didn’t you?” Just my luck!
Ray, a skinny redheaded kid all of 19 who is now a shift manager at Papa’s comes up to me, shakes my hand, noticing the MBA class ring on my finger, and replies, “Yeah, we did, David. I see that you finally finished your degree.”
Ray and I start joking around a bit and he tells me all about the wedding in February and his Bachelor Party.
Brianna says to me, “You know we would’ve invited you to the wedding if we didn’t know you were still in school back home.”
Tony and his fiancée, Tina, bought a modest house together over the winter in Garden City, about 15 km down the coast. They are getting married over the 4th of July weekend in their hometown of Brooklyn. More shifts for me during that busy weekend!
The Queen of Hearts had never been very kind to me. I have always been very shy, especially around women. After numerous heartaches and a few unfulfilling relationships, I want to break out of my shell, both professionally and socially. At this point in time, nearly all of my female acquaintances are the wives of my male friends, and from these ladies I have always kept a very respectful distance. I learned to be extremely careful about what I said to, about, or around them.
The Law of Political Correctness very clearly states that, “Anything you think, say, or do will offend someone. Furthermore, there is nothing you can say or do about it.”
A major reason for my shyness is not only my fear of rejection, but my fear of getting sued, arrested, or killed. Many years ago, when I was a freshman at the University of Illinois, my roommate was beaten to death for trying to behave in a gentlemanly manner. Late one night, Brett was studying in the Illini Union with a female classmate. They were in a very public place and had kept everything strictly professional. He was engaged to a sweet Jewish girl back home in Skokie. He did the gentlemanly thing of walking his classmate home to her sorority house on the way back to our dorm…and that proved to be a fatal mistake. A member of her boyfriend’s fraternity saw them studying together in the Union and told her boyfriend some exaggerated story about them. Her boyfriend went absolutely ballistic. He and a few of his fraternity brothers decided to make an example of Brett, who happened to be Jewish, by beating him to a bloody pulp. The poor kid died in the hospital the next morning. After the police came to my dorm room to ask me a few questions about him, I had the unenviable task of calling his fiancée to tell her the bad news about his death. Brett was a great guy and a good friend. No charges were ever brought.
I have a very hard time being “just friends” with any woman because every time I tried, someone else would get jealous and/or either of us would fall in love with the other. It never worked for me. In fact, I have had several cases over the years where a basic platonic friendship was ruined by a jealous husband or boyfriend, including a few life-threatening situations. I had even been shot at years ago by one of these drunken jerks…who turned out to be an off-duty police officer. All he caught me doing was leaving her apartment building. The only reason I lived to tell about it was because he was drunk. Is it any wonder I am so paranoid? I hope this trip to Myrtle Beach will help me break free from these fears, which have shut me down over the years.
Now we take a quick look at the Papa’s Pizza store in Myrtle Beach. It has reserved parking for customers in front of the store. The drivers and other employees park in the rear lot behind the store. There is a popular lingerie shop right next door, which makes for some pretty interesting interactions in the parking lot between employees and customers of both shops. Many exotic dancers buy their stage outfits there.
Looking inside the store, we see a triple-decker conveyer oven and the longest make-line I have ever seen. This table is nearly 3 m long, and located next to the door of one of two walk-in coolers, each cooler measuring 4 m by 4 m. This cooler is used for all ingredients except for dough and cheese, which are stored in the other cooler. Walking from the kitchen area towards the rear of the store, there is a central corridor with the office to the right, followed by the door to the other walk-in cooler on the left. Just past the office is the Prep Room, where most food prep work is done. Approaching the back door, we find the restrooms on the left and the Dish Room, where the dishwashing is done, on the right. With 20 to 25 drivers and about as many in-store team members working on a busy night, things can get a little crowded in here to say the least. The drivers drop their cash in their assigned drop boxes located in the Prep Room and bring their own padlocks to secure the drop boxes. A city ordinance prohibits the use of car-topper signs on delivery vehicles. Besides, how you do put a car-topper sign on a convertible?
When delivering back home, I put a small one on the trunk lid, right in front of the spoiler. It works well when the top is down, but it completely blocks my small rear window when the top is up. My dual side mirrors enable me to see behind the car. A few of us use internal window signs, which are useful when taking deliveries to hotels and gated communities. I am not crazy at all about using any of those signs, which might as well read “Rob Me!” It is important to note that delivery drivers often do much more than just deliver the pizzas. We are also expected to perform all of the duties, such as order-taking, production, food preparation, and general cleaning, that the in-store employees are expected to do. I am pretty proficient on all of these stations so I rarely have a problem with helping out in the production areas or on the phones. The only time I ever tried spinning dough up in the air was when I first started working at Papa’s Pizza at the University of Illinois many years ago, but I lost control of the dough skin which landed right on the corporate inspector’s head.
She laughed and asked me, “Did Dan Norwood teach you that?” referring to my former Area Supervisor who initially hired and trained me many years ago.
I sheepishly replied, “Yes, ma’am. He certainly did.”
Needless to say, I never tried that again!
That was many years ago when we manually wrote orders onto multi-part “deli tickets”. The first release of the company’s proprietary computer system was installed in our store about a year later. A paradigm shift was necessary on the part of everyone working there at the time. While it may not take a computer to actually make or deliver a pizza, that computer comes in handy when keeping track of who delivers which order. Learning the computer system at Papa’s Pizza was actually easy for me because of my computer background, despite that fact that it is a UNIX-based system. Within a few short months, I started training new employees on how to use the system. I even trained a few of my managers on the computer system. Whenever I work at a different store from where I regularly work, the only challenge is learning the new delivery area. Now that GPS navigation systems are widely available and very accurate, learning new delivery areas has become much easier. With the right security clearances I can find out just about anything I want to know. Could this be the reason my bosses often perceive me as a threat to their authority? Many of them have also come to realize that I really want something better in life.
I certainly don’t want my tombstone to read, “He gave his life to deliver the perfect pizza.”
A matter of intense debate within the pizza delivery industry is about whether delivery drivers should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on the job. Most major pizza chains have policies that expressly prohibit their employees from having any type of weapons on or near company property, which also includes personally-owned delivery vehicles. Until I was robbed at gunpoint three years ago, I was about as anti-gun as one could get. The robbery changed my attitude radically. Illinois law prohibits anyone from carrying a concealed weapon without a police badge. On the other hand, South Carolina law allows residents who meet certain legal requirements, including an FBI background check and the completion of a firearm safety course, to obtain a Concealed Carry Permit. There are places, such as schools, airports, banks, hotels, and government buildings, where concealed weapons are not permitted. Right now, the only concealed weapon I’m allowed to carry is the one I carry in my shorts.
Whenever I deliver to a hotel where I see a sign on the front door reading, “No Concealed Weapons Allowed – State Law”, I sometimes jokingly ask the Security Officer, “Does this mean I have to expose myself every time I come in here?”
In most cases, the Security Officer would get the joke. After all, it takes a lot of patience and a good sense of humor to deliver pizzas around here.
With respect to drivers carrying weapons on duty, the local managers at Papa’s Pizza in this area have a de facto “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. There are times when I wish not only that I would have a gun, but that I would be able to legally carry it with me on the job. An important lesson I learned while working here during previous summer seasons is that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Let’s make it clear that I am certainly no fan of gunplay. That being said, all I want is the right and the ability to defend myself against armed thugs without the threat of facing criminal charges myself. Is that too much to ask?
HARLEY-DAVIDSON BIKE RALLY
I arrive in Myrtle Beach just in time for the Harley-Davidson Bike Rally, the first of three major motorcycle rallies in town each year. The bikers who ride during this festival in mid-May are mostly white, older, and flush with cash. Ground Zero for the Harley Rally is a biker bar called “Suck Bang Blow” located about 20 km down the coast in Murrells Inlet. When you have over 300,000 bikers in town, things are going to get a little loud and crazy around here. Traffic flows about as well as can be expected for such a crowd, as most of the action takes place further south. These bikers do order a lot of pizza and usually tip us drivers quite well. The scantily-clad “Biker Babes” who ride into town give us delivery guys quite an eyeful. Even I’ll check out a few of these beauties myself, although I’m really not into the “Leather and Levis” style. I must admit that I find the tattoos and the excessive body piercings to be a real turn-off. A few of these ladies check me out in the Clipper, especially with the top down, and honk their horns at me. Sometimes they flirt with me at stop lights.