A Home for Nighthawks

The Waffle House serves up friendliness along with the food during the long, nighttime hours

By Jana Salisberry-Clancey, Staff Writer

The city of St. Pete Beach is doused in dreams. Many of the residents are sleeping, nestled in their beds under a fog of bedclothes, while few active lives are being led on Gulf Boulevard between historic Corey Avenue and the Don CeSar Resort.
The only sound is the hushed lapping of a restless coastline and the trembling motors of the handful of people roaming the streets. But for Rich Cummins and Lisa Bukowski, it is another Tuesday working at the Waffle House.

It’s midnight. The graveyard shift. Where weeknight solitude and weekend chaos account for normal days at the only 24-hour restaurant in St. Pete Beach.
The logo claims that the restaurant is “America’s Place to Eat.”
The faux leather seats are empty. There are no reflections in the shiny silver walls. There is no pop of cooking bacon. No boiling cauldron of fresh grits. The dishes are washed. The salt and pepper shakers are filled. Rich Cummins makes sure his grill has a stocked basket of eggs. Lisa Bukowski smokes a cigarette. A third employee, Ginger Smalley, stands behind the counter and sings along with the jukebox to one of Britney Spears’ first releases. She has been on since 8 p.m. Bukowski and Cummins started at 10 p.m.

The restaurant still has the clean, soda shop feel of the 1940s-when the first Waffle House opened in Norcross, Ga.
Two customers come in. Bukowski’s eyes light up. The night is too slow for two servers. And Smalley agrees to go home.

“Hello. Welcome to the Waffle House. Sit where you want,” Bukowski yells, and then races over to greet the two people at her table.
She bends close to the couple and sparks up a friendly conversation while she takes their order.
“Scrambled. Cheese. Grits. Whole wheat. White toast. Two bacon. One sausage,” Bukowski calls out from behind the counter beside her customers.
Cummins drives into a mad rush of cracking eggs, mixing grits and sliding toast into the slits in the toaster. He doesn’t write the order down. At Waffle House it is a job requirement that cooks remember each order. They start it right away.
Bukowski dashes to get two coffees.
“Oh, and a waffle,” Bukowski says.
“And one waffle,” Cummins calls back.

The process is a live-wire act. It’s a show for the customers. It’s fast. It’s efficient. It’s dedication. Both of them are smiling. They like their jobs.
Bukowski has shoulder-length brown hair and dark eyes. Behind the slightly botched mascara, her eyes are tired.
She has the thick build of an adult server. She has been one since she was 16. She is now 36. She is divorced-twice. She has a 17-year-old son. On her arms and back are seven tattoos. All the scars of an amateur. She has had them since she was 14-the same year she left home to live on her own.
Cummins is 48. He has been a cook since 1987. He says he is a Vietnam veteran. In 1974 he was a pre-engineering student at Purdue University in Indiana. He transferred to a small state college Illinois to study accounting and then transferred again to Sagamon State where he took up business. He never finished college.

Cummins lives in a motel on Corey Avenue without a refrigerator or a stove. Bukowski lives in Gulfport with her boyfriend.
Both say they love working at the Waffle House—despite the $1.70 taken out of their paychecks each week for uniforms and the 35 cents every hour for food, despite how little or how much food they consume.
It’s 12:45. Bukowski’s table stiffed her on the tip.
“It hurts my feelings a little bit,” Bukowski says. “They think I’m just another waitress. I’m not. I’m good. I give them good service.”
Bukowski has made $19.

The late-night hours only draw more of the same. No business. No money for Bukowski. No opportunity for Cummins to cook up a quick meal for the night owls or the inebriated.
By 3 a.m. Ginger Smalley has gone home to bed. The floors of the restaurant have been swept. It is tidy and ready for customers.
Just before 6 a.m. the sun begins its ascent, turning the blackness to an eerie blue.
St. Pete Beach is waking up.

Bukowski counts her tips. Last night was slow too, but she says it’s just a fluke. It was the weather. It is the slow season. At $8 an hour, Cummins earned $64 toward his next paycheck.

It’s time for the morning crowd of greasy spoon breakfast junkies to crawl in. It’s time for Bukowski and Cummins to go home.

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