The Far Hills Inn

In 1972 in New Jersey, when you reached the age of 16 you could get working papers that allowed you to get a W-2 form job. My buddy Keith and I turned 16 about the same time so we got our papers and headed to the Far Hills Inn Banquet Hall in Bridgewater, New Jersey for open part time Dishwasher positions. They hired us and put us on the schedule for the next Saturday. The pay was the princely sum of $1.60 an hour, minimum wage of the day.

Keith started ahead of me at Noon and I followed at 4. When I first saw him with a plastic bus bin of dishes, he said "you won't believe the sh!+ they make you do." I don't exactly remember how I felt, but it was probably a bit of trepidation.

Far Hills was managed by father and son Mike and Marty Molitz with Grandma Molitz, whom I presumed was quality control manager. In retrospect, they were gracious and generous people. Marty was our supervisor and not much older than us. He had lots of energy and was fun to work for and we loved his stories. They fed us well with chef prepared meals served by Irv on our meal breaks. The rule was "you can drink the ginger ale, but not the Coke." Who cares what you're drinking when there's a slab of prime rib on your plate. The Inn specialized in Jewish food, culture and traditions. Manischewitz ran freely in the ubiquitous sqaure bottles for the guests.  I got to sample Gefilte fish and sweetbreads. A delicacy made from lamb. It's the thymus, near the throat, and the pancreas, near the stomach. I had to look that one up. Irv once said "if I told you what it was, you wouldn't eat it."

One of my main jobs was to scrape bussed dinner plates coming down a moving conveyor belt into a hole on a stainless steel counter top with a refuse barrel beneath it. Big John was the Potwasher. Picture a big white haired guy in restaurant white with an ever present fork in his shirt pocket. John wasn't "all there" and we heard he suffered shell shock from WWII. In today's world, it's called PTSD. The Big Man would mosey over, pull that scrape barrel out and jab the fork into the barrel and poke around for choice bits of meat and potato...and eat it! 

Mike Kotula had a beautiful 1966 Plymouth Sport Fury. He'd remove the wheel covers, place them in a dish rack neatly stood up like plates and run them through the industrial dishwasher. They always came out sparkling clean! 

One day Marty came to me with one of our classmates, Robin and said he was starting that day. Give him the tour. OK. When we arrived at the bakery department, Robin spied a white bucket and asked me what it was. I replied that it was cake icing.  He scooped 3 fingers in and shoved a huge wad in his mouth. As fast as he schlepped it down, he spit it 6 feet across the room. Bleeeech! It was lard. Years later, I would see Robin socially and he'd say "you let me eat lard you son of a bitch!" I'd say shhhhh..don't tell anybody.

A legendary part of the Far Hills Inn was the basement. It was a spooky skull and bones place with old timbers overhead. We would slip down there and over a period of time, we melted old candles into a huge Close Encounters of The 3rd Kind sacred kind of mound. It was an impressive sight with wicks lit all over it. Why did we make it?  I have no answer to this day. Every Far Hills alumni member will remember that colorful monstrosity.

And then there was Willie The Cook. Longtime Bridgewater natives will remember him sitting on a stool and fishing in the pond next to the Inn. Nobody knew what kind of urchins he pulled out of that hole, but it looked like a relaxing past time. Willie lived in the Help's Quarters out back. On Friday nights, if I wasn't working, I'd ride over with Bob Overacker in his blue 1958 Dodge pickup...just like the one on the TV show Lassie. Willie would sell us 30 bottles of Ballentine for $3.00. That's 10 cents a bottle! What a deal, even back then. To the perceived chagrin of the parents, it was a great way for knucklehead 16 year olds to start the weekend. 

In the Spring of 1973, the Molitz family sold the Far Hills Inn. It became Squires at Far Hills. And just like like the song "Copacabana", it became a disco. I often wondered whatever happened to that candle in the basement.