I don’t like to personalize my essays or reviews. Due to my self-obsessive tendencies and the voice in my head. The voice belongs to my 10th grade English teacher, who constantly reminded her students not to make the story about you. Then again there is another unwritten belief that those who write about death are sophomoric. And if you are the least bit observant, you may have noticed the site you are currently reading contains a wee bit of the gothic.

I went home to read my Christmas Humphreys’ book on Zen,

Curiosity killed the cat,

Kerouac’s “Dharma Bums” and “On The Road”.

What’s my line?

I’m happy cleaning windows,

Don’t let it slide,

I’m a workin’ man in my prime,

Cleaning windows.

-from “Cleaning Windows” by Van Morrison

So often when reading a book, you come across a particular passage that sends you into a strange trance. Something in a sentence, a paragraph, stops you cold. Like Proust being sent back in time by a sense memory, you have been transported by something written by a complete stranger, sometimes from a different generation. And there you are with your book dangling from your hands as you stare off into space. And after, you frantically re-trace the last couple of paragraphs that you read but didn’t comprehend. And sometimes an entire book can have you stopping and starting because of this odd effect.

In DISHWASHER Pete Jordan chronicles his quest to wash dishes in all 50 states. Along the way Mr. Jordan builds a bit of a cult following among fellow dishwashers from throughout the United States and even parts of Europe. A big reason Mr. Jordan became such a working class folk hero was his magazine named “Dishwasher”, which he wrote, edited, printed, stapled, published, distributed. At it's peak “Dishwasher” circulation reached 10,000.

In the summer of 1982 I was 16 years old, and I washed dishes at Dale’s Fish Camp on the Cherokee indian reservation in western North Carolina. The restaurant sat right across the street from Frontier Land, an amusement park that featured among the rides and craft shops a live cowboys and indians show. Don’t look for either, Dale’s Fish Camp closed down years ago and Frontier Land is now a Harrah’s casino.

Pete Jordan washed dishes on oil rigs in the Atlantic Ocean, at dinner theaters in Branson, Missouri; at a hippie commune in California, a summer camp in Oregon, a Cracker Barrel in South Carolina, a casino in Reno, an isolated enclave in Alaska (which sounded a lot like the lone outpost in John Carpenter’s THE THING), and many more places that held more than their fair share of eccentric characters.

The summer of `82 was the summer that brought us ROCKY III, and I worked in close quarters with a Native American cook named Mark, father of 5 kids, who one day walked into the kitchen wearing an air-brushed t-shirt that displayed a picture of a tiger’s face, sprayed above the tiger’s face the words “Eye Of The Tiger”. Despite his questionable taste in cinema, Mark was a good guy that worked harder than anybody I ever knew, but of course to have 5 kids by the age of 30, you’d have no choice but to work hard. Mark's role shifted from day to day: father-figure, boss, friend, confidant.

Since the dawn of Rock `n Roll, the music of summer has had a particular relevance and meaning, something about summertime that automatically places a sentimental glow, regardless of whether the songs are good or not, the big hits of 1982: “I Love Rock `n Roll”, “Don’t You Want Me”, “Ebony and Ivory”, “Let’s Dance”. All summer Mark and I listened to Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Countdown, and Mark was thrilled when in late summer “Eye Of The Tiger” spent several weeks at #1, and I must admit, I was happy too.

Somewhere along the way Pete Jordan was nicknamed “Dishwasher Pete”, and thus solidifying his position as the Johnny Appleseed of “peal divers” nationwide. Dishwasher Pete’s fame grew so that he drew the attention of producers of Late Night with David Letterman. The story of how Pete and his friend pulled an Andy Kaufmanesque scam on David Letterman is hilarious. Pete spent as much time holed up in public libraries as he did in dish hubs, reading about the long and storied history of great dishwashers from George Orwell to Malcolm X to Gerald Ford. And now Pete Jordan is legend, after writing the most entertaining and insightful book ever written about dishwashing.

“Diary of a Dishwasher” was a fictionalized account of my years as a dishwasher, focusing on the summer of `82. Written during and immediately after the summer of `82, it was full of purple prose and grand romantic flourishes. It was awful. But, it would be the beginning of a life-long career of manual labor by day, typewriter-crusader by night. I held on to “Diary of a Dishwasher” for several years before ultimately ripping it to shreds, after years of thinking it would somehow magically transform into something other than a young man’s awkward attempt to create art.

Return to Book Review