The Great Willamette Valley Cycle Works Christmas Dinner

The Great Willamette Valley Cycle Works Christmas Dinner

The Bike I Rode to and from the Christmas Dinner

I was working at the Willamette Valley Cycle Works bicycle shop in the winter of 1976. My friend Frank was the owner and his shop was having a pretty good year after a couple of very iffy ones. Frank decided to splurge for a company Christmas Dinner for all the staff and their spouses or dates. He reserved a room at a nice restaurant in Eugene. A dinner at a nice place in Eugene at that time was under $10, in fact, that $10 would likely be close to covering both the dinner and a glass of wine. And it's not like we would be ordering the higher priced meals as we were almost all vegetarians. There were going to be 12 of us going and Oregon did not have any sales tax so even if we all had a couple of glasses of wine or beer the cost of the dinner looked like it would be easily under $150. I doubt any of us had ever spent anything close to $20 for a single meal before.

The day of our dinner came and after we closed the shop Frank pulled out over $200 from the shop cash register. We went home, cleaned up and then we all met at the restaurant at 6. When we got there Frank told everyone the shop was buying dinner and he had $200 to cover the food and drink. After we were all seated Frank decided to splurge a little and start us off buy buying a couple of bottles of wine recommended by the wait staff. Frank told everyone to order whatever they wanted and we all followed his lead. We ordered some appetizers and before dinner even arrived we needed more wine so Frank ordered 2 more bottles. Dinner arrived and so did another 2 bottles of wine. We were having a good time . Soon another couple of bottles of the same wine showed up at the table and they were not going to be the last. By now most of us were feeling pretty good and the wine kept-a-comin'. I was beginning to worry about just how much wine we were purchasing and consuming. I remember looking over at Peter's (one of the bike shop mechanics) wife. She was pregnant and so wasn't imbibing. We shared a glance and I could see she shared my concern.

Everyone was now full of the holiday spirit. We were all telling stories, guzzling the wine, and getting rather loud. Before we knew it, it was after 10. 10 was the normal closing time of the restaurant. It was at that time that I noticed all the male wait staff and much of the kitchen staff were lined up at the door like maybe they were expecting trouble. They were looking straight at us and not looking particularly friendly. I pointed this out to Frank and we took the hint realizing it was time for us to settle-up and call it a night. Frank asked for the bill and it was promptly delivered. I watched as Frank looked at the bill. He gave it a good long look. The look on his face was not a good one as some of the color seemed to head elsewhere. I figured we had exceeded the cash he had brought but I failed to realize by just how much.

Frank showed me the bill. It was in the $500 neighborhood before tip. Frank had a little extra cash and I had some but even then we only had enough to cover about half the bill. Frank had little choice but to shared the news with the everyone else. There was only one door out and it was blocked by an army of restaurant personnel with some serious looks on their faces. Discretion being the better part of valor and all that, everyone reached into their pockets and pulled out all the cash they had. You don't get rich working in a bike shop and this was a time when you'd feel pretty flush if you had $20 in your pocket. Frank and I tried to discreetly add up what we had but we were still something like $200 short. Mild panic began to set in. We didn't bring our guns so we were not going to be able to blast our way out, besides we had no get-away car because we were all on bikes. Were we going to be washing dishes for the holidays? Facing criminal charges? Or even worse, hauled off to the pokey by the local authorities?

Looking back through my wallet I realized I had brought my one and only credit card with me. I had recently gotten it for emergencies and because I was under the impression that it would help me establish a positive credit rating assuming I did not abuse it. (As I later learned, the more you abuse a credit card the better your credit rating gets as long as you don't miss any of those annoying minimum monthly payments.) Anyway, I didn't normally carry the card on me but for some reason I had it on me that night. The card had nothing on it, in fact, it had never been used. It had something like a $250 credit limit.

Well, that credit card ended up saving the day. We used it to cover the rest of the bill with a decent tip and it pretty much maxed the card out. The staff blockade dispersed and there was now had a clear pathway for us to leave the restaurant without the aid of the kindly wait staff or the local police. It was a rather quiet departure and ride home. All the bike shop guys now owed me something like $25 each. $25 at that point was a bit of money. Heck, $25 would be close to an entire months worth of spending money for me at that time. It turned out to be a rather lean rest of the holiday season for most of us but we sure had a good time. I've been to many company holiday parties and dinners over the next 40 plus years of my working career but it's the “Great Willamette Valley Cycle Works Christmas Dinner” that I have the most vivid and fondest memories of....