Point Of No Return by Expose

Spring 1986. No girlfriends, no money. We’re 14 and bored off our asses. Summer was coming.

“We need a job,” my friend Alex said.

“We’re 14. How do we get a job?”, I said.

“Let’s call McDonalds.  They might need someone to help sweep up or something,”

“OK.”

“Hi, I was wondering, do you have any jobs?  Like maybe do you need someone to help sweep up or something,” I said.

“No.”  Click.

This cycle was repeated.  A few times.

“Let’s keep trying,” I said. We called restaurants, a donut shop, a hobby shop. No one needed help sweeping up. We began to despair.

But then, a glimmer of hope. Someone said yes.  So two 14-year-olds headed on bikes to the local Pioneer Chicken, a fried-chicken franchise operation. Golden fried, it was. Southern Californians likely remember it, but we had a few franchises in the Phoenix area too.  

We filled out applications. I think.  And then we talked to the manager, Brad. He offered us both jobs, at minimum wage, of course. Which was $3.35 per hour. Success!  Our first jobs!  We’d work a few shifts after school and on the weekends. We got our dark brown uniform shirts and hats and got ready for training. Making fried chicken!  Buttermilk biscuits!  Livers and gizzards! 

Training started one day after school. We learned to “drop 10 of everything” which was code for cooking 10 breasts, 10 thighs, 10 wings and 10 legs in one of the restaurant’s four deep fryers. We cleaned the walk-in fridge, made spicy rice, and watched Brad sit in his office doing…not much. Sometimes he’d cackle and yell at us about washing dishes and then he’d turn up the radio, usually the hard rock station, KUPD.  He was 22, and we learned later that he was 49% owner of the franchise. The other 51% owner was a shady guy named Terry, who occasionally worked at another Pioneer Chicken a few miles away.  He seemed to have a lot of money, he looked rich to us when we’d see him come around. Terry’s girlfriend Candi (not her real name) occasionally worked in the front of our store.  That’s how it was:  the guys worked in the back, making the chicken and cleaning up.  The girls worked up front, taking orders and managing the cash register. The girls were always nice to Alex and me, like older sisters. Kimber was our favorite.

Some of the other guys we worked with heard Candi had posed for Playboy. But us being 14, and this being before the internet could allow us to confirm, it was all just rumor. No one had a copy of the magazine and no one dared ask Terry or Brad about it. But it made for us acting exactly like two 14-year-old boys, whenever she was working up front. I don’t think I ever got the nerve to speak to her.

We resumed our work and training. The worst job by far was “filtering” the fryers, which meant dispensing each fryer’s grease into a wheeled machine which cleaned the grease. Then we scrubbed the inside of the fryer with steel wool, using the machine’s hose to “wash” away what we cleaned, redistributing the clean grease back into the fryers. And it’s not like we did this when the grease was cold – it was sizzling hot.  Alex and I went home daily with burns up and down our hands and arms, in addition to smelling like fried chicken and grease.  Totally the stuff that girls dig.

But we got good enough at it that Brad made us “managers” at some point during the summer, which meant that we got a raise to $3.45/hour, and we could “close” the store at night on our own (so he could leave early). Many nights, we’d walk the mile and half home to Alex’s house at late at night with some chicken and spicy rice left over from the day, proud of ourselves, staying up all night watching HBO or his dad’s collection of Laserdiscs. On a few nights, a drunk Brad would show up just before closing, halfway through a 12-pack of Moosehead. He’d make jokes and give us shit for not cleaning the floors or the fryers properly and offered his opinion on our religion (Alex and I are both Jewish) or music. He had a good friend in an 80s metal band that had released a major label album and was proud of his friend, but Alex and I didn’t care for the band (I won’t mention them here). My tastes leaned more Top 40, while Alex went for more indie fare. That didn’t totally click for Brad. But he still offered us beers.

On the weekends, we’d make biscuits in the morning. That was the best part of the job – they were made from scratch. Brad never came in on the weekends, so we had control of the radio. Freestyle and dance pop were all over the radio in our city, and I got really into it, even though I was definitely more into the radio-rock of that era.  I bought 45’s of The Jets’ “Crush On You”, “I Can’t Wait” by Nu Shooz and “Object Of My Desire” by Starpoint. But all summer, the song I remember hearing the most was “Point Of No Return” by Expose. This was the original version of the Expose song. Later, they changed out a member and re-recorded it in 1987 and it became a huge hit. But the local Phoenix stations played that version a year earlier, along with loads of freestyle hits. Anytime I hear this song, I’m back in the Pioneer kitchen on a Saturday morning, 110 degrees outside, baking biscuits and frying chicken strips. 

One night, Alex and I were invited by someone at Pioneer to go to a house party. It might have been Terry’s house. His dad dropped us off in his Buick Regal and we walked up the long incline of the driveway, as adults looked down from the balcony attached to this massive home. We found the entrance and worked our way into the very high-end main living room of the house. We recognized a couple of Pioneer people but mostly it was jammed with older people, much older than us, and lots of loud music. People talked to us and were generally cool, if a bit curious as to why and how two kids had gotten there. There was a mirror lying flat on the coffee table, which I found strange. I remember we were hungry. Alex somehow made himself a ham sandwich and I ate cheese puffs. We saw some people going upstairs, and tried to follow, but were gently told that was off limits for us.

One night, not long after the party, I was “managing” and getting the money put away for the night when I opened a drawer in the office to find a bunch of ballpoint pens with the pen part removed, so they were basically little tubes. Next to those, I found a few razor blades. I closed the drawer, stashed the money in the safe and decided not to say anything about it to anyone.

In July, Brad reluctantly let me take three weeks off to go to Jewish summer camp in Northern Arizona, while Alex continued working.  It was nice to get away from the grease, the 110-degree summers and to be around girls. Ten years later in 1996, I met up with one of those girls at a party thrown by a mutual friend. We got married two years later.

When I came back, Brad was crazy. Kind of unpredictable. It was the 80s. He put me back on the schedule for a few shifts per week. I think Alex had quit by this time, tired of the fryer injuries. In October, I forgot to ask Brad for days off for the Jewish New Year. He flipped out and crossed me off the schedule entirely. I don’t know if I quit or got fired. But my days of frying chicken were over – thankfully, I managed to escape serious bodily injury.

But before I left we did confirm one thing: Candi did actually pose for Playboy.