Geoff Calkins: Rendezvous legends hanging up bowties

In 1963, Robert Stewart showed up at the Rendezvous. He liked the thick ham and cheese sandwiches they served back then. Everybody did.

“They were like this,” said Stewart, holding his thumb and forefinger six inches apart. “I was working at the William Len Hotel. I went down, I think it was on a Saturday night, and Mr. Charlie, Charlie Vergos, asked me if I wanted to work for him. That’s how it began.”

In 1969, Percy Norris showed up at the Rendezvous. He had a buddy who worked at the place. He used to pick his buddy up at night.

“I was working at a truck line at the time, loading and unloading trucks,” Norris said. “I always wanted to be a waiter, because you got a chance to dress sharply every day. Finally, one of the guys that was a bartender at the Rendezvous, his name was Catfish, he didn’t show up for work one day. Mr. Charlie called me and I got a job and things just took off.”

Robert Stewart — Big Robert — has been at the restaurant for 53 years

Percy Norris — everybody knows him as Percy — has been at the restaurant for 48.

That’s more than 100 years serving up ribs and shoulder and hospitality.

That’s more than 100 years in an industry defined by turnover and churn.

And at the end of this year,  Big Robert and Percy will hang up their bowties and see what life after the Rendezvous is like.

Said Percy, age 68: “I gotta give it up. It’s been a long haul, 48 years.”

Said Big Robert, age 71:  “I have to, I just got out of the hospital, but I’m not ready to go.”

Known by their first names

What other restaurant has servers who are widely known by their first names? What other city has them?

But Memphians know Big Robert and Percy, know them nearly as well as the restaurant itself.

“These guys who are retiring, they are probably as much a part of the Rendezvous as the ribs, and my family, and everything else about it,” said John Vergos, one of the owners of the restaurant. “Certain people won’t come down here if they can’t get a certain waiter, if they can’t get Percy or Robert. They’ve fed four generations of people. They’ve lived through and they’ve seen a lot of things.”

Big Robert grew up right behind Beale Street. Percy grew up in Fowler Homes, the public housing project at Fourth and Crump that was torn down in 2004.

“As a young black kid in those days, in the summer, we had a thing called the field bus,” Percy said. “You had to catch the bus to go to Arkansas to pick cotton. That was the only way that we could get our school clothes. They used to come through the neighborhood. The bus was only allowed to hold 40 but there would be 70 people on the bus. At the end of the day, at four o’clock, they would pay us either three dollars and fifty cents or four dollars. We would take that money, and put our school clothes in lay-away for that year, and you could pay for them a little bit at a time and that’s the way things were back then.”

Big Robert was working at the Rendezvous the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. Big Robert and Percy both worked during the times when downtown was largely deserted.

“There was one time, business was so slow here, we were the only ones downtown,” Percy said. “We cooked up a saying that if someone was downtown after 5 o’clock, they were either lost or headed to the Rendezvous.”

Because people still wanted to eat at the Rendezvous. Common people, and the good and great. And here, Percy starts ticking off names.

“George W. Bush. The prime minister of Japan. Al Gore. Dick Vitale. John Daly, I’ve been through three wives with him. John F. Kennedy Jr. Prince Albert of Monaco. The two princes from England. I could sit here for a whole two hours and name names.

“Julia Child. She loved the ribs. Red Skelton. Johnnie Cochran, he walked around, and he shook everybody’s hand. The Lone Ranger, Ben Johnson. Sam Phillips. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Blake Griffin.

“Don King. Man, he walked around and passed out 10 $100 bills. I served A-Rod when he was 17. President Clinton, I brought ribs to him every time he flew in. I served ribs on Air Force One four times.

“And the Mannings, of course. I drove ribs up to Indianapolis for Peyton’s 30th birthday party.”

Most generous tipper?

“Peyton Manning’s wife, Ashley. When I went up there, she laid it on.”

Big Robert and Percy developed different reputations, different styles. Percy was smooth, cheerful, an ambassador for the city. He had an uncanny ability to remember everybody’s name.

“One day, (television reporter) Andy Wise tried to pull a trick on me here,” Percy said. “They found out that I was good at names. They got a guy who hadn’t been here in three or four years and sent him in. His name was George Griffin. I saw him standing there and I said, 'George, where you been so long?’”

Big Robert was gruffer. Charmingly, wonderfully so. At one point, he weighed 350 pounds and doubled as security at the restaurant. He could crack some heads.

“Sometimes, if you weren’t ready, he’d just order for you,” said Vergos. “He was always Archie Manning’s guy.”

Serving 'the people'

Said Big Robert: “My idea of it is, it don’t take a millionaire to make you happy. My people is the public. They’re here to enjoy themselves and spend their money. The movie stars are getting their stuff free. So the people are the ones you want, you want the people to have more fun.

“When President Bush brought the prime minister of Japan, they had them upstairs. I had the Secret Service guys downstairs. We had a lot of fun.”

Big Robert is genuinely mournful that the fun is ending, but he doesn’t have much choice. He has been in and out of the hospital in recent months. Slinging ribs for half a century will take a toll.

As for Percy, he says, “I know it’s time for me to go. My body. My body tells me it is time to go. But we’ve still got several guys that have been here maybe 25 years. We’ve got two guys have been here 40 years. We have three guys who have been here 30 years. It’s an institution. Where else, in the United States of America, will you find employees that stay around that long?”

So there is pride, for both men. They are proud of what they have done with their lives. They are proud of where they started, and what they lived through, and what they accomplished along the way.

“I can watch television, and see all these famous people, and I’ve had conversations with them,” Percy said. “I sat there, talking to President George W. Bush, just like I’m talking to you now. And I said I had one question. `Don’t you ever want to drive your own car?’ And he said, `When I’m on the farm, they let me drive my truck now and then.’”

Percy laughs. From Fowler Homes and the field bus to conversations with the president. That’s not a bad run.

“I’m known all around the world,” said Big Robert, with a sense of wonder. “I don’t care where you are in the world, they know me.”

Some of that is because of the Rendezvous itself, of course. But would the Rendezvous be the Rendezvous without the people who have worked there? We live in a time when employees are seen as replaceable, as disposable. Percy and Big Robert are the perfect rebuttal to that. Their character and experience have been one of the strengths of the enterprise. Their ethic and loyalty helped build the place.

“I looked at it like this, if I was making more people happy than I was making mad, then I was doing great,” said Big Robert. “I have a feeling I made more people happy. That made me happy, too.”