My parents started a restaurant near Sacramento when we moved there in 1980 or so. It was next to one of the corners of a little shopping plaza and only a couple of blocks away from the apartment complex we lived in at the time. Check that, we didn't move there until more like 1981. Hmm, I remember going to this one school in second and third grade, then to Golden Empire Elementary starting fourth, so it must have been about 1981.

Anyway, It was a small store, some 25 by 35 for the dining area and a like amount for the kitchen and bathrooms. They bought a lighted sign for the front, red electric lanterns, red venetian blinds, and a movable partition to section off a bit of the dining area for the kids. This area had a plain table, and several carts with kitchen supplies, and a small black and white television to keep us enter- tained. The same television that I used during in college and that my brother now uses in his computer room.

Mom and dad bought a used display cabinet to use at the front for the cash register. No credit card machine that I can remember, although I didn't know that credit cards existed back then. The cabinet was big and long, and we didn't use the display part, so my mom kept all the cash and receipts and menus crammed into a small section in the back of it.

We had about eight small tables for two or four if they like being crowded. There were also two or three larger tables that could seat four comfortable or more with crowding. They bought red and white checkerboard table cloths, the chairs were padded and colored red, and the glasses were the kind you see at a Mexican restaurant: they had a orange-brown tint to them and grooved near the bottom.

Think of the restaurant as a rectangle, short in the ends where the main entrance (at the bottom) and the rear entrance (at the top) are. Split it up with a thick cross into four quadrants. The north-south beam of the cross goes from the entrance straight to the rear exit. The east-west beam are small alcoves: the east having the television and table for the kids, the west having shelves for all the extra plates and glasses and a big ice machine.

That ice machine was great. It made a lot of noise every half an hour or so as it took the newly frozen ice and broke it apart, the ice freezing into little rectangular blocks on a sheet of ice. The space where the ice was stored could hold my sister and I (being kids), although the opening to get the ice wasn't that big. It was rarely full of ice, as I think mom would turn it off when it was getting too full.

Going back to the cross, the southern half is the dining area. The northern half is split in two. In the west is the kitchen: a fairly sizable room with a big gas-fired stove. There's room for two big woks and a big metal pot for egg-flower soup (standard with the meals). Also a couple of smaller burners for keeping some things warm. A big white table dominates the center of the room. It's as tall as a counter and full of bowls with various ingredients, sauces, and all sorts of cooked and uncooked foods. Along a wall is a stand- up barbeque for making barbeque pork, a freezer the size of a standard fridge, and a big steel fridge the size of three or four fridges. On the other wall are three sinks for washing dishes and stuff.