‘I thought the United States was God’s country.’

When Willie Pusch and his wife, Mary, toured Europe for 2 1/2 months after his 1970 retirement, it was nothing new for him. He and three friends toured the United States in style back when there were no interstate highways and touring cars didn’t have windows. I was born in Frankfurt on July 31, 1905, but I was raised in Berlin. I was 9 years old when the First World War started. During the war the Allies blockaded Germany, so no food could come in from outside.

I was always hungry, never enough to eat. Milk was only for children up to 5 years. Eggs, forget it, there was no such thing. We ate potatoes, and vegetables we could raise. The winter of 1916-17 was tremendously cold. It went down to 40 below zero. The potato crop froze in the warehouse.

So they imported turnips. They ground turnips up and used them in flour. They roasted turnips and made imitation coffee. It was horrible. And then they made turnip marmalade. So in the morning for breakfast, when I got up as a child, I had a cup of terrible coffee, a piece of turnip bread and some turnip marmalade. That’s when I made up my mind that as soon as I’m old enough, I’m going to get the hell out of Germany.

My father was a chef, and my mother worked in the hotel business. I worked a three-year apprenticeship to learn the hotel business. In 1923, when I was almost 18, I went to Buenos Aires. I wanted to come to the United States, but in those days you had to have a sponsor.

The American consul lived in the hotel where I worked. I spoke English, so I used to wake him quite often. In 1925 I said, “Mr. Morgan, I’d like to go to the United States. Could I have a visa?” “Sure,” he said. “Come to the consulate and bring this and this and this.” In 10 minutes I had my visa, and I found out it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

I got off at Ellis Island at 3 o’clock, caught a ferry, took the subway to the place I was going to stay. So here I was, an hour in New York and I was traveling by subway all over already.

I got my first job at the Ritz Carlton, but I hated the winter. The Ritz was opening a hotel in Boca Raton, so I went to work in Florida in the winter.

In 1926, after I had been in Buenos Aires, New York and Florida, I went back to Europe for a visit. I had $500 in $20 gold pieces. When I got to Germany, I flashed these things around to all my schoolboy friends, and their eyes went like this. “Is that real gold?” “Yeah,” I said. “In America you find it on the streets.” Oh, boy, I had some wonderful, wonderful, wonderful times.

After the second winter in Florida, three friends and myself quit and bought a 1923 touring car and headed for California. We paid $350 for that car. It was fire red with leather upholstery.

Each one of us had a job. Mine was quartermaster. That meant that I had to look for a place to sleep and eat. We slept mostly in boarding houses. We could get a room for two for a dollar a night plus a country breakfast--and what a breakfast. We had muffins and sausage and eggs and steaks and what have you, all across the South. I thought the United States was God’s country.

When we got to Los Angeles, we started to work in the Biltmore Hotel downtown. After six months we left and went up to San Francisco and then headed back. In Chicago we saw the famous Tunney-Dempsey fight. Tickets were $5. That was a hell of a lot of money. They had 100,000 people in Soldier Field. I have a picture here in the album, and I still have my ticket. I think Dempsey got robbed. Tunney was down for 14 seconds.

After 10 months we came back to New York, and I got married in 1928. I always wanted to come back to California. But the Depression came and I couldn’t come, then the war came and I couldn’t come. Finally in 1949 I made up my mind that I was going to come out here to California.

That’s the beauty of being a waiter. You can always find a job. There is always a restaurant where you can work, because people have to eat. In very few other occupations can you pick up and go.