A Memoir by M. D. Roblyer
LeeLee, one of the girls I waitressed with at the Dutch Pantry Restaurant in the summer of 1968, told me that the commotion I made two weeks into starting work there made quite an impression on her. I never meant to make an impression, let alone a commotion, just a little cash to carry me through my senior year at the University of Maryland. And I definitely never counted on getting a civics lesson from a temporary waitress job.
The restaurant lay at the outskirts of the central Pennsylvania town of State College, home to both Pennsylvania State University and my boyfriend Don. He hoped to finish his degree at Penn State in the not-too-distant future, and we were sharing an apartment as much to save money as to maximize our together-time. The only short-term job Don could find was driving cab, but my blond hair and bouncy personality helped me get hired at the Dutch Pantry, a plum position in area waitstaff circles. Wages and tips were rumored to be good and the work not too onerous; the menu was small and so was the restaurant. The Dutch Pantry styled us as Mennonite girls in blue-and-white checked aprons over white uniforms and white caps we pinned into our hair. We purchased our own uniforms and the restaurant supplied aprons and caps. I fancied myself spiffy as I skipped out the door to work.
When I strolled into the restaurant one Monday, LeeLee pulled me aside. “Did you hear about the new requirement?” she whispered anxiously. “Frank is making us wear girdles starting next week!” Frank was our manager, and the waitresses agreed with LeeLee that he was “constipated,” meaning he had a sour disposition.
A familiar resentment flooded my brain. Not for the first time was I encountering someone with a deep need to lasso others into their blinkered worldview. A memory from high school stirred. I had crossed swords with the principal when he refused to allow one of my friends, a new mother, to return and complete her graduation credits. “We can’t have her here strutting her stuff,” he had huffed. As I considered Frank’s new regulation, I began to wonder if these scenes signaled more such battles to come.
I thought for a minute. “How’ll he force us? He doesn’t know what we have on under these uniforms.”
LeeLee’s round face lit up. “I guess you’re right. We could just lie.” The plan might have worked, but she blabbed it to everyone, and it got back to Frank by way of Jean, another Dutch Pantry waitress with designs on rising to management.
The first day the new edict went into effect, Frank ordered me into his office and, towering over me, began his interrogation. “Are you wearing your girdle?”
I nodded and forced a smile. “Sure, Frank, sure I am.”
He eyed my skinny butt. “Jean will go with you to the restroom to check.”
I did a quick calculus. Was keeping my job worth letting a restaurant tell me what to wear under my uniform? Teeth clenched, hands on hips, I took my stand. “No. Jean won’t. My underwear is my own business, not hers—and certainly not yours.”
“Get a girdle on or you’re fired!” he barked, sticking a finger in my flushed face.
“Forget it, Frank; I quit!” Other waitresses had gathered to watch the scene, and mouths flew open as I ripped off my blue-checked apron and threw it at Frank’s feet. The little white hat followed.
Within weeks, LeeLee called, excited with the news. Frank was history. The waitresses learned that the girdle requirement was not a Dutch Pantry policy, but Frank’s whim. Jean, sensing a career-making opportunity, had snitched to the chain’s headquarters. The company was offering a “please-don’t-sue-us” payment to anyone who had been forced to quit over Frank’s girdle requirement. The windfall was welcome, but I felt had also been gifted something more valuable: a seminar on the rights of individuals in a free society. Later that summer, the whole country got a course on the same topic at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
No one I knew in State College ever learned what happened to Frank, and I wonder if he learned anything at all from being fired for his fixation on girdled butts. I like to think he ended up selling women’s underwear.
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M. D. Roblyer [ she/her ] is a retired professor of educational technology and textbook author. She wrote a dozen Pearson Education textbooks, including Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching, which became the field leader in 1996 remains so today in its ninth edition. Strong Glass: A Memoir of Escaping the Dark Mirror of Family History, forthcoming from Apprentice House Press in 2026, is her first non-academic book; she is currently at work on another. Some of her work has been published by Orange Blossom Books, Bewildering Stories, and TrashLight Press. Her nonfiction story “Cat Fight” won a prize in a Chattanooga Writers Guild contest and will be included in the CWG Fall 2025 Anthology.