A couple days later, while passing back through Georgia I stopped in Decatur to fulfill another long-standing goal: to work at the same bus station diner where, in the 1950s, Little Richard had dished. According to the singer, the boss would say to him, “When are you going to wash those dishes, boy?” Little Richard would reply, “A wop-bop-a-loo-mop, a lopbam-boom!” His way of cussing out the boss without getting axed became the basis for the song he wrote while dishing—“Tutti Frutti.”
But the bus station on Broadway where Little Richard had worked was gone. A few blocks away, the closest thing the new bus station had to a diner was a candy vending machine. The site of the old bus station was now but a tiny grassy square overshadowed by a large parking garage. Since I was unable to pay proper homage by dishing on the very same spot, I did the next best thing: I commemorated the site sacred not only to dishwashing history, but to rock ’n’roll history as well. Christening the square “Little Richard’s Dishwashing Days Memorial Park,” on sheets of paper that I posted around the square, I wrote the new name of the park along with a quote from the man himself: I was the most beautiful dishwasher in the world!