During this period I had an opportunity to meet many more people than when I was in the grocery business. One of them was Jim Baldas who was a salesman for a butter and egg firm. We got to know each other better, became close friends and to this day he is one of my closest and most faithful friends. At that time (1924) he told me that George Politakis, who had anglicized his name to George Paulson, had opened a restaurant on the south side of Ellis Street between Mason and Powell, called Paulson's Grill. He had previously owned and operated the Minerva Café at Third and Folsom Streets before the First World War with a bar and entertainment. He had to give this up due to prohibition.

Paulson's Grill was doing a fairly good business but George was having problems with one of his two partners. One was a good man but the other was a gambler. He would help himself to the money in the register and go out and lose it gambling. The partners were also got caught on two occasions bootlegging so George wanted to disassociate himself from this location and these partners.

Paulson was looking for a partner with whom to buy a restaurant located at 1214 Market Street. It was recently opened by three brothers. Within ninety days it failed and was in the hands of the Board of Trade. The reason was obvious. They had very little capital, many obligations and big debts. They had to sell or risk losing everything.

I asked Paulson why he came to me. I didn't have experience in the restaurant business. His answer was that he was tired of dealing with shady partners, that he needed an honest young man with a good reputation to help him run the business. All he wanted from me was to take care of the buying, watch the register, be a cashier and do the bookkeeping. He would handle the kitchen.

In those days bookkeeping was simple. People in business did not have to file all the reports that we do today; social security, unemployment, income taxes, etc. I was disgusted with the insurance and brokerage business and did not realize how difficult the restaurant business would be and how easy it was to lose money. However, I agreed to buy the restaurant with him. Had I known of the difficult times ahead, I would never have gotten involved.

At any rate, he authorized me to go to the landlord and to the real estate broker to negotiate for the lease. I succeeded in convincing him that Paulson and I were the proper people to lease the building and that we had enough experience and capital to succeed.

The lease was signed. Then we had to deal with the prior owner's creditors. The merchandise creditors would get nothing. The fixture creditors, which mainly involved Dohrman Hotel Supply Company, had liens on the equipment. They offered to accept fifty percent on the dollar. I offered them twenty percent and told them they would either have to accept it or take everything out of the place and we would refurnish it to suit our needs. They agreed to take twenty five percent, some $12,000. We did some minor remodeling at the request of my partner, George Paulson, and we started business as the Maison Paul Restaurant.

The gossip among the Greek-Americans who were in the restaurant business was that we wouldn't last any longer than the previous owners, ninety days, and that we could kiss our $15,000 goodbye. Well, much to their disappointment and much to our pleasure, their prophesy did not come true and we succeeded in remaining there, through good times and bad, for thirty seven years.

We opened on New Year's Eve, 1924. Business was wonderful that night and we continued doing business to full capacity. What I learned was that my partner, George Paulson, was one of the most wonderful persons that you would want to be in business with and that he knew a lot about the preparation of food. The only trouble was that he knew very little about food costs and labor costs. We were top heavy with help.

After about forty days I called him over and said, "George, I'm not an expert in bookkeeping or in the restaurant business, but the figures before me are such that unless we take steps to cut down on help we will not last more that sixty to ninety days." God bless George Paulson's soul. He told me to do whatever I thought was best and eliminate anyone that I felt we should eliminate as long as we could give service to the public. I started by firing the headwaiter, and I promoted the assistant to headwaiter. We also let go two of the bus boys and three waiters. In two weeks we were saving about $400 a week.

As for food costs, I didn't know then that this was another issue that a restaurant owner had to control otherwise he would never make money. Soon I realized that we would have to either raise our prices or cut down our portions and eliminate waste if we were to operate profitably. I explained this to George and together we corrected the problem and started making money.

The year 1925 was the beginning of a new life for me. My first 14 years were spent around the village where I was born, where I went to school until I was taken out for financial reasons. From 1907 to 1911 I worked in a dry goods store in Kalamata which for me was a second school. In 1911 I immigrated to the United States doing whatever I could to improve myself with 14 years of hard work, mostly in the retail grocery business. 1925 was the beginning of the operation of the Maison Paul restaurant where I spent the next 37 years. They were the best years of my life. I learned a lot and made a good living. I met a lot of good people and it's something I'm proud to have gone through.

In the meantime, I was slowly learning the restaurant business, because no one could learn it in a year. I had the misfortune that my partner, George Pauson, was stricken with tuberculosis, a common ailment at that time. He was taken to a sanitarium in Belmont and remained there from the end of 1925 to the beginning of 1927. This added an extra burden on me because George was one of the best persons anyone would want to be in business with. He was very well liked, he had a pleasant personality and he was born to cater to people.

He came to work from 3 o'clock in the afternoon and remained there until 2 o'clock the following morning on weekdays, and until 4 AM on Saturdays. Though my day was from 7 in the morning to 8 or 9 in the evening, I had nothing to worry about when George was there. When he got sick I had to hire someone to take George's place. I had to work longer hours, sometimes from 7 in the morning till 2 the following morning.

As a result of my involvement at the Maison Paul, I started living better, economically and socially, than I was accustomed to from the time I first arrived in San Francisco. The restaurant made good money. We had fifteen or twenty people of the better element of the Greek community patronizing our restaurant and I became friendly with them. I started taking an interest in our community affairs and in our political affairs and in the lives of the citizens of San Francisco. I knew that I could no longer just work, eat, and go home to sleep. I knew that I would have to learn more, that I would have to meet more people and that I would have to render my services to my fellow Greeks and to the American people.