THE MOTHER OF ALL SANDWICHES

Once more food is providing me an opportunity to revisit an experience from my past. The aroma from the Italian peppers I was frying evoked memories of my mother’s kitchen and the sandwiches she made for my school lunch.

For several years in the 1950s my mother was baking most of our bread. It was something of a cross between traditional Italian bread and the sliced bread found in supermarkets, and considerably larger that either of them.  A slice of her bread easily measured at least 6-7 inches in all directions, large enough for one sandwich to be a complete meal.

During my senior year in high school – 1956-57 – my friends and I would walk across the street for lunch, to a sandwich shop where we could bring our own lunch, buy soda and snacks, and eat at one of the many stand-up tables.  It was here, often with my classmate Stanley, that I would enjoy my mother’s epic sandwichs.  Between the two slices of her bread she layered salami and/or Copacola, slices of fresh tomatoes, fried peppers, and mayonnaise. By lunchtime, the oils had soaked through the bread, the wrapping paper, and on more than one occasion, the paper bag.  (There were no plastic baggies then.), It took motivation and determination to manage a soggy sandwich of that size. And I had both, because I believed – and still do – that that sandwich was the most delicious soggy mess ever created.

And Thanks to Patience’s porch garden this past summer with its peppers and tomatoes, I was able to create that soggy mess once more, albeit without my mother’s bread.  One more reason to anticipate next summer.