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Life, actually…
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CHICKEN SALAD SANDWICH ON TOASTED LIGHTBREAD
SLICED IN TWO
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I am inside this toasted chicken salad sandwich on lightbread sliced in two, and I am eating it as if I’ve never eaten anything as good before in my entire life.
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This lightbread is toasted just right—and it is extra special, too, because it’s been toasted in an actual industrial-sized toaster at H&W Drugs.
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At home, we don’t own a toaster, so bread has to be placed flat inside the kitchen match-lit gas oven and watched carefully till one side is light brown, then taken out and turned over—OUCH! That burns!—and browned on the other side.
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Since the oven door doesn’t have a window in it, the rusty-creaking sound it makes when you open it for a quick peek at the lightbread is all part of the ritual of toasting.
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But here, in Downtown Tuscaloosa, I’m six years old and sitting in an actual dining area at H&W Drug Store on the corner of Sixth Street and 24th Avenue, sitting here with my young mother and my older sister Barbara and younger brother Ronny and eating the best chicken salad sandwich in the world as far as I’m concerned, since we never, ever have chicken salad sandwiches at home.
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This sandwich is made from freshly-cooked chicken, chopped pickles, maybe a hint of onion and some thick pre-calorie-counter mayonnaise, the likes of which don’t seem to exist after six-year-olds grow up.
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This chicken salad sandwich is what City people eat when they are dining out, and it’s about as Uptown as I can get in the tiny town of Tuscaloosa.
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Eating this toasted chicken salad sandwich on lightbread sliced in two is true ecstasy, a reward for good behavior when the three of us kids tag along with Mother while she pays household bills and does some shopping.
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Back home, I never even think of having a chicken salad sandwich—that’s because it would seem out of place. Home is where you eat heavy catsuppy meatloaf and fried chicken and peanut butter sandwiches. H&W Drugs is where you eat chicken salad sandwiches.
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My Aunt Ann’s home is where you eat chicken and dumplings. My Aunt Georgia’s home is where you eat blackeyed peas. My Aunt Dinah’s home is where you eat collards and turnip greens.
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Each location is food-specific, and each is independent of the other.
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But they will all crowd together into one big goulash some seventy years from now, when I am writing in my Red Clay Diary and remembering not only where and when and how and why, but also what I tasted and how it felt on my tongue and how it caught between my teeth and how it burned going down and how it filled my stomach and made me sluggish and secure-feeling all at the same time.
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I’m filled with good warm and zesty-smelling food for thought, as only food for thought can be created by my Mother and Aunts and H&W Drugs in the six-year-old Tuscaloosa that some seven decades from now will be written down for you to read this instant
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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.
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