THE SANDWICH MAN COMETH

 And speaking of sandwiches ...

 One of the minor but significant pleasures of living in Los Angeles was driving around in the middle of the day listening to Jonesy’s Jukebox on the car radio. That’s Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols.

 

And I remember him once talking about ‘National Days’ as in National Martini Day, National Take Your Iguana to Work Day, etc. etc.  I think these are largely inventions of the American marketing industry but of course the rest of the world is free to join in. 

 

And Jonesey said in his soft London drawl, ‘But wot I don’t understand, there’s only 365 days in the year but there’s more than 365 fings in the world.’  No arguing with that.

 

Now, as you may or may not know, yesterday November 3rd was National Sandwich Day.  Yes, yes I know, every day is sandwich day in some homes, my own included, and I can’t honestly believe that millions of people suddenly decided to celebrate this special day by eating a sandwich.  But for all I know perhaps they did.

 

As you may know, I mean I talk about often enough, I regularly consider writing a 1000 page book on the history, aesthetics, semiotics, cultural meanings, and probably ecological status of the sandwich.  I even discussed it with my agent, who wasn’t thrilled.  The one problem I see, it would probably have to contain recipes and I don’t think a sandwich needs a recipe, or rather you only need one – you get some stuff you like and you put it between slices of bread.  Job done.

 

Incidentally, not only is there a National Sandwich Day there’s also a National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day.  Some might think that was too much of a good thing. Not me.  Here’s one I made earlier.

THE SANDWICHES OF YESTERYEAR AND TODAY

For a very brief period of my life, immediately after college, I was a cook (definitely not a chef) in a steak restaurant within a pub in Cambridge. I remember it as the Bath Hotel, though online evidence suggests it was the Bath House, a place with a fine history, and still in business, though no longer selling steaks as far as I can tell.

 My job consisted chiefly of doing what I was told and trying to avoid being yelled at, but on Mondays, which were always very quiet, I ran the kitchen by myself. 

One Monday lunchtime a customer asked for a cheese sandwich, which wasn’t on the menu, but I guess the customer was a regular.  The restaurant manager told me to make it.  I cut two thick doorsteps of bread, buttered them, cut slabs of cheddar cheese (the only type in the kitchen) and assembled the sandwich.  It was a very generous, if admittedly not very elegant creation. 

The restaurant manager took one look at what I’d done and was furious, took the sandwich from me.  He discarded the bread and cut two new slices, as thin as any I’ve ever seen.  He then extracted the cheese from the sandwich and managed to recut those pieces of cheddar to maybe a third of their original thickness,.  He assembled the new sandwich and sprinkled the result with a flurry of watercress.  He showed it to me in triumph.  This was how a sandwich should be made, how it was supposed to look.  I didn’t argue because I knew there was no point.

Of course I have no longer have an absolutely clear mental picture of my original creation but last week, at a place on LA’s Sawtelle Boulevard, called Flores and Sons, I was served a grilled cheese sandwich “cheddar, gruyere, onion, honey mustard,” and I believe was even thicker.  It could have used a little less bread.

MORE SANDWICH LORE

        

 I was idly googling Charles Manson and sandwich, you know the way you do, and came across an unbeatable quotation of his, “You people would convict a grilled cheese sandwich of murder and the people wouldn’t question it.”  I mean there are some grilled sandwiches that surely should have been put out of their misery – hey, I’ve had a couple like that, but I do believe “the people” (does he mean me?) really probably would question such a murder conviction.

        

Anyway the googling continued and I found an LA Weekly story headlined “Ten Chilling New Things About Charles Manson Detailed in His New Biography" (that would be Manson: The Life of Times and Charles Manson by Jeff Guinn, and a good read all accounts).  The LA Weekly article was published in August last year, and since I only found it now, I’m not in much of a position to carp about newness, but one of these chilling new things (per the article) was this: 

“The Manson girls went so far as to try to murder a witness -- by dosing her hamburger with acid. Two of Manson's followers lured a key witness to Hawaii, where they bought her a hamburger.  As she was swallowing the last bites, Guinn relates, one of the Manson girls said casually, ‘Just imagine if there were 10 tabs of acid in that.’ Before losing consciousness, the witness begged a stranger to call the prosecutor. She was treated for a drug overdose and survived; the ‘girls’ who gave her the tainted hamburger were charged with attempted murder.”

Well, the information about the acid burger has been around since at least 1970.  The burger eater was Barbara Hoyt, a one-time member of the family who had overheard Susan Atkins describing the Tate LaBianca murders in telling detail.  Hoyt had apparently accepted a free trip to Hawaii in exchange for not testifying as a prosecution witness in the trial, but eventually changed her mind.  The acid burger may or may not have had something to do with that decision. The prosecutor she begged the stranger to call was, of course, Vincent Bugliosi, co-author of Helter Skelter, who claimed she’d been given a “near-fatal dose” of LSD.

Now there are a bunch of questions here, no?  Is there any such thing as a near-fatal dose of LSD?  A fatal dose?  How exactly do you slip ten doses of LSD into a burger?  Was this blotter acid?  Sugar cubes?  Capsules?  Wouldn’t Ms. Hoyt have noticed?  Why would it make you pass out?   And above all, why, if you were planning to murder somebody, by whatever method, would you say to them, "Just imagine if there were 10 tabs of acid in that”?  Well, it was a different time, for sure.  And a hamburger must have been a rare treat for many Manson family members, for long periods they survived by eating food out of dumpsters.

And somehow, for some reason, obliquely, all this made me think of this great cartoon by B.Kliban from Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head:

Hey, I’ve had a couple of sandwiches like that too.