All I Wanted Was a Sandwich

I got that and then some

All I wanted was a sandwich. I had skipped breakfast, it was it was well past lunchtime, and as you probably guessed already, I’m fairly grumpy even on a full stomach, so the situation was getting dire. To make things worse, this one was one of the few times I’d ventured out in a while, so I was not acclimated yet to either the traffic I encountered or the idiots posing as humans who were driving the vehicles.

Things were not all grim, however. My journey happened to take me through a part of my hometown I rarely visit, and for whatever reason I remembered a sub sandwich shop that had been there since I was a kid. We’re not talking Subway, either; it had been started in the 1970s by a Jewish family from New York and was heaven on earth to a bunch of Texans who considered Wonder bread and Oscar Meyer bologna a fine sandwich. I had heard the place was still in business and assumed one of the sons had taken over running it.

I was wrong.

I should have known the minute I walked in and saw I was the only one wearing a mask that the place had new owners. The life-size poster of Chris Kyle, American Sniper under the “Keep America Great” banner only registered after I had already ordered (the menu, at least, had not changed). The sidelong glances from the maskless bubbas, who a few years ago would have asked how I was doing and if I thought the Dallas Cowboys had a chance this year, caused me to move to the far end of the counter while I waited. That’s where I saw, under a poster of an Abrams tank, the magazine rack of free reading material in the picture above.

That is no parody image or something photoshopped to grab your attention. The names of the magazines really are Freedom First and Concealed Carry. The covers really do feature pictures of Donald Trump and unflattering caricatures of Joe Biden, with headlines like “Does Joe Biden Want Your Guns?” and “We Want Our Freedom.” Somehow, in a place previously dedicated to the worship of the finest cold cuts and cheeses the Northeast would deign to ship us Tex-Mex and barbecue fiends, I now stood in the middle of every bad stereotype ever foisted upon Texans.

When my food was ready I grabbed the bag and beat a hasty retreat. Once safely in the car, I said a prayer to St. Lawrence, patron saint of lunch meat (actually of cooking, but it’s the same thing) for my safe escape. I also thanked the heavens that my Italian grandmother from Boston had not lived to see her favorite sub shop in such a state; she had suffered enough having to use cottage cheese in her lasagna from the time she moved here in 1958 until ricotta was finally imported to Texas in ‘64.

As I ate my sandwich in my blissfully MAGA-free kitchen, I realized this was probably an appropriate final day of what has been a really shitty month. On the plus side, the sandwich was amazing; they were still using the old owner’s recipes.

Maybe there’s hope for September after all.