The Perfect Sandwich

Pajamas, Hot Dogs, and Mustard

My dad was a two job guy. We lived in a representative, working class neighborhood in Brooklyn, which was to me, the paradise of the world. Representative I learned years later meant not just Jewish people, like us, but an equal mix of almost everything else. The working class is obvious.

My dad worked at a brokerage house on Wall Street as a runner from 9 to 3. That was his first job. His second job was at the Morgan Annex branch of the US Post Office, in mid-town Manhattan. He had started at the PO as a teen-ager, and was in it for the longest possible haul, a modest pension being the carrot at the end of his rainbow. His hours on that job were 4 pm to mid-night. He rode the subway to work. He never owned a car. Once in a long while he got driven home.

A Breakfast Recipe

My mother stayed with us during her recent visit from back east. She emerged early each day from the back bedroom in need of coffee. In the kitchen she would find me up to my elbows in three-grain biscuit dough or in the midst of mixing a large oven baked pancake, or perhaps dropping oatmeal scones onto a cookie sheet. I was always in the midst of something made from scratch, time consuming and terrifically messy.

A ritual that was met with a quizzical look and her quiet reproach, as if I couldn’t hear her say, “Nu? Whats wrong with frozen waffles?” My childhood breakfasts came straight out of a box from the freezer in the cold mid-western kitchen where I grew up. My mother taught in downtown Detroit, and early morning school days were mostly about getting up and getting out. Yet, somewhere in between the up and out part, I remember a breakfast ritual that my mother and I shared, just her and I, before she left for work.

Sandwiches