I love sandwiches.  I honor the Earl of Sandwich for his contribution to that finest of all quick meals.  It has been reported that he asked a slave to slice some bread and place a slab of meat on it so he could eat while still playing cards.  Capital request there Earl.

I have 3 favorite sandwiches and they are from my days of yore.  In other words I ate them as a child.  They are pimento cheese, egg salad and tuna fish.  Back in the days when the cheese was grated on the old box grater, the eggs might be left over from an easter egg hunt and the tuna came from a can with enough oil in it to change oil on a Chevy.  We had no zip lock bags so our sandwiches were wrapped in “Cut-rite” wax paper.  Just enough odor could escape an item wrapped in wax paper to tantalize you all morning long.  I can vividly remember sitting in my desk, smelling the egg salad sandwich in my lunch pail.  Lunch usually consisted on a sandwich, 3 cookies and a small thermos filled with kool-ade.  Now, these sandwiches could serve as a meal for guests by simply cutting off the crust and making one of more diagonal cuts across the bread to make half triangles or two cuts which produced finger sandwiches.  Have you ever noticed how many more of those finger sandwiches you can eat, simply because they are just bite size?  You feel no shame in eating 10 or 12 of those little rascals and then later realize you have eaten 3 large sandwiches.

Modern day sandwiches have made progress according to some folks.  Many people like bread that has sunflower seeds, chunks of cranberries or even almonds in the bread.  Some like their sandwich to have a piece of lettuce that is curly and sticks out 4 inches on every side of the bread.  I dont.  I like the square, white bread.

Some ingredients for a sandwich demand a certain “side”.  A ham sandwich just about has to have cheese.   It should always have a slice of tomato and some lettuce, just not a leaf that looks like it was cut off a banana plant.  Good tuna should have diced onions, diced pickles and miracle whip.  A fancy tuna sandwich that was popular at Ranchland hills country club in Midland was tuna on a bun, topped with sliced avocado, a slice of cheese and melted under the broiler.  It was called the “Friday Topper”.  I liked that sandwich.  I am not a fan of great huge thick sandwiches that require that you unhinge your jaw like a python in order to take a bite.  I always say if your have to have that much of  a sandwich, order two of the regular sumbitches and eat them.  That prevents you from looking like you are having your last meal before being electrocuted.  LIver wurst or Braunsweiger sandwiches are good and pretty much demand some thinly sliced onions or maybe some pickled onions.

I dont have a lunch pail anymore and havent seen any wax paper in ages but I guess maybe things would taste different anyway.  I always like to remember back to when things were simpler.  You had a choice of 3, maybe four good sandwiches and that was it.  Deli’s were not readily available in west Texas so we had lunch counters like the one at Bozeman’s.  You could get a good sandwich there, it would be aesthetically cut into a triangle and you would get some chips.  A cherry coke to drink and you were in business.

Chuy