Peter H. Cropes

A new sandwich company has opened its doors just a few blocks from Pat's house. It is called "Quizno's," perhaps named for an Italian fellow, and their claim to fame is that they heat up all of their sandwiches, guaranteed. This intrigued me, as I have a very good memory of a hot sandwich at a road house late one night while driving across the country. Oh how the roll was toasty but soft, and oh how the cheese did melt into a fine soft sheet atop the many meats. I did not ask for the free fresh-sliced onions, because I did not want to cool down the sandwich with vegetables.

My sandwich at Quizno's was quite tasty. After some time in considering the large menu, I asked the female for a Bacon Chipotle Club, and I agreed to the larger size (one foot). It was served open-faced, and I allowed for a squirt of pink-colored "chili" mayonnaise. I am glad that I did. The sandwich bites came alive and sang once inside my lips. I ate and ate, the pleasure of each mouthful growing like a fire inside me. Saliva squirted inside my mouth with abandon, like a car wash. That sandwich was literally treated to a car wash inside my mouth...

I was so pleased with the sandwich that I pored over all of the literature available about Quizno's, but could find no company history. This must mean that it is a corporate invention. That is fine, if they can produce such a tasty product, but I would like them even better if they had a good story to them. Once home, I sat myself at my desk and began to pen the tale of Giugliacomo "Johnny" Quizno, my imaginary founder of the chain. A good, stout boy from Italy, he boards a steamship for Brooklyn in 1909, and makes his bones the old-world way, in a time of murder, prostitution, hard liquor, and the foods that stood up to it. He has a large belly all his life, but this is shown as seeming trustworthy rather than unpleasant. Anyhow. I am typing all of this up, and even drawing a portrait of Johnny, to mail to the corporate headquarters. It is an exciting time, for I know they will welcome this clever idea.

A little while back I mentioned that I was not happy with Rachael Ray, a famous television personality, because of the way she spoke low of perch. I guess I never told you how my "visit" to her went. Well, it is the holidays, and I finally have some time to myself, so here is that story.

I had read on-line that Rachael Ray lives in the woods outside of New York City, so I hopped in the van and got going. I figured I could do research here and there on the way, in various "hobo cafes" where there is Internet (I could also call a few colleagues). Things went well, and I made it to New York in about fifty hours. Once in New York, I had a pretty good idea of where she lived, so I headed "upstate" to the quiet rural community she calls home.

It's a nice enough town, with pines and cedars lining the road. The air is fresh, and the last yellow silt from pollen season lines the creek beds. An old general store advertises daily specials on medicine or cloth, and tired men in honest caps walk dogs that have real problems. Two women chat as they enter what is clearly a beloved hamburger restaurant.

I like where she lives; it is a good place. This is why I do not like that she lives there. It is as though she does not Get it. She tries much too hard to please. A good country person waits to be pleased. Poverty cannot afford to dance.

After some eavesdropping behind a newspaper I hear a local man mention where her house is to a new pizza delivery boy. I start the van and head there. The light is growing dim, and I have sulfured eggs to distract her dogs.

I make a few wrong turns, out on the foggy pine forest roads, but it isn't long before I know I've found the place. I ask you, what good country family has three matching PT Cruisers. Why would she need three. I know she is married, but it just seems terrible. It makes me angry. She should not make her husband drive a PT Cruiser. No matter who he is. (Although, I have to admit, my opinion on that will soon change.)

I park the van six miles down the road, to ward off suspicion, then sprint back to their property. As I had read, there are large dogs prowling about. I reach into my fanny sack and throw two sulfured eggs as far as I can from the house. The dogs hear the cracks and sprint away. Perfect. I've injected the eggs with Haxall's Pandemonium Chlorodyne.

Now it's time to get up and look in the windows. The first thing I see, unfortunately, is her short husband using the bathroom. Before I can duck away I learn the awful truth: he is sweating, and he has jazz butt. The window is open, so I am spared no detail, no matter how quickly I try to creep away. Oh god how awful, how awful to live with Rachael Ray. How awful to watch what happens. How awful to eat what happens.

Soon I have crept around to the back deck and I see the small husband, an Italian fellow, walk delicately into the large dine-in kitchen. Rachael is there and, away from the cameras, she wears Mickey Mouse clothing from head to toe. Even her house slippers have things on them which make it clear they are a Mickey Mouse product. She stirs a large pot of something I cannot see clearly; I hear her tell the little husband that it is her "Astronaut Turkey Smackers." I do not know how something called a "smacker," or meant for astronauts, can be prepared in a large pot. It seems that outer space demands special, careful foods. I feel lost. The husband, too, has the same feeling. He sneaks off to the driveway and takes a big sip of Amstel from a hidden place in the back of the third PT Cruiser. He has done this before.

Soon the pizza delivery boy pulls into view, but he stops a hundred yards down the road. He leaves a pizza box near a fencepost, picks up a rock, and removes what looks like cash. The husband does not look in his direction, but when he has heard the boy's engine fade away he sprints to the pie and ravenously consumes several slices. He then hides the box beneath large dried cedar branches, perhaps for later. It is a gamble, as animals may eat it, but it looks to me that he lives by playing at odds. He wipes wet leaves and pine needles on his mouth, on his tongue, to hide the smells.

Rachael steps out to the front porch and yells, "JAAAAHN? JOHN-BOY? YOU OUT THERE?"

The husband panics, and yells back, "I...I was chasing a rabbit! It looked like it was hurt!"

"Well, was it?"

"I guess not, Rach, 'cause he sure got away fast!"

"Get back in here! I just got an idea for Hobgoblin Turkey Gobblers! You know, kind of a Halloween thing!"

"Sounds awesome, Rach! What's...what's in it?"

"I'll figure that out later! Come in here and try the Smackers, and quit makin' me yell. You know I'm doin' twelve shows tomorrow!"

He whispers his reply: "Sure thing, Rach!"

"WHAAAAAAT?"

"Sorry, Rach! Be there in a sec!"

The dogs finally start to howl and convulse in the woods behind the house, so they run off to see what is the matter. I am disgusted with them both; I do not want to confront this terrible situation as much as I thought I did. I want to be gone, away from these two. It is all I can do to go into the house, make myself sick on a plate, and leave it by the stove. "Amateur hour," I know.

Not too long after that I am back in the van, headed for home. I am disappointed, and it takes me a good sixty hours to reach California. When I turn on the television, there is Rachael Ray, serving a meal of Astronaut Turkey Smackers. A telltale stain of iodine shows just past the cuff of a long shirt sleeve: she has been bitten by a crazed dog.

In a way, I have communicated with her, but I would not call it a conversation.

There are not many foods which I can eat in common with Pat, as he is quite particular. There is even a name for his style of peculiarity, but it escapes me at the moment. Something like Rogaine, although you and I both know that Rogaine is a gentleman's hair recovery salve. Anyhow. My point is, Pat and I both enjoy noodle meals.

We also enjoy my home-crafted "tater tots," but that is not on topic. Heh. I guess I just say it to brag. Oh how I love that old recipe.

Tonight's noodle meal was to be divine. Pat cooks some special Oriental spaghetti-type pasta and then coats it with "organic" peanut butter. The idea, the combination, is lunacy, but oh how delicious it is. It is truly...an amazing food. He often sprinkles it with coriander leaf and sesame "bushotto." Oh how it is filling. Oh how it sates. When he makes it lately, we even refer to the dish as "lunatic noodles." It is a joke among men. It is good.

I was very late getting home after my trip to the secret redwood patch (one of the roads had gone out after the first rain and I needed to shore up a section with a fill wall — even added a French drain for good measure) so my noodles had gone cold. I was polite and said I was sorry I had been late, but Pat continued to watch his television show about dancing. I put the noodles in the microwave cooker but this caused the peanut butter to separate into oil and an unpleasant mealy paste, and the noodles went clumpy. To honor Pat's commitment I ate it, but it was horrid. Every bite was an eternity. Every swallow was to vomit oil and glue into my own stomach. At the end of the meal I was ill, mad at Pat (although I honored him), and there was no fun in the house. I sat alongside the car in the dark garage for a few hours until my body had processed the terrible nutrition, and then went to the corner store for a pickled chorizo and a box of Saltines.

I do not mean great in that I am pleased with the ceaseless sneezing I have experienced in the evening lately. I mean it is out-of-bounds, unacceptable, painful in the extreme. For the last few months, at ten o'clock in the evening, I have had outbursts of this kind, and violent ones — ones that leave me retching.

Typically at ten o'clock PM I have my "rudders true" through a History Channel program about magnificent ships, as there has been a Series lately ("Empire of the Wind"). I admire fine old ships. Though of near-ancient ways, their power knew no equal. Meaningless men in creaking hammocks swung from the ceiling come night. Terrible food full of maggots and ash sustained them. Their punishment: the stockade. Oh, how many men screamed their way to the bottom of the sea in the stockade, bereft of even the ability to float hopelessly upon the surface, to talk while they died, before committing themselves, in final desperation, to the same "briny deep."

I cannot enjoy my show any longer, for all this sneezing. I must find a pill, or antidote, or a reason that I can do away with. I will start with Pat and his new friend. I will not put a name to him. The friend is the latest change to our home. Perhaps he wears some cologne, or dresses a persistent wound in some herb of succor, which upsets me so.

When I was a boy, it was always a good day when we could land a few sun-caught perch down at the ox mine sinkhole. Daddy would smack them across the head with his old special Carter wrench, and fillet them quicker than they could die. I remember good fish so fresh the fin on the side was still risin' up and down in the pan. We fried them in honest butter and put lemon alongside, that was meal enough for us.

Yet here I see on Food Television that a woman named Rachael Ray has claimed that perch is low, and says to get a fish by the name of "ahi" instead. Ahi looks red and wicked, like a steak cut from a man's thigh. It is said to cost great sums, much greater than meat. I don't like this woman, and I understand she lives in the woods. Well, I know woods. I see she has dogs. Well, dogs are of low persuasion and easily distracted by sulfured eggs.

Maybe next time she goes on television, she won't have the same low opinion of simple sun-caught perch.

Call me low, but I do enjoy a good old-fashioned TV Dinner. I cooked one tonight, while Pat was away with his new fellow. Guess I'm going to be doing a lot of cooking on my own for at least a while. That is good, I can get by. I can turn on an oven with the best of them, I like to kid.

Tonight's dinner was a Swanson Hungry Man Classic Fried Chicken dinner. It was on sale at the Bell, two for one, and to wash it down I chose good, cold milk. Oh how my meal was fine. The lengthy cooking time was a temptation of agony, but at last I could peel the cover off and eat. Oh how I dined. Oh how salty the meat, how perfect the mashed potato compartment with its yellow area where the picture-perfect square of margarine had melted. The corn I did not care for. Oh how sweet and sticky the delicious berry crumb dessert. And I have one left.

I am only worried at my insatiate behavior after I finished the meal. I was in a salt-lust and ate an entire jar of peanuts. I will walk for a few hours, and drink orange juice, to help break down the nuts. The walking will help rock the sea in my stomach and erode the food into a fine, fine sand.

Oh this was not the fancy kind of Book Tour with plane tickets and gleeful "paparazzi" and a smiling greeter at the airport. It was more of a tour of my own design. Late one night, while rifling, I was able to find the addresses of every customer who had purchased my books through Achewood, and after a fashion I was able to copy them down into a list. It took a good many hours, but fortunately rain was coming so everyone slept soundly as I did my work.

After that I plotted them all on free maps from the American Automobile Association, and fueled up the van. I watched through many windows as my customers read my books, and I have to say the results weren't half bad. It pleased me to see that folks generally were respectful while reading, and only one fellow shook his head at the end. We talked about that, he and I (in my mind). Since he had given money for the book, I had no claim over him, but all the same I did feel that his after-act of painful criticism justified the fire I set while he slept. That was my, "criticism," of him, if you will.

There were many long, hard nights on the road, but I believe I did visit all of you. I have to say that some of the college campuses are awful hard to navigate, and that made me angry, but I was pleased to see about the shared showers in many places. It kept my mind alive on the long roads between. The drain grates were enormous, and the water pressure superb.