Chapter 24 - Weekend Lunches

According to Boy: I doubt that there were more than a dozen weekends during our sojourn in New York that did not find Evie and me sitting in some park, at a drugstore counter, in a Zum Zum, or out in the middle of the woods, munching on a sandwich.
One thing that we seldom did was to sit around our apartment on a Saturday or Sunday. Even if we were not feeling well, we would tough it out. Perhaps not the first thing in the morning; but we would venture out on some sort of day trip.

If we were packing a lunch (which we frequently did), I was usually in charge of making the sandwiches. Typically I would make ham and cheese (with lots of mustard) on rye bread. Sometimes it was beer salami on rye, also with mustard. I liked a dill pickle on the side.

Evie and I liked the same type of sandwiches. The only major difference being she was not crazy about dill pickles. I would not, however, pack a dill pickle with a ham and cheese; only with salami. The reason I would not have the dill with the ham and cheese was that I did not want to screw up my breath. If we were having salami, it didn’t matter.

Evie did not like dills. She barely tolerated them in the refrigerator. She viewed dill pickles about the same way I viewed olives.

On those days when we did pack a lunch, we never packed anything to drink. We figured it would just add weight, and we could always buy a "pop." Of course, we were not long in New York when we learned that the proper word for pop was actually "soda." Were we to have gone in a similar store in Grand Rapids, and inquired about soda, we would have been directed to baking goods. That took a little getting used to.

If we were camping, we would take some soda with us. You could never count on finding water in the mountains.

Sometimes, on weekends, we would go to a Blimpie’s. We considered that a real treat. On those occasions, I would load up my sandwich with everything they offered, except for black and green olives. As I alluded to above, I hated olives (and still do). Neither of us were concerned about our breath on "Blimpie occasions." I suppose we assumed that when we got home we would indulge in sufficient other food and drink to mask the onions, dill pickles, or whatever other item we had them toss on our sandwich creations.

I almost forgot. It was during our New York era that we developed a taste for black pumpernickel bread. So, sometimes, we would substitute pumpernickel for rye. Beyond that, we were not terribly adventurous with our sandwiches.

Man, I’m getting really hungry!