Life is a Bunch of Bologna

Carl James Stubbs (Jimmy)

I really like bologna, a slice of cheese, white bread, and mayonnaise. I always have. It is one of the reasons I liked going to my parents’ home as an adult. They always had white Wonder bread, stacks of bologna and lots of Kraft cheese. This continued even after my mother passed away. Luckily for me, my dad didn’t hide these items when I came to visit. I could have several sandwiches during the day, and I did.

When we would take trips as a family, my mother would pack white bread and bologna, and we would eat it without the cheese and mayonnaise. It was wonderful. I still think of those trips and how the bread and bologna tasted. It must be real comfort food for me.

The first time I remember bologna was when I was very small. I would help my mother fix my father’s lunch. She always made Dad a lunch to take to work. She would spread mayonnaise on the bread and then put a slice of bologna on the bread. My job was to trim the extra bologna from the edge of the sandwich where the bologna hung over the edge.

I helped her this way for a couple of days, and then one day my father apparently complained about the trimming of the bologna from the sides where it hung over the bread. I was doing the trimming, and the best way I could think of to trim it was to bite around the sandwich, making sure not to bite the bread. Dad was not that impressed with the bite marks where I had trimmed the bologna.

On my next assignment making the sandwich, I was told not to bite the bologna around the edges. I agreed that I would not do that anymore. That night when my father came home, he was not happy with his lunch. I didn’t know that there was a rind around the bologna, and so when I made it, I didn’t know to remove the rind before I put it on the bread. When he came home, he was holding three little rinds that had gone around the bologna.

Leonard Smith Stubbs

My mom thought that it was quite funny. She had checked the sandwiches before wrapping them in wax paper and putting them in the lunch box. She knew what I had done and had a good laugh when I had done it, and again when Dad came home with the rinds from the bologna. He still likes the sandwiches, and I still like them too.

I was always happy to see the big boxes of Kraft cheese slices and packages of bologna. Dad never complained when he could see that half a package of bologna was gone with the matching slices of cheese from the large box. He always kept several large boxes of Kraft cheese slices and many packages of bologna in the fridge and freezer in the garage, along with a number of Kraft mayonnaise jars on the shelf. Thanks Dad, I miss you and your gourmet cooking.