Red Room Where the Writers Are

Hero sandwich.jpg

I'm joining the entire Red Room community in writing a short blog post on this week's topic: "Heroes." The form and the content of the blog entry are open to personal interpretation; whether this topic calls to mind a real-life hero, a fictional character, or something else altogether, we want to read your entry. We'll choose at least one of these blogs to be featured on Red Room's homepage next week, and we'll choose three blog writers to receive free books from Red Room Authors. Submit your blog entry by Friday at 10:30 a.m. PDT [GMT-0700] for consideration. Be sure to tag the entry with the keyword term "heroes blog” so we can find it.

(With apologies to the memory of Alice Childress for the title of this post. My childhood, which I address here, was nothing like the young protagonist of her book,and I hope she wouldn't have minded that I'm borrowing it.)

Red Room's Editorial Director Charles Purdy is my hero right now, because I've been going crazy trying to find an angle for this week's blog topic. I don't know why this has been giving me such trouble, since I've had heroes, and I believe in looking up to people who live admirable lives. 

And yet when I tried to think about what to do, there was a big blank. Red Roomers have been posting such wonderful entries about their heroes, so I don't know why I was having trouble. I see heroic acts every day, and especially admire the heroism I see reflected in the writing I see here on Red Room. Anyway, when I expressed this trouble, Charles came up with an elegant solution, the kind of creative left turn that often makes a mental knot untangle instantly: Write about a hero sandwich. No one's done it yet.

Of course! I love big, hearty sandwiches with lots of ingredients. Oddly enough, "hero" is an East-Coast term for big sandwiches like that, and I'm not sure when I learned that some people call a "hero" what I always knew as a "sub." According to Wikipedia, sandwiches of this typego by many names: "sub, grinder, hero, hoagie, Italian sandwich, po' boy, wedge, zep, torpedo or roll." I've also heard them called "Dagwoods," after Blondie'shusband's penchant for eating them.

Take me back to my childhood, O muse of blog topics! Summer vacations meant a trip once a week with my mother, my sister, my mom's friend, and her two kids to the Agua Caliente Mineral Springs pool near Sonoma, California. The facility had two pools, one quite warm fed by natural hot springs, the other quite cold that was for diving. I remember standing terrified by the edge of the hot pool, Mom patiently treading water in the deep end, encouraging me to jump in, promising to catch me. Other things I associate with the pool are bees buzzing over the lawns, the rotten-egg smell of the sulfurous water, kids not from my neighborhood with a slightly ominous air playing pinball and Pac-Man, and one elderly lady in a pink frilly bathing suit and bathing cap sidestroking laps—heroic laps, come to think of it—early in the afternoon.

Also special was lunch. As a rule, our family (meaning, mostly, Mom) that made its own sandwiches rather than buying them. For some reason, I associate the pool with my first bought sandwiches: fat salami subs from any number of sandwich shops around town. The shop I associate with this early foray into food not made at home was a liquor store/deli combination of a type extremely ubiquitous in strip malls across America. Strip malls weren't and aren't too omnipresent in Sonoma, but the Vineyard Center at Highway 12 and Verano Avenue certainly fits the stereotype. I want to go there right now, order a tall pile of salami, thickly sliced, creamy jack cheese, shredded iceberg lettuce (no mayo or mustard) on a sourdough roll, add some chips and a Mountain Dew, and run around being ten years old at Agua Caliente pool. 

While that particular combo still appeals to me (lose the Mountain Dew—I finally cut most corn syrup from my diet), other heroes have come into my life since those days. Give me a muffuleta with olive salad, provolone, and what seems like twenty different cold cuts; bánh mi with pickled carrots and daikon, onions, cucumbers, cilantro, hot peppers and pork; a vegetarian caprese drizzled with olive oil, and including the freshest tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, and lots of salt and pepper; a lovely brisket or fresh roast beef with horseradish from Moishe's Pippic here in Hayes Valley. (The guys who run that joint, by the way, are quietly heroic to me, too: they love what they do, which includes doling out friendly chat as much as it does scrupulously fresh and delicious food.)

The pretentious hipster clothing shops on Haight Street all have the latest t-shirt fashions hanging in their windows. One that I keep meaning to buy when I feel like I can spend that much on a t-shirt features a simple outline of an upright lizard monster (not too much like Godzilla), with talons outstretched and toothy mouth gaping. He simply roars "FIX ME A SANDWICH."

It's only 10:30 a.m. as I right this, but I know what's for lunch.

(By the way, in case you were wondering: Yes, Mom caught me when I jumped into the deep end.)