BUCK'S BLOG
The Search For The Perfect BLT
J.M.
Buck
It can
be hard to get a good BLT. It is exceptionally difficult in southwestern
Washington State, where I was misplaced a few years ago for about
three and a half months.
One day I had to drive into Longview, WA for an appointment, and
being I arrived about 45 minutes early I figured I might as well
grab lunch.
I stopped into a little mom-and-pop sub shop and ordered my fave,
a BLT on a sourdough roll to go. I went back to where my appointment
was to be, parked in the building’s three tiered parking
structure and unwrapped the sandwich.
I mmediately I realized that something was very, very wrong.
Examining the sandwich, there was a little mayonnaise smeared
on the bread and about a three-inch pile of bacon. No lettuce
or tomato to be seen anywhere in the near vicinity. I couldn't
believe what I was seeing, so I inspected the sandwich again.
No, I wasn't hallucinating. I got a B, not a BLT.
Thankfully, the sandwich shop was only four blocks away and I
took the mangled hoagie back to its rightful owners.
"Excuse me," I say to the five-foot-two, three hundred
pound bleached-blond woman behind the counter. "I think that
there's been some kind of mistake. I ordered a BLT and I got this...."
I open the sandwich for the rotund woman's scrutiny.
"Yeah," she says, and stares at me like a deer in the
headlights.
I feel like I'm in a scene out of the Twilight Zone. "I ordered
a BLT, but there's no lettuce and tomato on this sandwich,"
I tell her.
She continues to look at me with the same vacuous expression.
After spending almost a minute in heavy contemplation of the news
I just gave her, she finally drawled forth an explanation.
"Well, you didn't order any lettuce and tomato on it,"
she said.
This can't be real. I must have unwittingly been transported to
some parallel universe where it is mandatory for all citizens
to donate their brains at birth. All of the motor skills are functioning
on stem cells in this world. Here, this is good enough. They are
proud to be Deltas. It is frustrating for me to be an Alpha. My
kind has been phased out in this world due to severe insubordination
and a staunch refusal to take drugs. Aldous Huxley called it right
on the money over eighty years ago.
After clearly enunciating my every desire for the perfect BLT,
those desires being that lettuce and tomato accompany the bacon,
and please, remove some of that three-inch layer of fried pig
fat, I finally leave the sub shop with a bona fide BLT sandwich.
