My First Truck Stop Sandwich

[A note: I just got back from a day long "tiyul" (=trip), where we visited an "Illegal Immigrant's Camp" (aka the place the British holed up Jews trying to break into "Palestine" before 1948), and then went on a hike in the beautiful Carmel Mountains outside Haifa. Somewhere between Haifa and Efrat (a pretty big space, to be sure), I ran into what some might call fate, others might call destiny, and still others might call a sandwich. I call it "My First Truck Stop Sandwich".

Indeed, growing up, I found myself squished into the back of my mother's Toyota Land Cruiser, with either "Rudy" or "National Lampoon's Vacation" playing on the little TV we hooked up to the cigarette lighter, fighting over whether I had to sit in the back, or the "backee-back". Back in those days, I didn't keep kosher, but I still never ate a truck stop sandwich, a fact that I attribute to my wonderful mother, who also didn't let us eat cheeseburgers or White Castle. This had nothing to do with Jewish Law (as far as I can tell), and had mostly to do with the fact that these things were percieved as "below" "us". I would call it snobbery, but that's not half as funny as it actually was.

Anyway, most of you know the rest of the story (I fell off the deep end, became religious, and don't eat cheeseburgers or White Castle now because I think that G-d commanded a bunch of Heebs wandering the desert 4000 years ago to refrain from cooking a goat in its mother's milk....you can decide which reason is sillier). Well....maybe you thought you knew the end of the story. Because a new chapter can be added today!

TODAY, June 19th, 2006 (5766), I, Michael J. Star, ate my very first truck stop sandwich on the bus ride from Haifa to Efrat. I went into the truck stop food area innocently enough, looking from some potato chips or pretzels (normal truck stop fare for me in the U.S.), and then I saw them: back in the open refriderator section, there was a selection of 5 different sandwiches (cheese and tomato, tuna fish, baloney, omellete, and bagel with cheese and olives), all in their two-day old glory, with enough preservatives to kill a grown horse. Did the 10 shekel (~$2.50) price hold me back? No. Did the fact that they had sodium levels that the American Surgeon General has warned can cause blackouts keep me from sinking my teeth into them? Nope. All I could see was the little "kosher" symbol on the package, and the plastic wrapping keeping me from cheap hunger alleviation.

I will never forget this day. And I will consecrate it with the following poem:

TruckStop Sandwich

The open refridgerator
case. Cool. Crisp.
(Don't care about the
fresh Orange Juice).

You contain ex-forbidden fruits,
Apples of my eye,
Adam and Eve never had it so
hard.

Truck Stop Sandwich:
until this day you
avoided
polluting my taste buds
with your noxious bread
and stale cheese. Green olives:
were you always green,
or just really, really old?

And yet!
I sunk my hungry teeth into you,
I ate you all up, in a fit of
rage---(I wish I had a
serpent to blame!)
It was not so good or sweet,
but it was kosher.


On that note, thanks for all the comments. Good night.

Michael