Southern Ontario The Fifties
Chapter
One: A Top And A Bottom And Something
Between
All of the gang were sitting around in
the empty lot at the end of the block.
Joshua was polishing his glasses with spit
and his shirttail. Ingrid was wrapping
her incredibly long braids around and around her neck and then holding the ends
of them in her teeth. Piya was
wondering why Ellen and Lucy, who were twins, dressed alike but did not look at
all alike. Bill was biting just a tiny bit off his nails so his mother would
not know that he had. John and Sam were
sitting comparatively still.
Suddenly Sam shouted, "I’m
starving. I want a sangwich."
"It’s not SANGwich. It’s SANDwich," said Lucy, precisely,
who knew about such things.
"I say sangwich," shouted
Sam. He had five older brothers and
sisters. He had gotten into the habit
of shouting.
"What kind?" asked Ingrid,
talking around the ends of the braids in her mouth.
"Peanut butter’n’jam," hollered
Sam. "What else?"
"I like peanut butter’n’honey,"
said Joshua. He was trying to balance
his glasses backwards on his nose. The
glasses were brand new: he had to get used to all aspects of them before he
could just wear them.
"Yuck," said Ellen. "Honey
sticks to my braces." She
displayed them in a wide grin. Nobody
else had braces so nobody else could comment.
"Banana. I like banana on my peanut
butter sandwich." John sliced an
imaginary banana with an imaginary knife into neat rounds. He did it so
cleverly that everyone could SEE the banana wheels falling onto the bread
spread with peanut butter.
Ingrid could SEE it so clearly that she
said, "Hey, you’re using chunky peanut butter."
"Sure," John grinned. "Doubly peanuty."
"Yuck," said Ellen,
"Peanuts – "
"We know, we know!" the rest
yelled, "Peanuts stick in your braces."
Ellen was too proud of her braces to be
upset. Besides, her mother told her the
others were jealous of her braces, even her twin sister Lucy, who had perfectly
straight teeth. Ellen felt sorry for
her.
"I like lumpy peanut butter if it’s
on white bread," Bill explained, "but when my mom buys lumpy bread I
want my peanut butter smooth."
They all stared at him except for Lucy who
was busy trying to pick a knot out of her shoelace.
"What’s lumpy bread?" asked
Ingrid.
"The kind with seeds. Mom says it’s healthy. I say seeds are FOR THE BIRDS," Bill
made a face and laughed.
Ellen opened her mouth to say,
"Yuck," but decided not to.
Someone shouted, "Bill! Bill!" out a window down the street. "Not for me," Bill said, "She’s calling my dad."
"How can you tell?" Piya wanted
to know.
"She says Bill different when she’s
calling me."
"Bill, Bill, Bill," chanted
Ingrid in three different tones, but Bill pushed his lips out and shook his
head.
"I tell you what I like in my
sandwich," said Piya, "Cauliflower and peas."
"Yuck," said Ellen and John and
Sam and Bill.
"It’s good. My mom spices them and mashes them and puts them inside two flat
pieces of dough and then she fries them and they go all crackly and tasty. I love them."
"That’s not a sangwich," said
Sam.
"Sure it is," said Piya,
"It’s an East Indian sandwich. Who
says a sandwich has to use normal bread?"
"Hey, she’s right,/"Hey, she’s
right," said the twins exactly at the same time. They liked it when this happened and they smiled at each other in
a secret, sharing way. They wished they
were proper twins and looked alike.
"What do you mean she’s right,"
Joshua demanded.
"Well," said Ellen, "Our
mom and dad make all sorts of sandwiches – "
" – for their catering service –
" said Lucy,
" – and some are round with filling
wrapped up in the bread. And some are
puffs with stuff in the hollow. And
some are layered – " said Ellen,
" – so sandwiches can be all different
shapes and sizes," Lucy finished.
"Seaweed!!!!" Sam hollered and
everyone looked at him. "Seaweed!" he shouted again. "My mom uses seaweed for bread."
Everyone stared at him. Ingrid could SEE a peanut butter sandwich
with smelly, dripping, green seaweed like the stuff that got caught in her toes
at the lake, on the top and the bottom of the peanut butter. It looked AWFUL.
"In sushi," Sam explained
loudly. "Mom takes sheets of
seaweed and wraps fish and rice up in it and slices it and we eat it. It’s a Japanese sangwich."
"SANDwich," Lucy said under her
breath. "Will he ever get it
right?"
A seaweed sandwich!!!! Everyone had stopped staring and started
laughing.
"A sandwich should LOOK like a
sandwich," Bill stated.
"Yeah," some of them
agreed. Not Piya or Sam, however.
"My gramps favourite sandwich is
mashed potatoes," Bill remembered. "I had one when I visited him last summer. It was yummy."
"Mashed potatoes?" asked
Ingrid. "What else did he put in
it?"
Bill opened his mouth and went,
"chomp, chomp, chomp" to show what else his gramps put into the
sandwich.
When everyone had stopped laughing – Piya
didn’t laugh but she giggled – Joshua put his glasses firmly back on his nose
and said, "I make fly sandwiches."
"What?"
"Aw, go on."
"Don’t be silly."
"Yuck!"
"I do," said Joshua calmly. "I collect dead flies and I put them
between little pieces of bread and I squish them flat and – " he paused.
"And WHAT?" four or five of them
demanded.
" – and I put them in my
aquarium," Joshua finished.
"Oh, for the fish," John
groaned.
"That’s a different kind of fish
sandwich," Ingrid said and Lucy wrinkled her nose at Ingrid to show her
she appreciated the joke.
"My dad picks up squirrels that have
been killed on the roads," said Ellen, quietly, so that they all listened
carefully. "Then my mother makes a
loaf of bread as big as the kitchen and I make squashed squirrel sandwiches and
feed them to the monster in my closet."
She told them this in such an ordinary voice
that it took a moment for them to realize JUST what she had said.
Then they all hooted. Sam picked up a piece of dirt and threw it
at Ellen. "You ninny," he
screeched cheerfully.
"I make sandwiches with the MONSTERS
in my closet and feed them to the SQUIRRELS," said Lucy.
"I used to dream of feeding the
monsters in my closet to ANYTHING," shuddered Piya.
"I once made a sangwich with so much
inside," yelled Sam, "that we didn’t have groceries for three weeks
and it took us six weeks to eat it all and when it toppled off the table the
house started to fall over and – "
"SAM!!!!!!!!!" the rest of them
shouted even louder than Sam was shouting so he stopped.
"Of course we can’t forget REAL
sandwiches," John said. "I
mean what has to be in real sandwiches?"
"What?" asked Lucy.
"Sand, of course."
"Oh, phooey," said Joshua.
"I’m serious," John nodded
solemnly. "My dad puts butter on the bread and then he sprinkles
sand. He calls it brown sugar but I
know it’s really sweet sand. That’s how
the first sandwich got made."
Piya pushed John off the old box he was
sitting on. He caught her as he fell
and she landed on top of him. Sam gave
a yell and threw himself on top of Piya. Ingrid said, "Oh, look, we’ve got a real, live, human sandwich!!!! John and Sam are the bread and Piya is the
filling."
"We’ll be the lettuce,/"We’ll be
the lettuce," said Ellen and Lucy together and together they leaped on the
heap.
"Here comes the salad dressing,"
called Ingrid and fell on top.
Joshua looked at Bill. "Kid stuff," he said.
Bill shrugged. "I guess I’ll be the
plastic wrap," he said and joined the pile of wriggling gigglers.
Joshua took off his glasses and polished
them on his shirt.