The Sandwich Snob

The sandwich snob is all around us, invading the most delightful conversations with the braggadocio of trivial snobbery. This fault is particularly acute with truck drivers and construction workers, but you find it among lawyers and news reporters as well as anybody in any occupation. The sandwich snob will stake the claim that there are only two or three deli emporiums in the state that know how to make an edible sandwich, but these two delis are located, say, in Brooklyn or Buffalo, somewhere that is nowhere near at hand. The claim can not be easily checked. It might be that these remote delis, which may as well be in Mexico, are owned by the claimant’s brother-in-law or ex-girlfriend. Or that they offer a special sandwich that you would find disgusting to eat. Or there is the common claim that a simple ham sandwich can be made to taste better than the best beluga caviar if only so-and-so would slap the special home-made mustard on the bread. I can’t say that I’ve met all the sandwich snobs of the county, but I assure you they are legion. It’s difficult to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Town Hall without bumping into one. 

As a result of this epidemic, I have arrived at a new policy. I never bring up the subject of sandwiches or even mention where I would prefer to have them made, lest some sandwich snob launch into a tirade about every sandwich they have consumed in towns and cities that I have never heard of. There is too much information out there and I must shelter my brain from some of it, or else I won’t be able to recall the colleges that baseball, basketball, and football players attended before they made their mark in pro leagues. I keep forgetting some important information that I need at home, such as what plant my wife has sunk into the clay and I often find myself trampling down a nascent lily or destroying a dahlia on my way to the mucked-up driveway, then being unable to shunt off my feeling of guilt until the evening diner reveals her astonished outrage, to which I can only shrug my shoulders and recall some of the favorite sandwiches I have consumed in Manhattan, Millbrook, and Millerton.

While I love sandwiches and remain grateful to the great Earl of Sandwich who sponsored the colonial depravities of Captain Cook while bestowing his lordly name and fame upon the unseemly custom of eating that had been adopted by midnight card sharks in eighteenth century England before it became the rage as a late-night snack among the noble aristocracy of the nineteenth century. The very fact that the great earl allowed his name to be tagged onto such an unseemly way of consuming food was in no way an act of snobbery, but a gesture of populist posturing. A quick perusal of the most common high school textbook reveals that earls were never snobs and that their only fault lay in their misdirected desire to exterminate native populations around the globe, all those who had never heard of a proper English sandwich laden Coleman’s mustard.

—Gonzo Lorenzo

Gonzo Lorenzo’s columns are inspired by William Thackeray’s humor columns on the gentle art of snobbery that appeared in mid-nineteenth century Punch. 

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Learning to Compute

Just turned two and attempting to walk,

I loved crawling fast up my grandfather’s stairs,

the red rug tightly bound to the steps,

the landing above a joyous goal.

He would shout, “Take it easy,”

repeating it thrice in haste.

But I paid no attention

for I so enjoyed the speed,

the excitement of an ambling gait.

Forbidden to enter his room

where the shades were always drawn,

even in the summer heat,

there glowed a strange object,

a thing of wonder in the dark:

a radioactive clock,

its illuminated numbers

a wondrous mystery

closeted in the dark.

The glowing clock hand

imparted an aura of death.

All my life I have been

afraid of numbers:

their immensity,

their finality,

their eloquence

that makes me feel insignificant,

a two-eyed digit

facing a Medusa,

my heart turning to stone.

Yet when I look up

at a dark night sky

away from city glow,

I’m comfortable

with an overwhelming

number of stars and galaxies,

and feel fearless—

like I’m floating

and suckling mother’s milk

in the Milky Way,

exhaling filaments of joy

with nothing to say.