The wrong way to spread mayo on a sandwich

Almost a year ago, my family was having breakfast in a hotel just a few miles from the Biltmore.

We had visited the famous mansion the day before and were preparing to make a trek back to Dublin. My brother’s family had joined my wife and I since we were celebrating her birthday. She wanted to go to the Biltmore in the spring, and since she was turning half a century, we let her choose the destination.

While drinking my coffee, my niece looked at me and with a grin on her face, asked, “Hey Uncle P, what is this about your dad getting mad at you for using a spoon to put mayonnaise on a sandwich?” I looked at my brother and knew it was something he had mentioned to his children. How else did my 10-year-old niece know to ask me such a question?

It was ironic that my brother and I had recently talked about this situation. So, I knew that my brother must have mentioned it to his kids – just like he told them about me throwing a stapler at him when we were little (You may recall that I wrote about this in last week’s “Man About Town”).

When it comes to sandwiches, my favorite meat placed in the middle is ham. Throw some mayonnaise on a piece of bread along with sliced cheese and tomato and it is time to chow down. I cannot recall any ham that I did not like to eat.

I like ham anyway you can slice it. Just not served with green eggs – or yellow eggs either.

My grandparents liked ham, too. In fact, my grandfather loved pork. It was not uncommon for him to cook a meatloaf, vegetables and some rolls, look at it, and pull out some sausage or ham to go along with it. I was fine with the meatloaf and sides, but I did add a slice of ham or a piece of sausage or two to my plate when it was time to eat.

My grandfather believed in keeping a ham in the freezer. If there was all of a sudden a shortage of ham, I believe we would have been okay at his house. We would go out to eat on a Saturday night in Macon and bring back leftovers. We would walk through the front door with our takeout bags and tell him we were full and could not eat another bite.

Without missing a beat, my grandfather would ask if we wanted anything else to eat, and then shout back to grandma to, “get out the ham!”

One evening, I had just left my dad’s room and just happened to cross paths with my grandfather in the kitchen. He said he was still hungry and wanted to know if I wanted him to cook up some ham for a sandwich. I said yes, and before I could say anything else, he was frying two pieces of ham that seemed to have appeared out of thin air.

I stood there in the kitchen and watched him cook the ham as it sizzled in the frying pan. He grabbed two paper towels, some bread and mayonnaise. He pulled the ham out of the frying pan and let it sit for just a little bit. Then he placed the bread on the paper towels, grabbed a nearby spoon and slathered some mayonnaise on his bread. He, then, put the spoon back in the mayonnaise jar.

Turning around to me he said, “Go ahead, sugar, and fix it the way you want to.” Well, since there was no cheese or tomato around, I decided to do just what my grandfather did. I pulled out two pieces of bread, and I went to grab the spoon and scooped up the mayonnaise.

As I lifted the spoon out of the jar, the door to my dad’s room opened. I proceeded to move the spoon to the bread and slather it just like my grandfather had done only moments before. That is when I heard my dad scream out, “No!” By the time he had screamed that out, the spoon was already on the bread.

Oh, he was mad. I was ordered to put it down and come back to his room where he proceeded to inform me that a spoon was not used to spread mayonnaise on bread. That was what knives were for.

When it came to disagreements, or lectures with my dad, it was hard to win against him. In fact, it was better to just let him have his say, and the less you said, the sooner you could get back to whatever it was you were doing before.

Not long into his lecture, he finally asked, “Who in the world showed you that it was okay to use a spoon to do that?” I was glad he asked.

“Papa. In fact, he is in the front room right now eating the sandwich he made by using that same spoon to put mayonnaise on it.”

That ended that discussion.