Day Twelve Theme: Eating Out

A SANDWICH I COULDN'T REFUSE

When I was a teenager in Tuscola, Illinois

eating out meant getting Italian beef sandwiches

from Liga's, a garish restaurant

on Route 36 at the edge of town.

It was one of those places with cherry red booths

and checkered tablecloths,

and a large neon sign featuring the Leaning Tower,

but my mother refused to eat there.

She claimed this was because the one time we did,

we were surrounded by ominous clusters of men

in shiny, expensive suits,

talking furtively amongst themselves,

which meant that Liga's was a front for the Mafia.

I never noticed, since I was

eagerly masticating shredded beef and soggy French bread

as I clutched a plastic glass filled with icy Coca Cola,

as close to nirvana as I ever got in those terrible days.

My mother's principles

were not sufficient enough for her to stop patronizing Liga's,

they only extended to her refusal to actually dine there,

and were probably influenced by her parsimony

her extreme reluctance to leave a tip.

Instead, she sent my stepfather to drive the five blocks,

and he always returned a few minutes later

with a bulging, greasy shopping bag

filled with sandwiches wrapped in shiny foil.

This continued for years, until one day

I bit into a piece of ground glass.

That unnerving crunch

was one of the most terrifying sounds of my adolescence.

A trip to the doctor met with scorn--

the doctor said, “there isn't anything wrong with her stomach”

after placing a stethoscope on it in a bored manner.

I was instructed to go home,

and only call him again if my stomach began to hurt

or I started to pee blood.

Nothing happened,

but I never ate a sandwich from Liga's again.

I wonder sometimes what happened to their family,

if they stayed in downstate Illinois,

or had an offer somewhere else they couldn't refuse—

the restaurant closed some time during the 80's,

and hasn't re-opened in another location, as far as I know.

I'm still sad about those sandwiches,

they proved to me

that you don't need many options to be happy,

just one thing that you like enough to have over and over.