Bologna

When the pianist and I were first married in 1957 we made our nest in what was then Vancouver, now Olympic City. The pianist was developing a culinary style that has served her for many years. Food was a major issue for my inlaws since my father-in-law was a wholesale grocer of note and his wife a discriminating cook and shopper. One day, shortly after settling in, I asked my newly wed if she would cook fried bologna for supper. She had never experienced such a request or even considered it before, but she gave it a try and it made her nauseated. I ate it alone that night.It was nothing like I expected. It was everything like I should have expected. Much earlier, when I was a youngster, I recall a picture in a magazine of the King brothers. They were Hollywood B movie producers and the photo showed them eating chunks of what I remembered as raw bologna from a big bologna tube and drinking ginger ale. That image captured my attention as a child, mentally labeled as, "what famous people eat!" I must have retained that critical piece of knowledge in my subconscious soft wear; retained it up to my early marriage period, when it surfaced. It must have always been 'de rigueur' in my mind storage, since it looked like the King Brothers were enjoying their feast. It looked better to me as a youngster, than macaroni and cheese and better than canned spaghetti in tomato sauce. I may have thought It was a dish fit for a King. I don't think that you can even buy a big tube of bologna now, as if anyone would really want to. I have never since that culinary fiasco, lusted after bologna. The pianist would ignore me if I did! Postscript. (The picture I saw was in Life Magazine, Nov 22, 1948, and lo and behold, it's salami, not bologna!) A life long illusion shattered!