BREADSTICKS AND STRICKOLEAN

I learned the truth about kishke at the age of 12. It was at Larry Dellheim’s bar mitzvah. He had always been pretty obnoxious. “You know what you’re eating, don’t you?” he poked. “Cow’s guts.”

It was like hearing about sex for the first time. Just to play it safe, I put down my fork. “Get out of here!”

“Go ask you mom,” Larry jeered.

Years went by, and I’ve finally gone back to kishke. But cow organs – lung, heart, pancreas, brains – still give me the willies.

I was in good company. Northerners don’t eat much slimy innards. Then I moved South and discovered that organ meat was not a delicacy, but a sacrament.

Take, for example, the steaming bowl of pork intestine enhanced with hot-pepper sauce that they call “chitlins.” They look like they have the resilience of uncut rubber bands, but people slobber in them.

Then, I discovered that if you order cooked vegetables in a restaurant, their preparation is not so simple. They are invariably cooked with ham hock. This causes a slithering pool of grease to form atop the bowl and shards of pork to infuse the vegetables. My friends and I used to call it “mystery meat,” but there is no mystery about it.

I finally found it safe to eat lunch at a salad bar, where the vegetables are fresh and clean. At least I thought so. Once at a salad bar I loaded my plate with raw veggies. Well, maybe this isn’t as bad as I thought. They even had a stack of breadsticks, fairly cosmopolitan for the rural South. I bit into one, but it was oddly greasy. “This is not bread,” I said to the man at the next table. “No,” the man answered. “That’s fatback and strick-o-lean.” Well, I knew that fatback was a grubby pork delicacy. But “strick-o-lean”? “It’s a streak of lean bacon,” he explained impatiently.

“Oh.” I wanted to gargle with lye.

Then I came to resolution. I was the one who chose to move South. Besides, what a great story to tell my kids. Surely my two older ones would laugh. But then there’s the one who’s a Lubavitcher . . .

ONE MILKSHAKE: $150

I never met a chocolate milkshake that I didn’t love. My family was relatively poor, so Saturday night entertainment was to stroll “once around the track,” as my father called it, at Walgreen’s drugstore. Then, they would seat me at a stool in the cafeteria, ordered me a milkshake for 25 cents and sat impassively nearby as they waited for me to finish it.

What was the most I ever paid for a milkshake? $150. $150?!! It was December. The road was icy. I had just picked up my first pair of hearing aids and decided to stop for a celebratory milkshake. Away I drove, the milkshake in one hand, tuning my hearing aids with the other. I got distracted. The derrière of a truck loomed before me. I hit the brakes. I skidded. I missed the truck. Inertia, though, whipped the milkshake forward.

Thick, gooey milkshake exploded over windows, steering wheel, leather upholstery, the slot for the CDs, my suit, my shoes. And me with one wispy napkin. The car and I limped home. Two bottles of schpritz-cleaner later, I had not even made a dent. The reek of sour milk was setting in.
I took the car to the car wash, and all they could do was laugh. “Mister, you got one dirty car there.” They suggested an “auto detailing” service. “Mister,” again I heard them snickering, “you got one dirty car there.”

“How bad is it going to be?” I asked.

“We usually charge $75 to clean a car.”

“Usually?”

“We’ll have to charge $150 for yours.”

“All right.” Anyone who’s ever roiled in sour milk and gotten his bottom stuck to his seat knows that there is no alternative.

That’s the story of my $150 milkshake.

Regrets? Well, Linda didn’t let me back in the bedroom for a week. And $150 is still $150 to the unemployed. Honestly, though, the real regret? That I didn’t get to finish that damned milkshake, one of the best I’d ever tried. Was there any consolation? Yes, and here it is: The hearing aids are simply great, just great enough to shut off when Linda raves, “I told you so!”