Sweet Bologna: Oh How I Love Thee

Pee-wee is so excited about his wedding.

I had an old-school bologna sandwich for lunch today. Simple Boar’s Head bologna, sliced thin, on white bread with mayo: no, I don’t cook speed for a living. For some reason, I was reminded me of the Pee-wee’s Playhouse episode when Pee-wee married a bowl of fruit salad at Miss Yvonne’s urging. Me personally, I’m not interested in marrying a salad. But a bologna sandwich? Joanna might have had a little competition there.

Hell, I may as well come completely clean: in the world of cold cuts it’s not just bologna I’ve got a thing for. Bologna’s next door neighbor in the deli case, salami sings quite the siren song, and even the chunky girl downstairs, roast beef, looks great turned out in cheddar cheese and red onion.  In fact, while pretty much everyone who’s anyone wants to be seen out on the town with the steaks, or the veals, or the other upscale meat debutantes, bologna and the lunch meat family can be way more fun to spend time with.

These meats aren’t the kinds of prima donnas that require sweet talking, your best behavior, and handling with kid gloves or they’ll go home early and leave you alone, unsatisfied, and bitchy.  These meats are the ones that don’t care where you take them or what you do.  They’re ready to go out on a moment’s notice, won’t complain about sitting through a monster truck contest,  don’t worry about how they’re dressed, and will stay out all night drinking you under the table.  They’re easy, they’re fun, and they don’t ask for much beyond a bit of bread and ride home in a date-stamped zip lock bag.  They are, in short, the meats people love to hang out with but won’t introduce to mom.

And bologna is the most misunderstood of the bunch; the Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club of lunchmeats. It’s cheap, it comes in a tube, and it’s mysterious. But I know more than one adult that loves it, and plenty of kids are more than excited to find some in their lunch box.  And, if you stroll past certain kitchens I know at 2AM or so, you may just see someone standing in the light of the refrigerator, biting holes in slices of fresh bologna and holding them up like a mask, before shoving them in his mouth and dancing around the kitchen like Tom Cruise in Risky Business. Except no frigging Bob Seger music, ‘cause it sucks.

So with so many people enjoying the simple joys of bologna, why is it a love whose name we dare not speak? It probably goes back to a combination of not knowing what the hell bologna actually is (I keep hearing lips and ass from the sandalwood perfume-wearing vegans), combined with the incorrect assumption that it only belongs on a platter with ambrosia and Coors Light.

I can’t help with the latter, but the former I’m clearing up here and now: bologna is basically a sausage, manufactured in much the same way as hot dogs (which are also not lips and ass, Petal). It’s made with trimmings which are ground up and spiced, perhaps with a bit of a sweetener added, then pushed into a casing and cooked. No, the casing isn’t ass either, Moon Beam, it’s cellulose. So you end up with a tight six inch wide package of blended meat goodness that slices and travels like a champion.

Thank you, Mrs. Cleaver.

But none of that matters a whit once you bite into some, because good bologna is transcendent. Go make one of my trashy white bread and mayo versions, and use some quality ‘gna. Sit down with a tall glass of milk and just try to worry about something, anything. You can’t. It’s like being transported to an episode of Leave it to Beaver, and mom’s bustling about in the kitchen, Dad’s fixing the mower, and Wally, Lumpy and Eddie are in the living room talking about the way Betty’s dress rode up above her knee in science class.  And no arrogant foodie with a stupid facial hair and shopping cart full of fillets, or soft-boned vegan guitar player that claims it’s all horrible will ever change that.

A few years after the Salad/Herman nuptials, Pee-wee’s alter-ego, Paul Reubens, was arrested at an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Florida, after viewing at least a few minutes of a triple feature that included Turn Up The Heat, Nurse Nancy, and Catalina Five-O: Tiger Shark (apparently, the police in Sarasota would regularly hang out in this particular theater and watch what customers were doing – you know, to protect and serve and stuff, not for any other reason whatsoever, they promise – and anyway, there have been absolutely no crimes with actual victims committed in Sarasota at any time, so they really didn’t have any better place to be). And while his choice of a wife (are you kidding? Fruit salad over bologna?) may be lacking, I have to say the man knows value when it comes to movie tickets.