The Old Coot is “crust-y’

By Merlin Lessler
For The Pennysaver

I decided to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich the other day. Most people call it a PB&J, but not me, not us old guys. We use the words, not the acronym. I grabbed the loaf from the “bread box,” another item relegated to the history books. Two slices were left, a regular slice and the best one for me, the heel. It holds up very well when you spread jelly on it; today’s regular slices tear apart when you do that, but not the heel. Some people won’t use it; they toss it in the garbage. They are the same people who cut off the crust on regular slices when making sandwiches. That should be against the law, unless it’s for those little quarter slice sandwiches served at cocktail parties.

Today’s bread lasts forever, no blue shows up on “store bread” anymore. When I was a kid, the blue hue started appearing on the second or third day. That’s when my mother sent me off to a neighborhood grocery store. I rode my bike and hung the bread in a cloth drawstring bag from my handlebars, but first I snuck a slice from the center of the loaf so she wouldn’t notice. That fresh slice was fantastic, even without butter. Almost intoxicating. One day I ran into the side of a passing delivery van because I was so enraptured. When she came to collect me, she was scared because she got a phone call saying that her son had been in a car accident.

That feeling was soon replaced with her being mad. First, you scare them, and when they find out you’re OK, they get mad. I got the “You’re causing me to get gray hair!” speech, yet again.
We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches just about every day when my sister and I walked home from school for lunch. Usually with a bowl of Campbell’s, Alphabet Soup. I never had the bread tear apart when I made mine. I don’t eat PB&J’s that often these days, but when I do, I travel back in time to our Kitchen in the early 1950s and see that cloth bag hanging from the knob on the kitchen door. It’s a wonderful journey.