Clowns are a hungry breed. Something about the work induces ravenous appetites -- you won’t find a picky eater among the whiteface crowd. And while ‘Gluten-free’ may be the rallying cry for many a circus buffoon today, many moons ago when I was just starting out in the business with Ringling Brothers there was a definite surge of sympathy in clown alley for the humble blt sandwich.
I came to clown alley completely innocent of the blt. It was not on my mother’s menu -- for reasons I have never fathomed she considered a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on par with oysters Rockefeller and caviar -- something only rich people could afford. So she stuck to tuna casserole and beanie-wienie. Organ meats were popular in our household as well, because of their cheapness -- popular with my mother, that is; we kids shunned the stuff with the determination of Crusaders in the Holy Land.
So one bright morning when I happened upon Roofus T. Goofus munching on a blt sandwich I was all agog.
“What in the world is THAT?’” I asked him.
“Bacon, lettuce, tomater sanawich, Tork” he replied indistinctly, dripping mayonnaise and bits of bacon from his mouth.
“Where’d you get it?”
“Guy across the street makes ‘em in that greasy spoon. Only a dollar.”
The ‘guy across the street’ turned out to be a true artist in the craft of blt-making. When I entered his flyblown emporium and timidly requested a blt he didn’t bother to ask if I wanted whole wheat or white -- he made ‘em all the same way, on white toast with gobs of mayonnaise and greasy bacon and just a touch of lettuce and tomato. Then he wrapped ‘em in wax paper and handed them over to be admired and devoured.
I had two that first day. And have been in love with this distinctively American comfort food ever since.
Swede Johnson told me that when Ringling was still under canvas and they ran a giant cook tent for everyone, the bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwich was the prefered takeout for clown alley.
“You could take it with you if you weren’t hungry right then, and eat it later -- it still tasted just as good cold as hot” he told me. “Besides, the damn cooks didn’t really like serving them -- they were all hired from big hotels in New York and Chicago and wanted to show off with fancy dishes. They thought a blt was a trashy comedown so they’d let us take as many of ‘em as we wanted. I used to take half a dozen to give away to hungry kids I saw working on the lot.”
Clown alley was divided into two warring factions when it came to the blt. You were either ‘burnt’ or ‘cooked right.’ The Burnts maintained that it wasn’t a good sandwich unless the bacon was so crisp it crumbled away on first contact. The ‘Cooked Right’ crowd, on the other hand, stoutly avowed that the bacon should still have a little fight left in it when you bit into it. Needless to say, I was a “Cooked Right” man from the get-go. Everyone agreed that skimping on the mayo was a knavish thing to do -- any cook caught in the act should be strung up by their thumbs.
Some of the clowns, like Prince Paul and Murray Horowitz, did not eat pork, and so they were not involved in the debate at all. But they had their own set of standards when it came to a good pastrami sandwich. Once out of the New York area there was never anything remotely approaching a good pastrami sandwich.
“I’d kill for some decent pastrami right now” Horowitz would say fiercely as we traversed the cornfields of Nebraska.
“Wait until we get to Los Angeles” Prince Paul would counsel him. “At Canter’s the pastrami is so good you’ll eat until you plotz!”
The pie car made terrible blt’s. Since the cooks were always from one of the overseas acts they were unfamiliar with the basics of American cookery. They didn’t toast the bread and thought the bacon was just for window dressing -- so they only put one itty bitty strip of it on and instead piled on the lettuce and the tomato, thinking in their confused foreign way that it would taste just as good. And they put brown mustard on it, for the cat’s sake, not mayo!
The fact of the matter is, the best blt sandwich I ever made myself consisted of white toast, half a jar of mayonnaise, and six pieces of bacon -- I just waved the lettuce and tomato over it.
Before the sorry rise of the monolithic fast food empire, America was dotted with luncheon stands where you could order a blt and a bowl of tomato soup for a dollar and a quarter. Bacon was cheaper than hamburger. Down South, the Rebels put a slice of cheese on their blt sandwiches or else inserted a dill pickle. No wonder they lost the War Between the States.
In search of that ineffable sandwich in today’s food court hurly burly, I recently stopped by the local Five Guys franchise in Orem. Along with their superb hamburgers and abundant fries, their menu features a luscious looking blt sandwich. So I ordered one. Imagine my outrage when it came out with the bacon burnt to a crisp!
It’s a conspiracy, I tells ya! Breitbart News needs to get on this one, pronto!
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