By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 27, 1937.
“I could eat,” said Jimmie Frise, “an “Eskimo’s boot.”
“I’m a little hungry myself,” I agreed. “Where will we eat?”
“Eating,” said Jim, “is not the casual matter most of us think it is. What a man eats, he is,”
“Let’s have a good sit-down lunch to-day,” I said.
“It isn’t how you eat,” stated Jimmie, sinking deeper into his chair, “but what you eat. A man consumes food. That food, by a chemical process, becomes him. You are not you really. You are what you have eaten.”
“I’m too weak to argue to-day, Jim.” I explained. “Let’s go and eat.”
“Eating,” stated Jim, “should be by rights a spiritual exercise. It is as important as religion. What is the use of a man trying to implant high spiritual truths in his brain if that brain consists of fibres taken from bulls, hogs, oysters, mud-turtles1 and turnips?”
“Oysters,” I said. “That’s it. We’ll have a dozen Blue Points on the half-shell2. They’ll soon be out of season.”
“The human race,” said Jim, “is right on the verge of a great discovery. And that is, that what you put into a man, that is what you get out of him. Food. Food is the secret of it all.”
“All what?” I inquired.
“All our troubles,” said Jim. “We’ve solved everything, yet we are still in a universal confusion. We’ve solved the riddles of science and can make cloth out of wood and wood out of air: we can fly and we can travel under the sea; we’ve measured the stars; we’ve explored the human mind to its uttermost end; we’ve solved all questions of law and justice and society; we’ve solved everything, yet the human race as a whole is closer, in its own heart, to the cave man today than it has been since it started out of the caves.”
“We have gone kind of primitive,” I admitted.
“We’ve mastered everything else,” said Jim. “The whole animal and vegetable kingdom we’ve brought under control. Cattle we’ve taken and altered and changed to our own requirements. Horses, hogs, sheep, poultry, we’ve possessed body and soul and perfected them to our own needs. Wheat, potatoes, vegetables, flowers, trees, we’ve corrected and moulded and shaped and improved to our liking. How? By feeding. The only living creature, other than wild things, that mankind has not bothered to alter or improve is mankind himself.”
“Science.” I protested. “has vastly improved all food products. The very reason we have altered cows and cabbages was to improve their eating quality.”
“Yet,” cried Jim triumphantly, “we let mankind eat what it likes. That’s the point. You don’t catch us letting cattle or vegetables eat what they like. No, siree. They eat what we give them. And see the result of feeding oil cakes to cows or fertilizing celery?”
“Fascism,” I accused. “Jim, I hope you are not advocating that we humans be fed, not as we like, but as the government decrees?”
“Why not?” demanded Jim. “If we’ve brought all the animal and vegetable kingdom so far with science, wild cattle converted into Jerseys and great shorthorn beef; wild plants and roots transformed into those succulent vegetables and salads: why not wake up to the facts and start applying the same successful principles to ourselves?”
For a Government Menu
“Suppose,” I suggested, “that you would have a daily menu published by the government and we’d go to jail if we departed from it?”
“Better than that,” said Jim, who had apparently forgotten it was lunch time. “The first thing would be to appoint a royal commission consisting of scientists, doctors, agricultural experts and so forth to determine what foods are holding us back and what foods would, as the farmers say about steers and hogs, finish us. The whole history of the improvement of other species could be gone over, from Percheron horses to Pekingese dogs. Then the government could adopt the report of this royal commission and establish a new department called the Department of Human Agriculture or something. Each day in the newspapers would appear tomorrow’s menus. Inspectors would rove the streets of cities and towns, like weed inspectors, and pop into homes at meal time, to see that nothing noxious was being served. Restaurants and hotels would have permanent officers of the Department of Human Agriculture working right in them, sort of New Age dietitians.”
“Would they allow potato cakes?” I asked.
“Or Winnipeg gold eyes3? Or Roquefort cheese?”
“At first,” said Jim, “there would be a pretty general lenience, so as to wean the human race gradually away from its wicked and destructive individualism. I have no doubt that our ancestors had quite a time with wild horses, teaching them to eat what was good for them. But let us make it a Five Year Plan. In five years, the whole nation will be eating what is good for them according to the rules we have found so eminent successful in all other animals.”
“Fascism, Jim,” I said. “It sounds like fascism to me.”
“Well,” cried Jim passionately, “what else can you blame, but eating, for the way the world is to-day? We’ve tried everything else. We’ve mastered and conquered and explained in every conceivable direction. Yet man remains as mysterious and unmanageable as ever. I think it’s what he eats. Turn a herd of horses loose in the wild state, and how long does it take them to slide right back into the primitive mustang again? Let a field of turnips run wild and what happens to them?”
“Pork,” I said. “That’s what we’ll have for lunch, some lovely nice white roast pork, with cracklings on it, apple sauce and bright turnips with lots of pepper sprinkled on them.”
“Why,” said Jim, slowly straightening himself up out of his chair, “we can see the results of eating right in our midst. Wallace Beery eats beef4. Bernard Shaw5 eats vegetables. And look at them.”
“Well, it all depends what you want to do with them.” I said: “if it was a fight in a night club. I’d have Beery: but if it was a witty conversation in a parlor, I’d have Shaw.”
“Where,” said Jim, now upright and reaching for his coat and hat, “will we eat?”
“There are all kinds of places,” I said. “I feel like a sit-down meal to-day.”
“It’s lovely out.” said Jim. “We could eat a stand-up sandwich and spend the rest of the time strolling through the streets.”
“We could go down to the hotel grill room and have,” said I high-pressuredly. “let’s see, first: essence of tomato soup, that pale ruby consomme delicately tinged with tomato; followed by a mixed grill, consisting of a tiny plump lamb chop, a sausage, two strips of transparent grilled bacon, a grilled half tomato and a small kidney.”
“Or let’s go to a cafeteria,” suggested Jim, holding the door open for me. “In a cafeteria, you can see what you are getting. You can even pick the one steak you like out of a dozen steaks sizzling in the pan. Or the exact piece of pie you want out of a great and serried parade of pie. When I look at a menu and read the kinds of pies, apple pie, pumpkin pie, caramel cream pie, rhubarb pie and pineapple tart pie, I can’t visualize then. It’s just a great muddle of pie in my mind. But this is the age of realism. A cafeteria is realistic. I can glance over the pies, and just as you can pick the prettiest girl out of a bunch – though no two men will pick the same girl – you can pick the pie of your heart.”
“Well,” I said. “I’m weak from hunger, but nevertheless, let us go and walk around the downtown until the spirit moves us.”
Which we did; and the noon hour was lovely, and the streets jammed with people looking their best, either because they were just going to eat or because they had just eaten. If nothing else bears witness to the spiritual character of eating, this look of noontime beauty on the faces of everyone old and young does. At no other time of the day down town do you see it. That cold and hopeless and hurrying expression of the morning is gone; the tired, veiled look of the homing throngs of evening, gone. Noon is the hour of joy, of smiles, of freshness and of shining eye.
“Jim,” I said, “these girls are like vestal virgins going to the temple, these men – look at that old fellow, there. I bet he is an old buzzard in his office, yet what an air of comfortable and happy expectation is on him now, as he heads for lunch.”
And all the cars at corners slowed politely. and never tooted a toot, it being noon; though in the morning and the evening, these same cars would come angrily to the turns and with indignant horn fling us pedestrians out of their way. And policemen sauntered with far-away gaze. And lads on bicycles whistled tunes. And in the upper windows of office buildings, men sat leisurely on the sills, looking down, embracing their ankles and dreaming.
“Ah, Jim,” I said, “what a lovely thing noon is.”
“How about eating?” suggested Jim.
This Babylon Hour
So we slowed and looked in all the gating places: the drug stores, their windows filled with hardware and shoe trees and globes of the world, with their long counters within where men sat shoulder to shoulder and elbow to elbow and ate by the wrist movement; the little orangeade places6 where the girls sit, with wide eyes and self-conscious mouths, chewing as if chewing were slightly improper; restaurants, with and without beer parlors, where men, mostly in threes, go in and hang their coats up ceremonially, always having a brief flirt with the pretty coat-check girl; cafeterias, where forever somebody is always standing, tray braced against chest, staring helplessly around; funny little kosher sandwich shoppes, the spicy odor of which, skilfully emitted from an open transom, makes an invisible and potent advertisement all along the street whichever way the wind blows; tea shops upstairs and down cellar; armchair lunches where forsaken youths sadly push mops along the damp floors forever, and aged men, bent and tousled, carry great tin baskets full of dirty dishes; gloriously pretty soda joints where even the ham sandwiches taste of vanilla.
So we wandered in this Babylon hour amid the topless towers and the meaningless racket of a great city’s interlude of leisure, and the longer we looked, the less we felt like going into any one of them, for when I said beefsteak Jim said sandwiches, and when I said a chicken pie Jim said liver and bacon.
“The only thing we can do,” declared Jim, “is chuck and chance it. Let’s agree we’ll go into the fifth eating place north of here.”
“O.K..” said I.
And, the fifth was one of those orangeade places, where there were forty girls and only two men eating, and both the men looked as if they had duodenal ulcers and were eating as if they were adding up a column of figures.
“Hang it,” I said, as we paused irresolute, “I never felt more like a sizzling steak in my life.”
“An agreement’s an agreement,” said Jim, thrusting the door open, “but I must admit I could go for a large plate of curried lamb.”
So we went in and stood with the girls at the counter, and watched the little trays coming out, with their mug of coffee and saucer of dinky sandwiches on lettuce, and we studied the complex series of notices, signs and advertisements on the back wall.
I’ll have,” I said, “a tomato, cheese and bacon sandwich. And coffee.”
“Make mine,” said Jim, “a chicken, bacon and tomato sandwich. And coffee.”
And there we stood, while the food continued to stream out the little pantry wicket and the girls around us went seeking pews; and presently, out came our sandwiches.
Skidding and Skating
They were three-deckers. On white bread. Skewered with toothpicks on which was impaled an olive.
On the little tray there was a knife, fork and spoon. The plate the sandwich was on was a bread and butter plate. But the coffee mug was large and husky and manly.
Jim and I balanced our trays out into the sea of skirts and up by the window found a table just being vacated by five girls. The table was 18 inches square.
We removed our coats, but, except by climbing over several strange young ladies, we could not hang them up. So we sat on the coats.
“I hate these three-deckers,” I said to Jim as we faced our food. “You can’t open your mouth wide enough to get a bite at them, yet, if you unskewer them, they slither all over the table.”
“Curried lamb,” muttered Jim numbly contemplating his sandwich.
The knives were not sharp, and when I tried to cut into my sandwich, the bacon resisted, at which, this the very first attack, the three-decker began to come to pieces. The top slice of bread skidded on the buttered lettuce underneath. The bacon slewed out sideways.
I stabbed it with the fork to hold it firm.
“Easy,” said Jimmie. “I guess we shouldn’t wait so late for lunch. It affects our temper.”
“Whose temper?” I demanded. “I’m not in a temper. I’m just indignant at these silly three-deckers. A sandwich is a sandwich. It is meant to be eaten in the hand.”
I tried another cut at the thing, and the two top slices, resting on cheese and lettuce. skidded in a new and hitherto unsuspected direction. I made a quick stab with the fork and nailed that runaway.
“Pssst,” said Jim, who was sawing cautiously at his.
I laid my knife and fork down and sat back and looked at him.
Jim, with dignity, continued to saw, and presently got a corner loose. This he proceeded to impale on his fork and transfer to his mouth. But tomato is by nature slippery and elusive. The bottom piece of bread, with tomato and lettuce, slipped off half-way to its terminal and fell in Jim’s lap. He made a quick duck with his head and captured off the fork the two upper bits of bread and some wisps of chicken.
“Ha,” said I, resuming knife and fork and advancing to the attack.
I stabbed the largest and firmest part of the sandwich which by now was slithered out, like a pack of cards, all over the little plate. I laid my knife firmly upon it and pressed. I pressed harder. I drew.
The whole business skidded, the little plate tilted, the tray skated, and my sandwich went to the floor.
“Good!” I said. “Now I’ve got you, you…”
And I got down and stabbed it on the floor.
“Pssst,” said Jim, kicking at me. “Keep cool.”
“The… the… the…” I said.
Easy,” said Jim. “Ladies present.”
So, as if by mutual consent, we rose quickly, snatched our coats and hurried out into the street and went down to a drug store and had a double malted egg chocolate, and went back to work much refreshed.
Editor’s Notes:
- Turtle soup was a common food until turtles were over-hunted and the soup lost its popularity by the 1950s. ↩︎
- “Blue Points on the half shell” are a serving of raw Blue Point oysters. Oysters were plentiful and cheap from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, so they were treated as a cheap protein like eggs. ↩︎
- Goldeyes are a type of freshwater fish. ↩︎
- Wallace Beery was an actor who was well known for his tough guy roles. ↩︎
- George Bernard Shaw, the playwright, was a well known vegetarian. ↩︎
- I’m not sure what these are but it seems like “orangeade places” were restaurants were known for serving small meals that would be more popular with women. ↩︎
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