They Should Order Subs

Lunch out in the suburbs of Boston near Bedford we dove into a blue collar Italian restaurant.  I noticed the “subs.”  I told the girls they should order “subs.” And I tried to explain the local significance of hoagies, and wedges and heroes and subs.  My girls order a sub.  My wife reluctantly orders a sub with her mussels.  I don’t necessarily need a sub before I drive for three and a half hours.  But the menu and the atmosphere and the waitress face, which is poised between “what the fuck do you want?  And “yeah sure, my pleasure?” have activated something in the rear of my head.  It feels like I’m on a construction site or it’s lunch time at a pool supply parts factory and someone is going out for subs, “whatdyawant?”

My veal parmesan is just about like I remembered it.  It’s good.  It’s juicy and cheesy and I’m a wuss as I chuck the bread and fork the veal with an eye to my bulge.  One daughter has a meatball sub, the other eggplant parmesan.   My wife appropriately commented that it didn’t seem particularly Italian.  I’ll grant you that.  This is a different and distinct grafting.  I did what I could to explain “classic Boston-Italian-American.”  

Now I’m stuffed.  Now it’s coming on rush hour.  Photos and farewells and now this ride back to New York.  Worcester comes slowly.  It takes forever to get to Amherst.  It’s raining.  NPR is telling me what I already know.  We climb for much longer than I remember up into the Berkshires.  It rains and then it stops.  And then it rains again.  Where are all the cool college radio stations?  I can’t find anything worth staying on for very long.  In my memory the New York State Throughway is right over the Mass border, but we’re driving on and on and on in the rain.   That’s right.  You need to cross the Hudson again. 

In the absence of a reliable college station or someone committed to jazz or blues, I search for classic rock.  When you find “classic” rock you need to be careful.  My definition is not widely accepted.  Indeed, as has always been the case with commercial radio, I am poised to be disappointed. Someone has just thrown on Steve Miller’s “Big Old Jet Airliner.”  I turn it up.  This is poignant and I consider Steve’s flights and my own.  Just what was he talking about when he said: “I don’t want to get caught up in any of that funky shit going down in the city.”  Which “shit?”  Which “city?”  Earth Wind and Fire are up next with “Shining Star.”  It ain’t so far now.  I think the rain has really stopped.