The importance of a bologna sandwich

(This was written in 1989 and is transcribed unedited)

It was only a bologna sandwich, didn't even contain mustard. But it was one of the best tasting things I've ever had.

The sandwich was served at the small, sticker-infested Lefors, Tex., park. The park was just a concrete picnic table, a couple of swings and a marble state historical marker of an 1800s army attack on some Cheyennes which recovered two kidnapped white women.

It would seem the vistas couldn't have led to the sandwiches' exquisite taste, but that was a large part of it. The bread was slathered with sweet West Texas sunshine and the entire sandwich was sprinkled with the mystery and history of the small canyons winds had dug into the slight rolls of the land.

It was also a specially prepared sandwich, made by my Grandmother. I had been kind of dumped on her most of the times between my second and fifth birthdays. We were a strange team, a woman in her forties and a child still forming trusts and beliefs. But she took me when no one else did, and even at that early age I seemed to realize it.

The reason the sandwich comes to mind is a return visit to the park today. It's almost 30 years later and I've returned to Lefors to bury my Grandmother.

Wandering around the town alone just before the services, I was drawn to some regular stops - the water tower we hiked to each day of Vacation Bible School and the muddy fork of the Red River.

But for some reason, for the first time, I was drawn to return to the park. The taste of that sandwich came to me immediately, but it seemed like a small memory to demand my subconscious to make the trip.

As I looked across the little canyons though I found the trip's reason. Moving across the road at the top of the ridge was the vehicle bringing my Grandmother's body from the nearby larger town of Pampa.

Although my Grandmother was a church woman, that building filled with mourners wasn't where she wanted to say goodbye. This park, those times, the taste of that sandwich, were her farewell.

Finally, I cried.