Pork City

Pork sandwiches are very popular in Philadelphia, and certain eateries are considered among the city's icons. Here is Tommy Dinic's counter in the Reading Terminal Market before it opened this morning, but just after its bread delivery. I seldom eat their tasty sandwiches, usually because I hate waiting on line, and this place is a real tourist magnet.

The bags of sandwich rolls (usually called hoagie rolls here) brought an ancient memory to mind. As a teenager on Long Island I would ride around with my friends in a 1957 De Soto that an unforgettable guy named George owned, and we would make pranks all over town in the middle of the night. Once we stopped at the nearby McDonald's (one of the very last of the old-style, free-standing buildings with giant golden arches) and stole all of its still-warm hamburger buns. Then George drove along wooded roads and residential streets as the rest of us tossed the buns out the windows.

It occurs to me that even then, when they would still change the number of hamburgers they had sold on the sign at the roadside, almost nobody had any love or respect for that company. I remember another friend proving to us with taste-tests that their burger patties had no taste whatsoever --and this was long before the movements toward healthier food in the US.

Yeah I'd have a pork sandwich from Tommy Dinic's over a Big Mac any day, but I still hate waiting on line.

PS Catch my backblip for yesterday here.