OPINION
There I Was...#97
Published on August 27, 2009 By Big Fat Daddy In Misc

I was in the kitchen yesterday, engaged in one of my favorite pursuits:  frying bacon.  The sizzle, the smell, the whole experience is zen-ish.  It is second only to the eating of bacon.   Just ask Jim Gaffigen.  As we settled into the den with our plates of bacon, potatoes and eggs, our old-folks recliners and our game shows, a memory flashed of days of yore and breakfasts gone by.


By and large, Mess Halls in the Army don't deserve the reputation they have for sloppy food and sloppier attitude.  Mess Halls are a lot like any large scale food operation, some are good, some are bad, some are great and some...you should avoid.  Mess Halls reflect the Mess Sergeant.  Dedicated Mess Sergeants have excellent Mess Halls.  I have had some absolutely outstanding meals in Mess Halls...and then there have been others not so outstanding.  I have never had so complete a Holiday Dinner at any home as I have had in many a Mess Hall.  My favorite Mess Hall meal has always been breakfast.  Aside from the difficulty in finding any Army cook who can get bacon crisp without burning it, breakfast rules.  Even after being retired for 16 years, I still prepare an all out Army breakfast at least once a month...blood sugar be damned.


When I was a young soldier, standing in line for my breakfast, I used to see dozens of senior NCOs walking by with impromptu bacon sandwiches...not a full-bore BLT, but just a piece of toast folded over a couple of strips of bacon...or sometimes a biscuit (only during the first week or two of the month).  They didn't have to stand in line, they didn't sign a meal roster, they just went in and got a slice of toast, hit the cook on the serving line for the bacon, and they were set.  It was so commonplace that no one even thought about it.  We who were not of a rank to buck the line never considered ourselves worthy or elevated enough to rate the bacon sandwich treatment.  But wherever you went in the morning hours, you would find NCOs chewing bacon sandwiches at their desks, in their jeeps, or on the parade field.   A little old-time-Army perk for hard-working, everwhere-at-once sergeants who probably didn't have time to sit down for  breakfast at their own quarters or anywhere else, for that matter.


It took me a while to discover what the reason for this was.  Economics.  Soldiers who do not live in the barracks and eat in the mess hall are paid an allowance to feed themselves.  Then, if they do eat a meal in the mess hall, they have to pay for it.  I think that breakfast in the mess hall in 1964 cost about 15 cents.  Dinner was a buck something.  And most of the time the food was pretty good.  But getting a meal for free was a no-no unless you were on duty as an inspector or something like that.  Key word:  MEAL.  To the point:  one could argue that a bacon sandwich was not a meal, if you don't take a plate or tray, or silverware, or consume any other part of the meal.  And throughout the Army in the 1960's, most Mess Sergeants made concession to that loophole and baked extra bacon every morning.  


In the early 1970's the system became a little more controlled and it was more difficult for the Mess managers to cover the cost of the extra bacon, but bacon sandwiches were still common up into the 90's.  


Such a little thing...a couple of slices of bacon rolled up in a piece of plain-Jane- white bread.  But I remember clearly the day that I went into the Mess Hall at Turley Barracks one morning to find one of my soldiers who I needed to get into a truck right away.  I was a brand new Staff Sergeant.  I walked past the headcount sergeant, explaining that I was "just looking for someone" (this must have been the code word) and looked through the serving line for my guy.  The First Cook (this is what the Army calls the shift leader) came out from behind the serving line with a napkin wrapped around a bacon sandwich.   My first.  I was shocked...but pleased.   it was official:  I was a bacon-sandwich-NCO.  I had arrived.


Comments
on Aug 27, 2009

yummmmm  

on Aug 27, 2009

Wonderbread in every sense of the word.. I never had seen bread that you could roll before I went to the US for the first time .

Just today a young friend of mine came back from a vacation in the US and she sort of liked american food even though it was a bit strange for her. Pancakes with maple syrup, butter and saussages are pretty alien here in Germany. We like Müsli for breakfast or reak dark bread with either butter and jam or real cheese and/or ham. Bacon is fine for brunch, lunch or supper but not early in the morning.. isn't it like having a solid brick in your stomach?

on Aug 27, 2009

Yeah!  That's the way ya start the day!  Continental breakfasts are great if you are on vacation but if you gotta work all day and some GIs really do work, it helps to fire the furnace...Know what I mean?  The cowboys on the ranch that my Grandma lived on in the fifties and sixties ate two breakfasts...one at 4:00am was just bacon and eggs and toast and coffee.  Then after morning chores they sat down to the real breakfast around 8:00am...biscuits and gravy, sausage, pancakes, lots of carbs to get them through the day.  Come to think of it, a lot of them loaded up on bacon or sausage sandwiches to take out with them if they were working mounted for the day.

on Aug 28, 2009

Müsli has a lot of carbs - I like my continental breakfast! And Nutella - lots of carbs and calories to keep ya going. At least we don't sell cheese that comes in spraycans or butter that isn't butter hehe or skim milk (yuck)

on Aug 28, 2009

Mmmm bacon. Just one of God's little gifts to mankind!

Just popping in to say hello.  

on Aug 28, 2009

Bunnahabhain:  For some reason the quote function just quit working...but thanks for stopping by.

And as for bacon....Yeeeeeahhhh.

on Aug 29, 2009

Great story . . . now someone bring me a bacon sandwich!   Mmmm . . . bacon.

on Jan 04, 2010

There is a guy I work with that will trade you bacon story for bacon story!  I think he has a shrine in his office to the almight pork belly!

on Jan 05, 2010

Everything is better with bacon on it...even apple pie.  Excuse the short reply but I am kitchen bound to produce a bacon sundae.

on Jan 07, 2010

lol. I saw the tail end of this documentary last night on WW2, and one veteran told the story of what they recieved for lunch near the front line near the ardennes forrest in january '45. It was roast beef, peas and carrots, potatoes, and on top of everything chocolate pudding. I guess they only had one plate so they got it all on that. The guy told that he can still taste roast beef with chocolate pudding - he was sort of grinning when he said it, too.

on Jan 07, 2010

Yummmmm.