Sometimes the journey begins, more or less, with a single step. In some cases it isn’t actually putting one foot in front of the other but a thing. In this instance, it just happens to be liverwurst.
My story of liverwurst and friendship begins over 30 years ago while working the night shift at the local hospital when it was still a small town hospital, standing on its own two feet, before it became “du rigor” to be part of some giant, faceless medical entity. It was the kind of place where the employees were all neighbors, our kids went to school together and it didn’t matter what part of the ladder of importance you were on in terms of the job you did inside those four walls, we were all equal.
Anyone who has ever worked the night shift knows, that group of folks becomes a second family to you. With less to attend to, unlike the day shift, there tends to be plenty of time to sit around and share stories. You learn things from the night crew that you might not have time for during the day. There is a chance to get to the “knitty-gritty” of the lives of your co-worker. That often includes food. The cafeteria is usually closed by the time we all are ready for dinner so most evening, we brought brown bag buffets. With your night time friends, you can sometimes be more open to sharing the occasional odd and wonderful palette that might often remain anonymous on day shift. In fact, you could consider some of the evening offerings as a charcuterie board of wonders.
Liverwurst is just one of the many choices we shared, but for one intrepid soul, it stayed on the “board” untouched. It does a person’s heart good to realize they are not alone in the culinary climate of delicacies and it opens up the world for a good dialogue based solely on the pale, brown slice on the plate. Like Moxie, there are two camps: either you love it or hate it. There is no medium ground when it comes to liverwurst or Moxie, for that matter.
So today, on the usual rainy Memoria Day, instead of torturing my family by insisting we go camping, even though we know it always rains on Memorial Day, I stayed home with my best liverwurst friend of over 30 years, planted the squash and pumpkin starts and had liverwurst and rhubarb crisp as a belated birthday celebration.
Covid-19 and the pandemic may have stymied the Camino de Santiago planned for 2020 and we’re giving it another year to be sure the damn virus is well contained before we attempt to walk 500 miles but you can be sure that liverwurst will continue to be front and center whenever my best bud and I get together until it’s time to pack the pack and begin that other journey.
Buen Camino
Holy Sneakers
"Holy" Sneakers 500 