It happened in Kentucky a while back.
Perhaps 13 years. I don't know the name of the small town where we stopped. It escapes me completely, but that does not matter in the story.
I was on a three-day, three-town speaking tour with Kentucky’s first female governor, Martha Layne Collins.
Corporate executives were driving us from Owensboro to Lexington. We sat in the back seat, and I listened, enthralled, as she pointed out landmarks, making historical comments. As we drove through one tiny town, she said softly, “This is Christian County. It’s ‘wet’. But Bourbon County is ‘dry.’” (It’s now ‘wet’.)
In Lexington, she and I gazed at an enormous statue of Man o’ War, one of Kentucky’s most famed racehorses. “Lime runs in our rivers, and it is said that’s why our racehorses run faster. The lime.” She shrugged. “That’s what they say.”
Another legend: Kentucky distillers spelled whisky without an “e” to pay homage to the abbreviation of Kentucky, KY. There’s a dispute about that one.
“John Y. Brown,” she once said, looking upon the town of Harlan, “He was brilliant. He talked Colonel Sanders into selling Kentucky Fried Chicken. Then, he franchised it across the nation. One of his best contributions to the governor’s office was his wife, Phyllis George (a former Miss America).
She turned Kentucky’s folk painters and crafters into respected artists and took them across America.”
I will always be grateful for the lunch stop at a Cracker Barrel in a now-forgotten town.
As we waited for a table, we browsed through its fantastic store, where the governor stopped at a display. “Look at this.”
She held up the most miniature cast iron skillet I’d ever seen, about five inches around.
I was awed. “It’s perfect for fryin’ baloney.”
She laughed lightly. “I was thinking the same thing.”
I bought that skillet, which is terrific for frying baloney and making small cornbread cakes.
It brings back this precious memory, which smothers my memory whenever I fry baloney (and melt cheese on it).
One night, I was using that little pan to fry baloney when a friend called. When he learned what I was doing, he asked, with a craving in his voice, “When you fry baloney, and it comes up, do you cut the edges so you can flatten it and fry the center?”
This is the number-one question that baloney fryers ask each other.
“Absolutely. And I melt cheese on mine, too.”
He sighed. “I do, too.”
He waited a bit. “Are you making it on white bread?”
I laughed. “Of course.”
“Well, if you’re gonna have fried baloney, go all the way and have white bread and plenty of mayonnaise!” The irony was that both of us were dedicated to eating well and working out five days a week. But even the fittest deserve to cheat now and then — especially when it comes to fried baloney sandwiches cooked up in the perfect iron skillet from a small town in Kentucky.
It continues to be one of my favorite frying pans.
My friend, who salivated over the fried baloney sandwich, exercised hard for two hours daily: one hour during lunch at his company’s gym and another hour after work. He was lean but incredibly fit, with muscular legs and arms.
The doctors later said his incredible body was why he had lived so long.
“Three weeks,” they had said when they found the pancreatic cancer. He showed them and carried on for more than 18 months. Amid that hard fight, he talked longingly about the fried baloney sandwich. “I wish I had baloney right now,” he said.
Three weeks before his earthly time ended, I spent the day with him.
Alone. “Is there anything I can get you?” I smiled and winked. “I brought baloney and white bread.” He grinned. “Maybe later.”
Later, though, never came.
Ronda Rich is the best-selling author of St. Simons: A Stella Bankwell Mystery. Visit www.rondarich.com to sign up for her free weekly newsletter.