What I Ate On My Spring Break
Recipe for a WASP Ham Sandwich
We aren’t supposed to talk about the pilot program at Richard E Rich Academy where students on financial aid are subsidized over spring break. (Read about it here). But I was a test subject and I’m not embarrassed to tell the story.
In fact, one thing I’ve learned from this experience is that I am asked to either perform my poverty/diversity status for the community to make them feel virtuous for including me, or I am asked to mask my experience so as not to make other people uncomfortable. Hard no to both.
I was offered a choice: either I could take my family with me on a prep-equivalent spring break, or I could pair with a rich family and see how it is with them. My family did not want to take time off from work for the free vacation and are not comfortable leaving their hometown. So I ended up visiting with an old preppy family with a long history at Richard Rich.
It was not what I expected.
Over the last year, I’ve heard stories about the super-rich kids at Richard Rich and how they get picked up in helicopters that land on the tennis court and whisked off to private islands for long weekends where a tutor does their homework for them so they don’t fall behind.
Part of the narrative is that these “poor little rich kids” are somewhat neglected. Teachers at Richard Rich spend a lot of time helping these forgotten children learn to be human beings and feeling sorry for them helps dull the pain of jealousy. From what I’ve heard, often the only company on the private island is a rotating roster of resentful staff members and the rapey billionaire one island over.
Still, I was looking forward to doing shots by my personal plunge pool and maybe getting that AP history essay done.
Instead, at the crack of dawn my host student and I were picked up in a battered old Mercedes by his Eccentric Uncle. Yes, those are caps. It is his title. He was wearing loafers without socks, a tattered Grateful Dead t-shirt, and the vintage seersucker jacket that he believed would help him pass for a respectable parent at his old alma mater.
Private planes and helicopters are notoriously dangerous, but I was more concerned for my life being driven by the clearly slightly stoned uncle in this bedraggled Mercedes. Although it was obscenely early in the day for us, I suspected that it was the end of a long night for him.
The floor around the driver’s pedals was rusted through and you could see pavement flying by underneath. A suspicious gasoline smell suggested a leaky line. The Eccentric Uncle began breaking long before any intersection and seemed to stop the car more with the force of will than mechanical means. I had concerns about the electrical integrity of the car. Among other things, the radio did not work and we instead listened to an old battery-powered transistor wedged into the glove compartment and permanently tuned to a local opera station.
From the back seat, I could see that the inspection sticker was many years out of date. But I was too preoccupied with the pain from perching on an exposed spring in the upholstery to focus on that for long. Piles of moth-eaten Pendleton blankets laid over the cushion only added an itchy layer to the ride.
Remembering the Instagram posts of Viking-sized sushi boats and Wagyu beef feasts from my classmates, I anticipated a luxe lunch. Erroneous!
The large shingle-style house had a grand entrance complete with a peeling porte-cochere which was blocked by a pile of dented bicycles. We bypassed the front door and drove along a sandy driveway overrun with grass to a back door and entered up a set of splintered steps that looked like they were rescued from a construction site. Inside, the enormous kitchen was empty and the vintage linoleum floors were dirty underfoot. Obviously designed for caterers from days gone by, the room featured an insane number of cabinets and a rack of tarnished copper pots too heavy to reach down.
My host offered me half a bag of stale Goldfish and an unrefrigerated bottle of Schweppes tonic water and disappeared. His uncle went off for a “nap” with a Bic lighter and a fistful of something from behind the garage.
I was able to find a bathroom by following the sound of a running toilet down a hallway to a tiny windowless room marked “Please jiggle handle after you tinkle.”
Only several hours later did I meet the mother, who seemed not to have remembered (not to know?) that I was going to be staying with her and was obviously annoyed by the presence of her brother-in-law. When the landline rang she was further irritated to discover that her Nemesis was dropping by at lunchtime.
The Nemesis emerged as a regular visitor, even a best friend.
Suddenly the kitchen was a hive of activity. In unexpected cooperation, the mom and the Eccentric Uncle worked to put together a lunch from the food available. It turns out the Eccentric Uncle also has a history with the Nemesis.
Here is the recipe for a WASP ham sandwich.
WASP Ham Sandwich Buffet Recipe
Serves:
5 people
Ingredients:
1 slice of ham
8 slices of Pepperidge Farm white sandwich bread
Streaky remains of a jar of Helman’s Mayonnaise
End of a french crock of dijon mustard
Foraged mint
Instructions:
Cut the ham into extremely thin slices.
Use a rubber spatula to extract every last bit of mayonnaise and mustard from their jars.
Spread exactly evenly over all the many (8) slices of bread.
Arrange the thin slices of ham in a woven pattern over the bread so that there is a little taste of ham in every bite.
Assemble the latticed ham sandwiches and cut them into 6 pieces each.
Arrange the sandwich pieces quite far apart on a medium-sized ancestral platter, taking care to cover up the large crack down the side from when the Eccentric Uncle dropped it while carrying a roast pheasant to the dinner table in 1989.
Serve with a garnish of mint found growing as a weed in the “garden” out by the garage. Don’t bother washing it, it’s “organic.”
NOTE
Rinse out the mustard crock and use it to store ballpoint pens with almost no ink left in them and giveaway pencils from the hardware store and or library which need to be sharpened. NB there is a rusty old pencil sharpener bolted to the wall in the butler’s pantry.
Servings:
24 mini sandwiches
Back home my own uncle was visiting and my dad posted the beef stew he made, complete with a whole loaf of bread (albeit store brand) and an apple pie.
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**Starred Comment**
ROG
I’ve had a lot of comments on this post that it does not sound like a student wrote it. Mia culpa, I had ChatGPT rewrite the story from the point of view of a stuffy prep school alum.
UPDATE
ROG
JK! I had my host’s college essay tutor rewrite the essay for me. Too hard to figure out ChatGPT.
In related news see this Summer House for Rent (Includes Demented Relative)