Taxidermy and Tuna Melts

My last post about signs reminds me of my first day in Alabama. My husband and I went down this summer before the wedding to get an apartment and try to make connections so that our real move would be easier. We also went to Israel before the wedding since we wouldn’t have a chance to go on a real honeymoon afterward due to our mandatory road trip (aka. move) to Alabama a week after the wedding. On the way back, we cabbed from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv (don’t even ask what happened to our sherut (bus)), flew from Tel Aviv to Zurich to New York to Charlotte, North Carolina, to Atlanta, Georgia and then got a rental car to drive the 4 hours to Enterprise AL. Yup, from the biblical homeland to the Bible Belt… not the same thing, and with lots of stops in between due to a flaw in our plan that said cheaper was better and the decision to book two separate flights: Tel Aviv – New York and then New York- Atlanta. Did you know that there is a flight from Tel Aviv – Miami –Atlanta meaning only 1 stop over? Did you know that the closest affordable airport to Enterprise AL is in Atlanta (4 hours) or sometimes Birmingham (3.5 hours)?

Anyway, when we finally got to Enterprise, we were starving. My husband checked his smart phone to see what restaurants were around. There were BBQ pit places with a pig as their logo, and the normal restaurants like Bojangles, Waffle House, and Sonic, which we don’t have up north. We decided to try a sub place that said they had tuna salad on their menu. Great. I could really go for a tuna melt. *Disclaimer: We keep Kosher in our home but we eat dairy out.*

So we pulled into the parking lot of the sub place and I noticed that across the street was an auto repair shop. I also saw the strangest sign in the window of this auto repair shop. It was a sign claiming cheap taxidermy. I was confused. Auto repair and taxidermy? What do you do? Hit the deer and then have it stuffed and mounted on your wall as a momento?

Ok. Moving on because I don’t think that anyone could make sense of that one. We walked into the sub shop not knowing what to expect next. We went up to the register marked “order.”

             “Hi there! What can I do for y’all today?” asked the cashier.

             “Well, your menu says tuna salad, so I was wondering if we could get a 12 inch tuna melt to share,” I said.

             “A what? I never heard of that.”

             I looked at my husband with a little disbelief mixing with panic at being relocated to a place that had never heard of a tuna melt.

           “Well, it’s just tuna salad on bread, toasted with cheese on top,” my husband attempted to explain in order to get the panicked look out my eyes. He tried to give me a reassuring nod in an attempt to show me that this would be all right and that he was handling it. Maybe if this was a new thing down here and caught on they would name the tuna melt after us. The Jenn, or the CT Yankee. Maybe we could be the ones that brought the tuna melt to the south!

            The cashier’s eyes went blank, but then lit up as though she had seen the light and had received directions on tuna-melt making straight from the Lord himself. “Oh! I’ll just pop it in the oven for a few minutes! Would you like anything else with that? You guys are number 72 and you can have a seat anywhere.”

            We paid and then sat down at a two seater red plastic table by the wall. The trifold on the table gave the history of the shop and advertised their 5 gallon pickle bucket that they sold with proceeds going to charity. We actually considered buying one and making the bucket our Tzedakah box (to collect money to go to good causes that we choose).

So finally this real skinny guy with a long blonde pony tail and acne came over to us with our lunch. “Well, I never seen this before, but I hope you like it.” The guy had the thickest accent I had heard yet on our trip.

I took a bite. It was good. It was a tuna melt. We thanked him for his service.

That was literally my first day in Alabama. I’ll admit it, I was having MAJOR second thoughts about the move from what I considered the real world to this land of taxidermy and plain tuna salad. Let’s just say I cook a lot down here and that has made the transition a little easier.

OK READERS: I am thinking about turning my road trip down to Alabama into a short story. This tuna melt story would definitely be a part of it, though edited. Also included would be our stop for the ghost tour in Williamsburg VA, salsa in S. Carolina, and the Enterprise Boll Weevil Monument (which I promise to explain in another post). What do you think? Should I write it? Comment below!