How to entertain a grown-up child

Rob Price

What does a parent do to entertain a child who is no longer a child?

This was the question that burned in my mind as I welcomed my daughter home recently from her first semester of college. Her Christmas break was complicated by the fact my wife had to attend a three-day professional conference between Christmas and New Year's Day. What activities could I organize to create stimulating, creative educational opportunities?

Here's what I considered:

I could give her the keys to the family car and wave goodbye, hoping she wouldn't wrap herself around a tree.

I could let her sleep until three in the afternoon, an activity at which she excells.

I could point her in the direction of the local video store and let her watch all six seasons of "The Sopranos." Hey, it was a good series.

Instead, I made her a hot pastrami sandwich.

But not just any hot pastrami sandwich. "I am offering to make you," I said, "a sandwich I enjoyed eating in an dark, dusty bar in Pittsburgh when I was your age."

Being a college student, she was intrigued at the idea of dark, dusty bars. This particular dive was called The Wheel Cafe, and it served twenty-five-cent beers and hot, greasy bar food that's hard to find in this age of franchise drinking/eating establishments like Applebees and TGIF.

Comparing a joint like The Wheel Cafe to a place like Applebees is like comparing burlap to cheap polyester. One is rough and real; the other is smooth and artificial. Walking into The Wheel Care 35 years ago, you entered a dark world of cigarette smoke, cheap beer and the heavenly aroma of a busy Pittsburgh kitchen. Ordering a beer was easy: You slapped a quarter on the bar and waited for the bartender to pick it up. I ordered Schmidt's in those days. Do they still make that beer?

The precise specifications of The Wheel's Cafe's hot pastrami sandwich were as follows: firm rye bread; half a pound of shaved pastrami, good Swiss cheese, butter and a grill. Because it wasn't just a hot pastrami sandwich; It was a hot pastrami on grilled rye with melted Swiss cheese.

I explained these finer points of eating to my daughter while I cooked up two sandwiches over the stove on Saturday afternoon. I also described significant details of The Wheel Cafe, including the fact that the number of beers you would drink depended on the number of quarters you arranged in a neat pile on the bar in front of you. There was little conversation with the bartender, who looked like he had died several years earlier.

"I don't think they even make these bars anymore," I told my daughter.

She agreed. In her limited bar experience, there are plenty of places where you can find cheap beer; the establishment that sells cheap beer to wash down grilled rye heaped with hot pastrami and melted Swiss cheese is basically extinct.

The pastrami sandwiches sizzled on the stove. The Swiss cheese melted and ran onto the grilling pan. When the bread was browned on both sides, I slapped each sandwich onto a plate, cut them in half and carried them to the table.

"Want to split a beer?" I asked her.

She agreed. It would have been nice to find a Budweiser, or even an Iron City, in the refrigerator. Unfortunately, all we had was Sam Adams, which is more of a sipping beer. It would have to do. We sat at the table, and my daughter was just about to take her first bite, when I gasped: "Hold it! I forgot something!"

I trotted back to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of sour dill pickles. "You have to eat pickles with these," I explained, sitting back down at the table. Then I watched as she bit into her first pastrami sandwich. Her eyes widened.

"Wow," she said.

Was it as good as the sandwiches I used to eat, when I was her age, at The Wheel Cafe? I have a feeling my pastrami was not as pungent as The Wheel's, but it was a sandwich that opened my daughter's eyes (literally) to the glories of good bar food. Better yet, it offered an interesting hint of the big wonderful world her father had once lived in, and which is gone.

"Tell me again about this bar," she said.

And I told her again all about it, smiling inwardly at my significant achievement: I'd just found a way to entertain my grown-up child.