Under the Venice Sun
Somewhere Over on Main, Deer…
It was a Saturday in the mid-1980s in Centerville. The town square was lined with brick storefronts and faded canvas awnings that had weathered depressions, wars, and the rise and fall of coal mining in southern Iowa. The imposing stone edifice of the Appanoose County Courthouse stood at the center, while Main Street ran north to south through it like a familiar vein.
Just a few blocks up this street from the square sat my best friend Rob's grandmother’s place—a modest single-story frame house with a wide front porch, lace curtains in the windows, and a mailbox that read “The Johnsons” in careful script.
I don't recall the exact reason we ended up there that day—perhaps Rob's parents were away for the weekend—but the directive had come down: "Go to your Grandma's for lunch." Teenage boys being teenage boys, we complied without much protest. Food was food, and his Grandma Mildred's table was always reliable.
We arrived around noon, the spring sun filtering through the maple trees along the sidewalk. Mildred greeted us at the door in her housedress and apron, her silver hair pinned neatly, her smile as warm as the kitchen smelled.
She possessed the efficiency of someone who had raised a family during leaner times, so lunch was straightforward Midwestern fare: bologna and American cheese sandwiches on Wonder Bread, with French’s mustard from the squeeze bottle, a side of potato chips (the now long-gone Iowa brand Hiland), and tall glasses of Kool-Aid—cherry, if memory serves.
Mildred was a thrifty soul, much like my own grandmother—the kind who viewed waste as a personal affront. Somewhere along the line—perhaps from a neighbor's successful hunt—she had acquired a portion of deer meat. Venison, in these parts, is not uncommon. To this day, it’s a seasonal bounty that appears in freezers across the county once deer season starts in the autumn.
Determined not to let it languish, she had transformed part of the meat into deer sausage. That alone struck Rob and me as novel. We had encountered summer sausage at holiday gatherings, sliced thin on Ritz crackers, but deer sausage? This was uncharted territory.
Then, in her relentless campaign against leftovers, Mildred decided to fashion the remaining deer sausage into—drum roll, please:
Deer sausage salad.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Deer sausage salad.
Imagine tuna salad, but subtract the tuna and substitute one hundred percent pure Bambi. Finely minced, held together with mayonnaise and chopped hard-boiled egg—and a touch of relish and diced celery added for crunch. It had a dark pinkish-to-almost-red hue of something that had once grazed peacefully in the Iowa woods and meadows.
Grandma Mildred decided two strapping teenage boys—her grandson and his obliging friend—were the perfect disposal units, so she proceeded to serve it up. With evident pride, she assembled the sandwiches: generous scoops of the sausage salad nestled between slices of soft Wonder Bread and a fresh lettuce leaf, cut diagonally—because that somehow made them fancier.
Rob eyed his plate with silent horror. He was, after all, her grandson; hurting her feelings was unthinkable. But venison repurposed twice over? This tested even familial loyalty.
He glanced at me with a mischievous grin, raised an eyebrow, and with a subtle nod toward my sandwich said, "Give it a try." It did not escape my notice that his remained untouched.
I was the guest, and Mildred was a sweet little old lady who had just fed me with genuine hospitality. Politeness dictated action. So, down the hatch.
The first bite was a revelation. The sausage carried a subtle gaminess, mellowed by the spices and the creamy binding. It was savory, surprisingly harmonious—far better than anticipated.
WOW! This is... actually pretty good! In fact... it's delicious!
I began to consume the sandwich with gusto. Rob stared at me as if I had stepped into the role of Mikey from those Life cereal commercials—the picky kid who, against all odds, devoured the bowl and prompted his brothers to exclaim, "He likes it! Hey, Mikey!" (Coincidentally, "Mikey" had been my childhood nickname, a fact Rob never let me forget.)
I enthusiastically encouraged him to try his sandwich, but he clearly suspected a Tom Sawyer-style ruse, some elaborate fence-whitewashing scheme to offload the offending sandwich onto him.
But I was genuine. When Mildred asked how I liked it, beaming expectantly, I assured her it was excellent. Encouraged, she offered seconds. Later, Rob's untouched serving found its way to my plate as well. He stared at me the whole time with a suspicious look that verged on open concern for my mental well-being. I just grinned at him with my mouth full and continued chewing contentedly.
Mildred was glowing with satisfaction. Rob, meanwhile, preserved his dignity and skepticism by continuing to work doggedly on his bologna and cheese, ignoring my entreaties for him to at least try a bite.
For years afterward, he recounted the tale to anyone who would listen: how his best friend had single-handedly consumed not one, but two Bambi salad sandwiches at Grandma Mildred's house over on Main Street.
* * *
These days, driving past similar small-town porches or spotting Wonder Bread in a grocery aisle, I sometimes find myself humming a reimagined version of Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba"—in my high school Spanish, of course:
(To the tune of "La Bamba")
Para comer La Bambi,
para comer La Bambi,
se necesita un poco de mayo...
Un poco de mayo y relish también,
¡Bambi, Bambi!
¡Bambi, Bambi!
Grandma Mildred has long since passed, and the house on Main Street has new occupants. But in that long-ago decade of the 1980s, under that Iowa springtime sun, she turned potential waste into an unlikely triumph.
And one teenage boy learned that sometimes, the strangest offerings are the ones worth trying at least once.
Sometimes twice.
