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It all began innocently enough on the upper deck of our social club one warm summer night a year ago. My wife, Fran, was engaged in a conversation about mayonnaise with a couple of her southern friends. If you are thinking mayo is a strange subject for a conversation, you have not been to our outdoor swim-social club.
For instance, one evening, the conversation at our table consisted of reminiscing about that night years ago when one very liberal lady decided that the other women at the club needed to see firsthand what pornographic films were all about. She brought a copy of Marilyn Chambers “Behind The Green Door” to the club and had it projected onto a blank wall on the upper deck, which is, by the way, for adults only. The only problem was that as Chambers got “busy,” the movie could be seen on the street below. After traffic was backed up for blocks by curiosity seekers driving by, the police came and explained that the club’s lesson in ’70s porno had come to an end. Anyway, I digress, back to the mayo.
Our friends, one from Kentucky and the other from North Carolina, were lovingly looking back at their days in the South when Duke’s Mayo ruled and Hellmann’s mayonnaise was a dirty word. Flash forward to a month ago when my wife and I visited Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga. Fran decided that it would be a cute idea to bring back a couple of jars of Duke’s Mayo for our friends. It should be noted that neither Fran nor I have ever tasted Duke’s Mayo. In fact, with our being Italian and from South Philadelphia, mayo is not at the top of our list of condiments. In our circle of friends, someone ordering mayo instead of oil on a hoagie is considered reason enough to report him or her to the NSA as possible subversives.
Our quest to find Duke’s Mayo did not prove as easy as we thought. We spent the better part of four days in Charleston trying to find the stuff and couldn’t find any evidence that Duke’s even existed. Fran mentioned our frustration to the bartender at our hotel who suggested that we were searching for Duke’s in gourmet food stores when in reality, it was the choice of the working class and could readily be found in any plain old grocery store.
We were headed for Savannah the next morning. Our driver “Jeep” (I’m not sure whether he was named after the brand of automobile he was driving or if the whole thing was just a happy coincidence) suggested that we stop on our way at a family grocery store where he was certain we could find Duke’s (by this time, I was getting a bit frustrated and was thinking about getting a jar of Hellmann’s back home and changing the name on the label).
The Family Grocery store is a chain that has taken over some of the local Piggly Wigglys, a fact that has raised the ire of the proud locals in the area, some of whom refuse to shop at Family. Hampered not by local pride, Fran ran into the grocery store and moments later came out with two 32-ounce jars of Duke’s Mayo. I think the guy in Family saw her coming and claimed that it was the only size of Duke’s on his shelf.
A word is in order about the origins of Duke’s Mayo. Sometime in Greenville, S.C. in 1917, a southern gentlewoman by the name of Eugenia created Duke’s Mayo from a family recipe. I had an aunt by the name of Eugenia and though we never called Aunt Jenny by that name, I felt a sudden connection with Duke’s. A supposedly objective food critic on Duke’s Website claims that their mayo is more acidic and therefore is a more zesty complement to sandwiches. The company also claims that they use more egg yolks than their competitors, and unlike the competition, never adds sugar to their ingredients. Why, Duke’s is practically considered a health food down South (that’s my own observation).
As Fran packed our suitcases for our departure home (I usually assume a position of casual indifference during this process), she realized that two 32-ounce jars of Duke’s were not going to fit into our suitcases. We would have to put the mayo in our carry-on bags, divided equally between the two of us. I am not ashamed to admit that as we lugged our carry-ons toward airport security, I uttered a few profanities not usually associated with Duke’s.
Being over 75, I no longer have to remove my shoes at airport security, a fact about which I have distinctly mixed feelings. We separated to have our carry-ons checked. I heard the warning signal go off where my wife stood perplexed at the same time the signal went off and stopped me from going through. Search of our bags revealed Duke’s Mayo as the culprit (apparently someone can hide a bomb in this stuff). We watched forlornly as the mayo was confiscated like a kilo of heroin.
It was later when we were back home that I discovered one can order Duke’s Mayo online at Amazon with free shipping, courtesy of our Prime membership. The wonder of technology.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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