RICH: Fried boloney sandwiches

Published 9:15 am Sunday, July 21, 2024

It happened in Kentucky a while back. Perhaps 13 years. The name of the small town in which we had stopped, escapes me completely, but that matters not to the story.

I was on a three-day, three-town speaking tour with Kentucky’s first female governor, Martha Layne Collins. We were being driven from Owensboro to Lexington by corporate executives. We sat in the back seat and I listened, enthralled, as she pointed out landmarks, making historical comments. As we drove through one tiny town, she said softly, “This is Christian County. It’s ‘wet.’ But Bourbon County is ‘dry.’” (It’s now ‘wet’.) 

In Lexington, she and I gazed at an enormous statue of Man of War, one of Kentucky’s most famed race horses. 

“Lime runs in our rivers and it is said that’s why our racehorses run faster. The lime.” 

She shrugged. 

“That’s what they say.”

Another legend: Kentucky distillers spelled whisky, without an “e” to pay homage to the abbreviation of Kentucky, Ky. There’s dispute to that one.

“George Y. Brown,” she once said, looking upon the town of Harlan. “He was brilliant. He talked Col. Sanders into selling Kentucky Fried Chicken. Then he franchised it across the nation. One of his best contributions to the governor’s office was his wife, Phyllis George (a former Miss America). She turned Kentucky’s folk painters and crafters into respected artists and took them across America.”

I will always be grateful for the lunch stop in a now-forgotten town. It was at a Cracker Barrel. As we waited for a table, we browsed through its wonderful store where the governor stopped at a display. “Look at this.” She held up the smallest cast iron skillet I’d ever seen, about five inches around. 

I was awed. 

“It’s perfect for fryin’ boloney.”

She laughed lightly. 

“I was thinking the same thing.”

I bought that skillet — which is not only terrific for frying boloney but also for making small cakes of cornbread.

It brings back this precious memory which smothers my memory whenever I fry boloney (and melt cheese on it).

One night, I was using that little pan to fry boloney when a friend called. When he learned what I was doing, he asked, with a craving in his voice, “When you fry boloney and it domes up, do you cut the edges so you can flatten it and fry the center?”

This is the No. 1 question that boloney fryers ask each other.

“Absolutely. And I melt cheese on mine, too.”

He sighed. 

“I do, too.” He waited a bit. “Are you’re making it on white bread?”

I laughed. “Of course.”

“Well, if you’re gonna have fried boloney, go all the way and have white bread and plenty of mayonnaise.” 

The irony was that both of us were dedicated to eating well and working out five days a week. But even the fittest deserve to cheat now and then — especially when it comes to fried boloney sandwiches cooked up in the most perfect iron skillet from a small town in Kentucky. It continues to be one of my favorite frying pans.

My friend, who salivated over the fried boloney sandwich, exercised hard two hours daily — one hour during lunch at his company’s gym, then, another hour following work. He was lean but incredibly fit with muscular legs and arms.

The doctors later said that’s why he lived so long: his incredible body. 

“Three weeks,” they had said when they found the pancreatic cancer. He showed them and carried on for more than 18 months.

It was in the midst of that hard fight that he talked longingly about the fried boloney sandwich. 

“I wish I had boloney right now,” he said.

Three weeks before his earthly time ended, I spent the day with him. Alone. 

“Is there anything I can get you?” I smiled and winked. “I brought boloney and white bread.”

He grinned. “Maybe later.”

Later, though, never came. 

—Ronda Rich is the best-selling author of “St. Simons Island: A Stella Bankwell Mystery.” Visit www.rondarich.com to sign up for her free newsletter.