Lunch of a Lifetime

Somewhere just off Interstate 15, somewhere between Barstow and the El Cajon Pass, somewhere in the deserts of Eastern California, I once had the perfect lunch.

It's hard to describe just how good that lunch was. I could say it was better than anything I've ever eaten, but that wouldn't do justice to this meal. I could say it's better than sex, but sex isn't that good a lot of the time, so just take it on faith. It was good.

Picture it. Sliced turkey piled three inches high on an onion roll, with crisp iceberg lettuce and the perfect amount of mayo. And with it, vanilla ice cream and root beer blended perfectly into what Dairy Queen menus like to call a freeze.

I had that meal three summers ago. September 4, 1990, at two in the afternoon, to be exact. I never thought that lunch could be created again.

But at Harvard, it can.

Of course, making a lunch like that takes a determination, skill and luck.

First, go to lunch early before the mayo goes bad. Then take six or seven slices of turkey. There's rarely iceberg lettuce in the sandwich bar, so pick pieces of iceberg out of the salad bowl and add them to your plate.

That gives you the turkey sandwich.

The freeze is trickier. Fill a large bowl with vanilla ice cream. Then take a cup and fill it one-third of the way with root beer. Add the ice cream slowly to the root beer, stirring as you go, until you get a thick, rich, root beer-flavored freeze.

It's free, it's fun. It's the perfect lunch.

And you don't even have to go to Barstow to get it.