1245 Grinder

So the other day I’m eating a submarine sandwich. You know, the kind you can get at Subway.
Interestingly, if you pay attention to their décor, their Subway is the subterranean type. Yet the “sub” in their name derives from submarine…
In any event, I reflected that when I was growing up, we called the sandwich a grinder. No one native to the northwest seems to believe that word. I recently took the occasion to look it up for proof and the first definition in the list said “one who grinds.”
So I skipped up to the definition of grind. Was I surprised that one of those definitions defined grinding as “exotic rotation of the pelvis.”
Not the sandwich I remember.
A further definition of grinder said it was slang for a Hero sandwich. And I thought, here is an amazing sandwich indeed.
It’s basically a long roll cut lengthwise in half, loaded with sliced meats, cheeses, and produce, and it has a more names than stuffings. You have your hero. And you got your grinder. Submarine sandwich of course. Then there’s also the south’s version, the po’ boy.
Po’ boy is interesting, in that people who put it on menus now feel obliged to do the p-o-, apostrophe, then b-o-y-. When we had it for school lunches, the cafeteria lady menu writer always spelled out the “poor” that the current po’ refers to.
I’m not sure why we lost the poor part but I feel really stupid ordering one and trying to affect the New Orleans accent of the apostropheed version.
It certainly gets me P-O’d.
So there you have it, heroes and poor boys and exotic pelvi.
The perfect sandwich to take to the submarine races.
America, ya gotta love it.