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If you're having people over to sit outside and enjoy the fruits of freedom from British rule and the establishment of constitutional principles, you'll need some potato chips.
If it weren't for our forefathers, we'd be calling them crisps, you know. Washington slew 40 men with the jawbone of an ass at Valley Forge so we could call them chips!
At the store the other day, I saw two new seasonal potato chips. One was "SUMMER BLT." In smaller print: "flavored." Well, yes, I figured as much. When you think about it, an actual BLT is BLT-flavored. What's the difference between a summer BLT and a fall BLT? I have no idea. I don't know what summer bacon is, either. And I'd really like to meet the chemists who managed to re-create iceberg lettuce flavor. They're probably haggard from the work, recovering on a long vacation in Mexico somewhere, sitting at a bar on the beach, talking to anyone who'd listen:
"Make it lettuce-flavored, they said. Lettuce-flavored. We were scientists, OK, full of confidence, and thought, sure, why not? We spent six months trying to re-create the flavor of green water that's hard, but also limp. Hard green limp water. It's like trying to make something wind-flavored."
No, they went with "summer" because it reminds people how the cool snap of the tomato and lettuce pairs well with a summer lunch. So I'm guessing it's bacon dust and desiccated tomato atoms.
The other flavor was CHILI MANGO. Ergo, spicy and sweet, all at once. Sounded great. I put a bag in my cart, along with Summer BLT. Then I saw the dreaded word:
Limited.
This means they would go away. One day the first leaf would turn brown; the last cicada would fall silent; the school bus would rumble past the house, and the grocery store managers would gather up the bags of summer flavors from the aisles. Perhaps they would be replaced with BURNT ACORN or FALL GRILLED CHEESE chips. Summer's flavors would be but a memory, never to be experienced again.
I put the bags back on the shelf.
If I liked either flavor, it would be overshadowed by the idea that it would cease to exist, soon. When you're young, you can form fleeting attachments and enjoy the moment with no thought for the end. But the older you get, the more the inevitable end of things overshadows the Dionysian revels of the moment, and you imagine yourself standing in the potato chip aisle, looking for Chile Mango, realizing it's gone for good, like so many other things. The world seems a bit more empty, the store of things lost exceeding the store of things that survived.
A bitterness wells up in your heart: They can make Captain Crunch Crunchberries year after gol-durned year, but they can't let a man enjoy his unusual seasonal flavors.
"Can I help you?" the clerk asks.
"Just thinking about Summer BLT."
"Was she someone special you used to know?"
"You could say that, son. You could say that."
(P.S. I actually did buy a bag. They're OK. And you can really taste the lettuce.)
james.lileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 • Twitter: @Lileks • facebook.com/james.lileks
