WWJDD

Jimmy Dean makes all sorts of things. Eggs and meats, breads and cheeses. Microwave safe stuff.  But Jimmy Ray Dean was a man too. He used to be a singer and an actor. He sure was handsome. Don't muck this country boy up with that deathwish lovin, non-sausage-eatin' James Dean. The dead rebel. Oh no. Jimmy was a man covered in powder and tied up in bandannas, yeah, real pretty like. He got to a ripe old age. And sometime in the twilight of his pretty-boy, Honky Tonk days, his name plumb got on up from that dollboy face of his and plopped itself down on some sausages. I mean it. Jimmy Dean became a sausage empire. A name synonymous with breakfast corndogs, with patty sandwiches, with them refrigerated, not too sweet, not too spicy, tubes of meat.



I knew Dean as a kid. We hung out in the mornings. Me unwrapping the plastic from some frozen hunk of stuff. Me rewrapping the stuff in a paper towel like an impromptu X-mas. Me shoving it in the microwave, plugging in some digits...pacing...opening the door...feeling the radiated heat of the warm blanket of paper towel, that hot and pliable give of a gummy chunk of who knows what sausage. The portion vanishing in fevered seconds, mouth juggling hot bite after hot bite. Yeah. That was breakfast ina pinch. Parents still asleep or gone. We kids, the resourceful freezer divers. JIMMY JIMMY yeah. Y'know, a name like Jimmy sure puts you at ease. You expect a Jimmy that serves you food to poison you? Not me.

Fast forward to a week ago. The house's milk has all dried up. No rote cereal for me. Got to get to work. Got to eat on the way. McDonald's is a frighteningly easy path to go down, once you do, no looking back. Something else. Need something else. QFC, grocery wandering, bound to be options. Need food. Mind unformed. Microwaves at work. Frozen aisle, help me. Answer me! Behind a glass door, the words JIMMY DEAN appear like streaky writing through the fog. Terrifying but can't look away. But but but Jimmy, there's eggs on everything. I'm already squeamish about them. And these eggs either look like circular disks from some twisted future where eggs are used as circular currency, chicken overlords etc, or just the entrails of some horrible chicken pinata sprinkled on some heinous invention not meant for this world like BREAKFAST PIZZA BURRITO PIE EGG SALAD SANDWICH.

I scramble up and down the aisles. Breakfast food, that's all I want. Maybe I should just get fruit and yogurt. Maybe I am throwing away my best years. JIMMY DEAN. The words smashing against my face, like they are banging me against their glass prison, beating a new logic into me. JIMMY DEAN has the answer. Look harder. There. Under the egg futures, there's something. Turkey(!) sausages sandwiched on cinnamon bread...no egg chunks to speak of (JIMMY DEAN taunts me with this mention of Turkey, cackling about petty distinctions between the animals. To JIMMY, all good things return to the sausage from whence they came. Titling animals merely calms his hungry brood of followers). There's only 4 of them and its like $6. But I'm flagging and I need to get to work. I slide my card, do the motions and head to the work microwave. Carrying out my childhood DEAN ritual is easy. The cinnamon juices soggy the paper towels. The sandwich burns all over, its microwaved molecules raging through the sandwich like some divine flame. For four mornings I will eat this same sandwich. I have eaten three of the four. I am delaying the inevitable. I fear that upon eating the fourth, none of you will ever see me again. Let these words then serve as a reminder of the unshakable truth that a man can sing and act, can move about this Earth with grace and beauty, can live and die and still, still be there as a name, as a cardboard box or a breakfast corndog, can be ground up sausage, waiting for you to slip and eat 'em all up. JIMMY DEAN can show you, right in your very gut, the expressway to your own sausage grinder.