Speaking of "toast"

[Wilson Gray]

On Nov 29, 2004, at 12:34 PM, George Thompson wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Speaking of "toast"
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>
> When I was a kid, the toaster my parents had, had the heating/toasting
> elements in the center and flaps on either side.  We put the bread
> slices on the lowered flaps and closed them.  The bread toasted on one
> side, but when we opened the flaps a contrivance of wire which I do
> not now clearly remember caught the lower edge of the slice, so that
> if the flap was opened and then closed the untoasted side of the bread
> was then presented to the heat without our having to touch the bread.
> We always opened and shut the toaster, because in fact we did like
> bread toasted on both sides.
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
> "We have seen the best of our time.  Machinations, hollowness,
> treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our
> graves."  King Lear, Act 1, scene 2 (Gloucester speaking).

Yes, I, too, remember that toasting contraption. My family bought one
shortly after we moved to St. Louis. It didn't really work for us
because of our custom of buttering or, rather, oleomagarining - this
was during the war - the bread before putting it into the toasting
machine.

-Wilson Gray

>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM>
> Date: Saturday, November 27, 2004 10:45 pm
> Subject: Speaking of "toast"
>
>> When I was a child, buttered toast was made by first buttering slices
>> of "light bread" and then putting them into the broiler on a cookie
>> sheet till the butter melted and only the *top* of the bread was
>> toasted. After we moved to St. Louis, which was not nearly as Jim-Crow
>> as Marshall, TX, as a child, I often had occasion to eat a meal at the
>> houses of neighborhood white children. One of the first things
>> that I
>> noticed was that white people had bread-toasting machines that toasted
>> the bread on both sides. I also noted that no butter was put onto the
>> bread until after it was toasted.
>>
>> I came to the following conclusions:
>> 1) It was not possible to make a toasting machine that could toast
>> bread on only one side, hence both sides of a slice of bread had
>> to be
>> toasted
>> 2) Since the bread was inserted into the toasting machine on the
>> vertical, it was not possible to butter the bread before      toasting
>> it, because the melting butter would flow into the innards of machine
>> and cause a problem
>>
>> Approximately 25 years later, I had a white roommate who owned a
>> toaster-oven. One day, when it was his turn to cook, he got out a
>> cookie sheet, put some unbuttered slices bread on it and toasted the
>> bread. This struck me as somewhat strange, but I wasn't the one
>> cooking, so I didn't say anything. In any case, after the bread slices
>> had been toasted, he took the cookie sheet out of toaster and
>> proceededto flip the slices over to their untoasted sides and then
>> he put the
>> cookie sheet back into the toaster-oven. I asked, "Why are you putting
>> that toasted bread back into the oven?" He replied, as though to a
>> child, "Why, so that I can toast the other sides."
>>
>> EPIPHANY!!!
>>
>> White people don't toast bread on both sides because they can't figure
>> out a way to make a toasting machine that will toast bread on only one
>> side! They toast bread on both sides BECAUSE THEY LIKE IT THAT WAY!!!
>>
>> -Wilson Gray
>>
>