“Soup’s on,” my grandfather said from time to time.
The tin, saltine can, shouted out from the center of the table with the word “premium” in big blue letters. I hear the slight woosh from a minor vacuum release created when Gramps pried the top off the rectangular canister and pulled from within a wax paper-wrapped pillar of crackers, sealed, then revealed—unbroken.
I often didn’t get his favorite soup du jour at home, but it became my favorite. For him, it was a product boiled up in his hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire, but it had all of its roots in Quebec.
Manchester was a hub of French-Canadian enterprise, but Gramps was a Scot. Still, you are what you eat. Or, at least, you eat what is produced where you are.
Lewiston, Maine, right across the river, my birthplace simply because that’s where the hospital stood, teemed with hard-working French-Canadians working in the shoe shops that line the Androscoggin River. Most likely, their influence in the region allowed me to try the best soup I ever ate—Habitant Yellow Pea Soup. Grocers carry what the locals eat; I’ve learned that in my travels.
It didn’t hurt that there were commercials on the television touting that “You mustn’t add water to a Habitant soup,” sung to me by an English-accented actor. But there it was, in a bowl before me, with the discarded yellow can disappearing into the kitchen garbage can. It even smelled like it would taste good. Oh, it does. If you hate pea soup, I implore you to try it, but you won’t find it at the grocery store. At least, not around here.
All this happened around 1967, give or take a year or two. The taste got me because I’ve hankered for it for years. I believe the last time I ate it was with my grandfather, who has been gone from Earth since the early ’90s.
The jingle plays through my head often, and when it does, I find myself on Jones Street. I can taste the soup and hear the rustling of the wax paper holding the saltines.
I gave in to the cravings about a week ago, finding the soup still produced in Canada and available online. I needed the fix.
Soup has been on my menu here at Chez Timmay a lot this winter. Soup lunches have facilitated my losing weight, equivalent to six bags of sugar (the bigger ones, not those on the counter at HoJos). And no, I don’t skip the Premium saltines—a man’s gotta live, you know.
Whenever I open a can of soup, various kinds from Cambell’s to Progressive, I wish it was Habitant. I hear that Englishman singing, probably an ode to the popular at the time, “My Fair Lady.” That’s what the ad-men from Mad Men would have done; I watched the series, sometimes with soup.
I scoured the Internet, found my soup, and ordered a case. The only issue is that the cans (28 ounces) were designed for families more extensive than the ones I feed. However, I own Tupperware. Day-old canned soup like this is still worthy of table fare.
Well, my ship came in this week. Yesterday, around lunchtime, I sacked in a box of soup. I picked it up at the post office, watching my favorite postal worker haul it from a top shelf since they don’t deliver directly to my house.
That’s a whole other story, but I should say that I don’t have a postal box because of the number of times that the State of Maine snowplows knocked it so far back into the alder bushes that, one year, I just went out to buy a new one at the Home Depot, gathering up the old one later in the spring. I’m not complaining; those trucks are hard to drive without a bit of damage on the roadside.
Mailboxes tossed one hundred yards into the woods are great reminders to look both ways when crossing the road.
I digress.
Not only did I most likely damage the rotator cuffs of my favorite mail person, but the Significant One was alarmed that I needed that much soup.
“Honey, buying in bulk is the only way to get value. Do you want a bowl of soup? The cans are huge.”
Here’s the bottom line: the soup tastes precisely the same as it did with my grandfather. How often does that happen in this little stint on terra firma that we call life?
I will have more today, and I am afraid, for all the shippers and postal workers, that I will order more. The flavor is fantastic, and within that can comes a lot more than savory, smoky Canadian yellow pea soup—especially if you don’t add water, for you mustn’t, as I often hear in the jingle running through my head since the mid-60s.
From the Jagged Edge of these great United States, I remain,
TC
“Soup’s On!”
*Thanks to all my BuyMeACoffee Supporters. You keep the soup on around here. I appreciate all of you. Thanks for reading the stuff. tc