My First Can of Pork & Beans

"Memories are bubbles that never pop."  Jerry Seinfeld.


In the fall of 1970 I went to live with strangers in a foreign climate. The cumulative realization that I had left the only home I had ever known to gamble my life on a deep-seated whim fell on me one Sunday morning as I was wondering how I was going to eat for the coming week:

I am in Venice, Florida, in an apartment I share with 3 other men at the Venice Villas. A soupy canal runs behind the Villas into the Gulf of Mexico. An alligator in it eats dogs, including the poodle owned by Ruby -- who manages the Venice Villas from her golf cart with a combination of Southern hospitality, suspicion, and gin.

I am from Minnesota, attending the Ringling Clown College. I am 17.

And that Sunday morning I squeeze the tears of anxiety and remorse out of my eyes so I can find someone to tell me what to do with a can of Van Camp's pork and beans. I have nothing else to eat for the rest of the week. I have never opened a can of food before. Not even dog food.

I meet one of my roommates, Phil, on the nearby beach. He tells me to empty the can into a pot, add some ketchup and mustard, heat it up, and eat it with bread and butter.

"No finah meal" he tells me, in his Tennessee drawl.

Phil is a professional ballet dancer. He's tall, and thin to the point of gauntness. He moves with a fluid assurance in pantomime class. He chooses a simple Pierrot white face makeup. I hate him.

I hate all my roommates, and most of my fellow students. They are older, college-wise, and filled with theatrical attainments and ambition. They talk passionately about Vietnam and sex, and they make fun of me because I pick my nose.

And, after I eat my pork and beans, I will have nothing left to eat.

I have money when I come to the Clown College. There is no tuition, but Ruby needs cash for the 8 weeks I'm staying at the Villas. Then I buy makeup, material for clown costumes, clown shoes made of real leather, and rent a bicycle. I buy smoked turkey legs and potato salad at the Winn-Dixie.

What's a budget? I'm rich, with my five hundred dollars that comes from an insurance policy my mother bought when I was born, and cashed in for me when I turned 17.

But now the money's gone and there's still 3 weeks of school to go.

I pour the beans in the pot, stir in half a bottle of Heinz ketchup and most of a bottle of French's mustard. The contents of the pot take on an unhealthy brown appearance. When little bubbles rise to the surface and go 'bloop' I take it off the stove and scrape it into a bowl. I steal bread and butter from my roommates, blushing as I do so although no one else is around. I draw a glass of tap water.

Everyone is down on the beach this Sunday morning. Except me. It's too raucous. A body of water, to me, should be a quiet lake with the scent of pine needles and the sound of mosquitoes whining in the cattails. Water should be a still life. This vast ocean roaring near my door, with gulls screaming and the taint of rotted fish and seaweed, seems crude and threatening.

I was taught to be cautious of loud smelly things.

The pork and beans are inedible. I spit them back into the bowl, then eat the bread and butter.

Disconsolate, I turn on the TV. There's an Abbott and Costello movie playing.

"Ah, this will cheer me up!" I tell myself brightly. But it doesn't. It's one of their later, tired, efforts; almost as indigestible as my pork and beans. I continue watching it, too drained of hope to move.

There is a flimsy knock at the screen door. It's Alice, one of the younger students, like me. Just out of high school. Like me. She doesn't talk about theater or sex. She wants me to come over to help her eat a quiche Lorraine she's made. I don't know what that is, but I'm happy to find out. At her place she lets me talk about anything I want without interruption. Because she doesn't know any more than I do. Is it love, I wonder, to find out that you like somebody?

Suddenly I'm so happy I want to kiss her. But instead I ask for a glass of milk. And she gives it to me, telling me there's nothing better than an ice cold glass of milk. This is better than love -- this is homogenized friendship.

Then her roommates come back from the beach, with a cooler full of fruit and seafood salad. Why don't I stick around and have some with them? Okay, sure.

When I return that evening, full of good food and girl talk, my roommates are eating pizza. Do I want a slice? I want. I wish I were a chipmunk, so I could stuff the cheese and pepperoni into my cheek pouches for later.

For the next 3 weeks there's always food around. From Alice. From my roommates. Ruby brings me oranges on her golf cart. Because, she says, I look kinda scrawny. On my birthday I get 3 different cakes.

How could I not notice all this food around me, and all the people who want to share it? And then my mother sends me twenty dollars. I spend half of it on the biggest bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken I can carry, and pass it out to anybody who wants a piece at the Venice Villas.

So I finally get it.

The people who say there's no such thing as a free lunch are full of crap.