Rastaphur and Johnson walked up the stairs, their long journey just . . . just kidding.

My little creative escapade of the last five weeks over, it's back to Ye Olde Humor Columne ™. And the thing that really screams out to be ridiculed this week is white trash food.

First, I suppose I'd better define what I consider to be white trash, so those of you out there deciding whether to feel offended or not can just go ahead and do it.

White trash can broadly be defined as those people who live in trailer parks and consume massive quantities of macaroni and cheese with ketchup, not out of economic necessity, but because they like it.

Now, don't let that limit you. If you have the sincere desire to be white trash, you can do it no matter where you live or what you eat. And believe me, a lot of people have that sincere desire.

But there are definitely a few food items that are closely identified with white trash. In their little food yearbooks from food high school they won "Most Likely to Be Eaten by White Trash" awards and are found at the scenes of crimes next to the assault rifle.

The first white trash food that catapults to mind is macaroni and cheese. Now, now, I understand that macaroni and cheese is a staple at any household where money is a problem, and that's fine. But when you graduate from college, it's time to let it go. Macaroni and cheese was never meant to be consumed at 18 cents a package, and I'm pretty darn sure that the Italian who invented the dish would be spinning like a drill bit if they knew what ketchup was and how it was adulterating their piece de resistance. And if you're one of those hopeless weirdoes who actually eats it out of the pan, or worse yet, standing over the sink, please send in your address so a crack team of Voice staffers can take you out of the gene pool.

White trash eating has evolved some pretty bizarre foods. Actually, "evolved" is definitely the wrong word, perhaps "inbred" is more like it. I'm talking about American Cheese. Why were we so lucky to have that particular form of cheese named after us? I view that much the same way that I view a Cafe Americain being a diluted espresso drink, an insult against us by snotty foreigners.

This stuff is only marginally cheese, it'd be better suited to heat-shielding on the space shuttle or lining septic tanks or scaring children or something.

"Ahhhhhhhhhh!!"

"What was it? What was it?"

"It was this guy, and . . . and . . . he dangled some American Cheese at me."

"My God, get this child to therapy, right away."

The fast food industry insists on placing it on everything from hamburgers to bigger hamburgers, because it's cheap, and then pretending like it's something we might actually want.

"Would you like some American Cheese on that, sir?"

"Sure, but only if you can send the manager out to personally drive the railroad spike through my forehead."

And good God, what is Velveeta?

I admit, I had a passing flirtation with Velveeta when I was younger. Occasionally, my father and I would settle down for a snack of velveeta on saltines. I'm sure for him it was out of habit from a passing decade, and for me it was blatant ignorance. But why does it keep selling so well? Don't you people realize that it isn't actually food? It's really the lining from bulletproof vests with a little hyper-activity-inducing food coloring thrown in.

And then there's fish sticks. If my mother ever tries to make me feel guilty about anything, I have this little comestible skeleton from our family closet.

"Well, Rob, you never call us anymore."

"But Mom, you made me eat fish sticks."

*muffled crying noises on the phone*

"I'm sorry, Mom, you forced me to bring out the tactical nuke."

"We were poor, son. Can you ever forgive me?"

"For everything but the fish sticks, Mom."

"Waaaahhhhhh!"

Fish sticks were only marginally ever fish. And I'm pretty sure that real fish never came in stick form.

"Today on Jacques Cousteau's 'Ocean Voyage of Never-Ending Annoyance' we'll be hunting the elusive spiny stick fish."

Breading them was just to cover up the fact that they weren't really fish, but a crime against humanity.

And speaking of crimes against humanity, there's wonder bread. The real wonder of it is that they still allow it be sold as food. Sure, I liked it as a kid, everyone did. But that wasn't because of its taste, it was because of the neat experiments you could conduct with it. A whole piece of wonder bread could be wadded into a ball approximately the size of a grape. And who gives a rat's wrinkly butt about super-absorbent paper towels when you had a sandwich made of wonder bread. It was the Bermuda Triangle of moisture-absorption. You could pour an entire carton of chocolate milk onto a sandwich made of wonder bread and not only wouldn't it be soggy, but even at gunpoint it couldn't describe moisture for you.

Speaking of absorption, I was just reminded of the stuff you sprinkle on pools of oil to dry them out which in turn reminded me of hamburger helper. What exactly is it helping? Hamburger can give us colon cancer all on its own, I don't think it needs the help of this particular "food" item. And really, while feeding our children sawdust may keep them from going to bed hungry, I'm sure it's not very healthy for them.

We all know about hot dogs, rat-parts-and-insect-droppings-per-cubic foot and all that, but I wonder how processed meat fits into the grand paradigm. I have my suspicions and I'm pretty sure it fits right next to the processed cheese spread (a giant whopping hallmark of white trash food is if it has the word "processed" on the label).

Has anyone ever bothered to figure out what's in bologna? As far as I know there aren't any bologna animals running around. And what about pimento loaf? What the hell is pimento loaf? Did they forcefeed a dachsund pimentos and then slice it up?

And the strangest lunch meat of all? Headcheese. Don't even get me started on headcheese.

Copyright © 1994 by Robert T. Bakie