On Taking a Day and Ham Sandwiches

This conversation has come up in our household several times over the years, and it did again during dinner with friends Saturday night: Which public figure (someone with whom you have no personal ties) would you need to “take a day” upon their death. Not necessarily go back to bed and hide from the world but do the bare minimum and spend a great deal of time watching video about the person, commiserating with others about the loss, re-experiencing their greatest work. My list is fairly short — Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Brian Wilson, Barack Obama, and Michelle Obama are the names that leap to mind — but I acknowledge that I might be unaware of how much another loss might affect me. I was really shaken when Chadwick Boseman died, and I wouldn’t have anticipated that in advance. Same with Prince.

Since early 2022, the “take a day” conversation always leads me to think of Gary Brooker. If you don’t recognize the name, Gary Brooker was the lead singer, keyboard player, and chief songwriter for the band Procol Harum. If you don’t recognize that name, you certainly recognize their most famous hit, “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” The song was a world-opener for me. As you might have guessed from the names above, I’m a very big rock music fan. However, when I was growing up, rock was a guitar medium, and I was a keyboard guy. Then along came this song, with its gorgeous organ lead, that celebrated the keyboard in the rock world. I can’t overstate how transformative that was for me. I embraced Procol Harum’s music and celebrated Gary Brooker’s success through numerous hit albums.

I didn’t take a day when Gary Brooker died on February 19, 2022, but I did think about him a lot that day and the days that followed, and Procol Harum’s music was in heavy rotation for about a week afterward. This wasn’t like when Prince died — I never believed that Gary Brooker was one of the greatest rock musicians of all time. But his work had spoken directly to me in a way that was more meaningful than virtually any other artist, even those whose cultural impact was considerably greater.

I think there’s a message in here for all of us with creative leanings. Maybe we want to believe that what we’re creating will have global import, that we’ll touch a huge audience of people in a profound and sustainable way. But if that sort of thing isn’t in the cards for us (and, really, it’s only in the cards for the tiniest fraction of us), if we’re creating at our most honest and most dedicated way, there’s the possibility that we’ll be Gary Brooker to a whole bunch of people, that what we have to say will resonate deep within them.

This, in the most roundabout possible way, makes me think of ham sandwiches. When I was growing up, we didn’t go out to eat terribly often. My parents were both excellent cooks, so we ate very well at home, and we were operating on a limited budget. One summer day when I was eight, though, my mother let me walk with some of my friends to the deli just beyond our neighborhood to get a picnic lunch. I think this might have been the first time I’d ever ordered food for myself, and I was a bit overwhelmed by the available selections. I settled on a ham sandwich on a hard roll with brown mustard and lettuce.

“You want cheese with that?” said the guy taking my order.

This was perplexing. I hadn’t considered the possibility. “Do I?”

The man behind the counter leaned toward me conspiratorially. “I’ll give you the good Swiss. You’ll love it.”

I agreed, and he made my sandwich. It was easily the best sandwich I’d ever eaten. The roll had the right amount of crunch. The mustard was spicy, but not so spicy that my eight-year-old tastebuds protested. There was at least twice as much ham between the bread than I’d ever had in a sandwich before. And the Swiss? At that point in my life, I couldn’t have distinguished the “good Swiss” from the average, but it imparted just enough funk to make the sandwich unforgettable. I can still call the taste to mind today.

How does this relate to Gary Brooker? I think it has to do with dedication to one’s craft. The sandwich guy probably made a dozen ham sandwiches that day. He probably even made a couple with mayo, even though he was probably cringing while he did so. But I’m convinced he didn’t take the creation of a single one of those sandwiches casually. Somewhere in his soul, he knew that there was a chance he was going to generate a lasting memory with one of those sandwiches, and he took that responsibility seriously. No one would ever confuse the sandwich guy with Thomas Keller, just as no one ever confused Gary Brooker with Prince or Paul McCartney or Bruce Springsteen or Brian Wilson. But these artists gave us their best work in their most honest way, and some of us were permanently changed for the better.

As a creator, that sounds like a great consolation prize.