The Family Angel And The Best Sandwiches Ever

Mipps had a blue four door Buick Skylark he drove everywhere. Since he had it in high school and then college with me, I still think of him with his Skylark.

One summer, we drove to Madison to apply for summer jobs. I'm not sure anymore what the true motivation was to apply for jobs in Madison, but I'm sure it was related to females. We spent the entire day filling out applications everywhere, and then jumped in the Skylark to head back to Green Bay.

About 45 minutes outside of Madison, something bad happened to the car. Dash lights went on and it lost power. We rolled along the emergency lane. Neither of us had any money at all.

Somewhere in Sun Prairie, Mipps rolled the car into a mechanic's garage. He said something was wrong with the computer, and....(that's when both of our minds shut down. THERE WAS A COMPUTER IN THE SKYLARK? HOW DID WE NOT KNOW THIS? DID IT TALK?)...it was going to cost almost $1,000.00 to fix it.

And that's in 1988 money.

Now it's 9 pm and we are starving. We haven't eaten all day. We drove about 15 mph to the closest grocery store, and pooled our money: under five bucks. So we bought a package of pastrami and a loaf of white bread and jumped back in the car to head back to Madison. We weren't sure where we were going in Madison, but it was closest.

So there we were, driving down the highway at about 30 mph, eating our sandwiches in silence. "You know what, Mipps?," I said, "these are the best sandwiches I've ever eaten."

They were.

Now it's 20 years later and one of us has escaped from Skylarks and whitebread sandwiches. But Mipps didn't forget who rode shotgun. Thanks, Mipps, for the sandwich, the Skylark, and for 20 years, being the Batiansila family's angel.