Debra Thomas Burhans

The Mayonnaise Museum

One of my finest ideas came to me in a dream. It was apparently remarkable enough that my older daughter, now nearly 14 and back then around 5, still remembers it. In fact, it probably will require many expensive years of therapy to excise this image from her mind. I dreamed that I had a Mayonnaise Museum. The Mayonnaise Museum was located in Ohio. Somehow it does seem fitting. Now, don't take offence, I do like Ohio, however, growing up in Ann Arbor does engender a certain animosity for the Buckeye State. Yes, I dare not mention some of the ubiquitous bumper stickers referring to Ohio denizens in derogotory ways. While not specified in the dream, I suspect the museum was located in the vicinity of the World's Largest Easter Basket. But I digress. My museum was in an old farmouse, undoubtably on the National Historic Register. Inside the walls were lined with shelves, and on them rested rows and rows of jars of mayonnaise. One hopes they were previously unopened. In keeping with the true religion of mayonnaise, not a single jar of pseudo mayonnaise, which bears the moniker "salad dressing" or "miracle whip", could be found. Let's face it, the world really is divided into the mayonnaise sorts of people and the salad dressing sorts of people, and we all know which are superior. It isn't called real for nothing. Most importantly, I had just received a donation of a jar of mayo from Bush the Elder, who, in an unexpected act of great intelligence, decided his personal mayonnaise ought to be preserved for posterity. Perhaps the Bush I Presidential Library was not particularly excited at the prospect of the presidential mayonnaise (no talking! no food!) On the other hand, I'm not even sure of the existence of such a library. Maybe instead there is a little collection of fishing poles and mackinaw jackets up in Maine somewhere. Oops, wasn't he from Texas? Still, when it comes to historic mayonnaise, all states are created equal (except, perhaps, Ohio). Anyway, the memory of the Mayonnaise Museum popped into my head yesterday as I was reading a story in the New Yorker about Allen Ginsberg's jars of soup. Yes, two jars of the last soup Ginsberg concocted, just a couple hours before his death, remained in the deep freeze in his Village loft until recently, when a power outage required hasty removal (via taxi) to an apartment on the Upper West Side. They are planning on putting the soup on permanent display in a museum in LA that goes in for odd sorts of things. Even they have probably never devoted a museum section to mayonnaise, which I suspect is due to the lack of challenge related to displaying unopened mayonnaise jars. And by the way, if you are short on interesting factoids with which to amaze your friends, I definitely recommend a New Yorker subscription, or at least a visit to my museum. In the New Yorker you can learn about things like Ginsberg's last soup and how to understand, and subsequently bandy about, phrases like "Tribeca" and "Village". Meanwhile, I have to get back to the Mayonnaise Museum (via Soho.)