Years ago my father used to go down to the Seattle waterfront and buy a couple of tuna fresh off the boat. Big damned fish! Then all that weekend, people going by our house would hold their noses and run, because my mother and father were busy cutting up the tuna, packing it into pint Mason jars, and doing the pressure cooker thing. We would also have a few tuna steaks.

Then, any time during the coming year, my mother would take a pint jar of tuna out of the storage cupboard in a cool corner of our basement, mince it up, add a little mayo, minced celery and sweet pickle, and voila! Tuna salad! We'd pack tuna salad about three-quarters of an inch thick between a couple slices of bread.

This was not like the tuna (consistency of moist sawdust) that you get out of the little cans you buy in the grocery store. This was. . .   This was. . . .

I'm overcome by emotion. And hunger. I just realized it's lunchtime here. And (sigh) no tuna. I'll have to rummage around in the fridge and see what I can find.

I grew up on tuna salad sandwiches.

Don Firth