Po-boys gone by

[TAPrice]

In honor of the Po-Boy Festival this Saturday (see this eGullet Calendar entry for more info), let's talk about great (and not so great) po-boys that are no longer with us.

Let's here those memories...

[HungryC]

Griddled ham & american cheese from the original incarnation of Parkway Bakery, when the old dude behind the counter wore a dirty apron & grease strings 3' long hung from the outside of the kitchen exhaust fan.

Cheap deli cold cuts on slightly stale bread from the Com-Pak Food Store (aka Young's/Jung's) on the riverside corner of Magazine & Walnut streets. The whole building fell down in Katrina; now it's just an empty lot.

And, the incomparable roast beef poboys from George's in Larose, LA.

[RAHiggins1]

My friends who are from New Orleans, but have lived here in Atlanta for the last 15 years always used to stop at Danny and Clyde's in slidell on their way back and pick up Poboys and muffalettas. They closed the kitchen in that one after the storm.

I was just down there and picked up some tasty ones at Peck's on Gauze Blvd. just off I-10.

Edited November 15, 2007 by RAHiggins1 (log)

[saturnbar]

I was always a big fan of Streetcar Sandwiches or was it Poboys on Carrollton. Excellent shrimp and oyster poboys and the peacemaker, a combination of the two, with bacon and remoulade was a killer. Unlike many of the other local shops they also did a good Italian sub and a number of other inventive subs which I can't really remeber. They always had lots of business, and I could never figure out why they closed. ch

[HungryC]

I was always a big fan of Streetcar Sandwiches or was it Poboys on Carrollton.  Excellent shrimp and oyster poboys and the peacemaker, a combination of the two, with bacon and remoulade was a killer.  Unlike many of the other local shops they also did a good Italian sub and a number of other inventive subs which I can't really remeber. They always had lots of business, and I could never figure out why they closed.  ch

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I wonder about SS, too. I used to work on Earhart, and SS was our standard takeout lunch. Good salads, too (we used to get the chicken/walnut/greens all the time for meetings). It had consistently good food. Did the original ownership sell out or what? I know that it changed hands, the menu changed, and quality went downhill. This would have been '95--'97 or so.

[TAPrice]

Help me out with this one. Here is what Craig Claiborne says about po-boys in the recently reissued Southern Cooking (an amazing book, by the way):

If I liked the New Orleans oyster loaf, I had an almost equal fondness for a po' boy sandwich. That is dialect, of course, for "poor boy." It consists of assorted salamis and cheese plus pepperoncini, lettuce, and other good things served on an open sandwich, the filling to be doused with olive oil and vinegar according to taste. Other places use other names such as "heroes" or "submarines," but they are to my mind inferior to the New Orleans original.

This raises so many questions. First, did people used to eat po-boys like this? (Cold cuts are still around, but not as common. The oil and vinegar dressing seems out of step with current practice). Maybe he's just wrong.

Second, he talks about Oyster loafs as something different from po-boys. Was there a strong distinction at some point? Did people order shrimp loafs or catfish loafs instead of shrimp po-boys and catfish po-boys?

Finally, did these sandwiches on French loafs really originate in New Orleans?

Claiborne was a very learned man. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy to get things wrong. This book was written in the late 1980s, near the end of Claiborne's life.

[HungryC]

As far as I can tell (and yes, I'm the sort who actually researches such things):

--the oyster loaf is/was physically different from the "poboy". A true oyster loaf could be on pan bread (a la Casamento's) or on french bread (like the original College Inn's sandwich), but it has a few distinguishing characteristics....1)some of the bread's soft insides were removed to increase the oyster-holding capacity of the bread; 2)oyster loaves usually feature buttered, toasted bread. With all due respect to Claiborne, he's conflating the muffelatta and the po-boy. The oil/vinegar dressing is far more common to the subs/heroes of the Northeast.

A good, fairly early academic work on the poboy/poor boy is by Hennig Cohen, in the journal American Speech from 1950...available on JSTOR, here's the stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1283...%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N The author cites cognate sandwiches in Tampa and Puerto Rico, though known by other names. In addition, he/she cites a 1931 city directory listing for a "Po-Boy Sandwich Shop" which, for me, ends the great poboy/poorboy debate once and for all--it's clear that the "R" fell off of "poor" quite early on.

Another good, early work on sandwiches also from American Speech is "The Submarine Sandwich: Lexical Variations in a Cultural Context" which sounds boring but isn't (also available via JSTOR). In Eames & Robboy surveyed telephone directory advertising in 100 American cities for the period 1938-1946, recording the terminology use for sandwiches. Submarine ranks #1, hoagie #2, and (surprise!) poor boy is #3. It ranked ahead of grinder, torpedo, hero, etc. Some of the places where the term cropped up include Houston, Memphis, Mobile, Montgomery, Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Sacramento, Peoria, and most surprisingly, Billings, MT. The geographer in me sees ready connections (direct rail links to NOLA) for most of those cities, but Billings has me stumped. At some point, I'm gonna track down that Billings city directory and see if I can figure out a NOLA connection!

In Rome last month, I saw signs outside cheap sandwich shops/coffee bars advertising "porto ricos"--clearly a poboy cousin, on a short, tapered, light loaf, made with various cold cuts and dressed with lettuce & tomatoes. I just wish my Italian was good enough to have explored the "puerto rico" connection.

Incidentally, I'm teaching a course this spring at Tulane's School of Continuing Studies on "Food & Culture in Louisiana", if anyone's interested (LOUS 303)...Tuesdays from 5:45 to 8:25. We're devoting one entire class session to the poboy. PM me for details, if you're interested.

[TAPrice]

Celeste,

Thanks for the fascinating references. (I also quickly found Cohen's "The Terminology of Mardi Gras." That looks like good reading as well.)

I agree about Claiborne. My first reaction was that he'd mixed up the muffaletta and the po-boy. He's strikes me as a man who's rarely wrong, though, so I didn't dismiss his description lightly. Certainly Claiborne spent time in New Orleans, although perhaps a young, gay man from Mississippi in this city was distracted by matters beyond food.

I don't know if the earlier reference to "po-boy" actually ends the whole "poor boy" vs. "po-boy" controversy. As many people know, Tom Fitzmorris is very dismissive of anyone who says "po-boy." He's not alone. I can think of at least one other distinguished authority who thinks writing "po-boy" is a sign that someone is an outsider. My reaction is, well, let me walked down the street and tell Dot Domilise that she's got it wrong.

It seems, though, that at some point the use of "poor boy" vs. "po-boy" must have been either a social marker or a marker of outsider/insider status. Clearly it's not today. I wonder, though, how much of a social marker it could have been and at what point did eating po-boys becomes a activity shared by all (or at least most) classes?

To me this is similar to the way people dismiss anyone who writes BBQ instead of barbecue. That seems to be an affliction of the connoisseur class of barbecuers, although it seems the real pit masters have no problems spelling the word in any number of shorter versions.

[HungryC]

It seems, though, that at some point the use of "poor boy" vs. "po-boy" must have been either a social marker or a marker of outsider/insider status. Clearly it's not today. I wonder, though, how much of a social marker it could have been and at what point did eating po-boys becomes a activity shared by all (or at least most) classes?

To me this is similar to the way people dismiss anyone who writes BBQ instead of barbecue. That seems to be an affliction of the connoisseur class of barbecuers, although it seems the real pit masters have no problems spelling the word in any number of shorter versions.

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I think that the missing "R" has been imbued with far too much meaning. Local dialect leaves the final consonant off many words; such clipping doesn't signify much in the way of class or educational level or even (contemporary) ethnicity. Moving into the realm of the completely speculative, I'd wager that the "r" disappears from the spelling because it was rarely voiced in common useage among the hordes of native Romance language speakers of NOLA...consider all the different sounds of rhotic consonants in italian, spanish, french, and english...all still common languages in the streets of NOLA in 1921 when the Martin brothers (french speaking, acadian descendants, natives of Bayou Lafourche) apparently coined the term.

[TAPrice]

I think that the missing "R" has been imbued with far too much meaning.

I think the meaning imputed to the missing 'r' is silly, but people I take seriously believe that it means something (and no, I'm not talking about Fitzmorris here). I don't believe the current generation places any value on the distinction (or is any aware that it's a meaningful distinction), but that may not have been true for an older generation.

Local dialect leaves the final consonant off many words; such clipping doesn't signify much in the way of class or educational level or even (contemporary) ethnicity.  Moving into the realm of the completely speculative, I'd wager that the "r" disappears from the spelling because it was rarely voiced in common useage among the hordes of native Romance language speakers of NOLA...consider all the different sounds of rhotic consonants in italian, spanish, french, and english...all still common languages in the streets of NOLA in 1921 when the Martin brothers (french speaking, acadian descendants, natives of Bayou Lafourche) apparently coined the term.

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Here is what I don't get. The streetcar strike was actually in 1929, right? Here is the po-boy history from the recent festival written by a local historian. I agree that dropping the final consonant is a common feature of local dialect. But does it seem odd that in 1929 the Martin Brothers would coin the term "poor boy" and by 1931 it had become so common and widely spoken that the written form had evolved to "po-boy" (or po boi)? I'm no linguist, but that strikes me as unlikely. It makes me question the 1929 origin of the term.

(On a slightly related topic, I think the transition from "snowball" to "sno ball" happened for very different reasons.)

[HungryC]

I thought that the term was coined during the 1922 streetcar strike? The 1929 strike was a particularly violent one, but I've read/heard from various independent sources that it was the 1922 strike...frankly, someone needs to do a thorough examination of the topic, 'cause a whole lotta hearsay is being circulated under the guise of history (perpetrated by various parties). September 1922, to be precise.

Edited November 21, 2007 by HungryC (log)

[TAPrice]

I thought that the term was coined during the 1922 streetcar strike?  The 1929 strike was a particularly violent one, but I've read/heard from various independent sources that it was the 1922 strike...

I'd love to get those sources.

frankly, someone needs to do a thorough examination of the topic, 'cause a whole lotta hearsay is being circulated under the guise of history (perpetrated by various parties).

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Is that a challenge? I'd take you up on that one.

My bullshit detector goes off every time I read that the Martin Brothers invented the sandwich and the name.

I think part of the problem is that much food history is written by food writers, many of whom are trained neither as journalists nor scholars. Without the background in journalism or scholarship, they're not skeptical enough of their sources. Also, writers tend to like a good story, when they should really distrust every good story.

[saturnbar]

someone needs to do a thorough examination of the topic, 'cause a whole lotta hearsay is being circulated under the guise of history (perpetrated by various parties).

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I agree. While the Martin Brothers may have been the first to officially use the phrase in adevertising, I can't believe that the phrase wasn't in common usage before that. I had heard, where I know not, that expresion evolved from the inexpensive sandwiches that were sold to londshoreman and stevedore's working on the docks by various vendors. ch

[TAPrice]

someone needs to do a thorough examination of the topic, 'cause a whole lotta hearsay is being circulated under the guise of history (perpetrated by various parties).

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I agree. While the Martin Brothers may have been the first to officially use the phrase in adevertising, I can't believe that the phrase wasn't in common usage before that. I had heard, where I know not, that expresion evolved from the inexpensive sandwiches that were sold to londshoreman and stevedore's working on the docks by various vendors. ch

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SaturnBar,

I'm with you. It sure seems more likely that it was a widely used term (not that the most likely scenario is always true, but...).

Here's a question: Did the Martin Brothers advertise "poor boys" or "poor boy sandwiches"? If they truly coined the phrase, I would suspect that initially they would sell "poor boy sandwiches."

Edited November 21, 2007 by TAPrice (log)

[saturnbar]

If they truly coined the phrase, I would suspect that initially they would sell "poor boy sandwiches."

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Good point. I wish I could recall where I heard about the suspected origins of the phrase. I want to say it on WYES some time ago. Charlie

[HungryC]

I've seen photos of the Martin bros place on St. Claude, but I don't seem to remember any display advertising with one spelling or the other in the photo. The earlier work I cited quotes "po boy" and "poor boy" spellings in city directories as early as 1931...sounds like a trip to the Jones Hall archives are in order. Mmm, I can smell the dust burning on the microfilm machine's lamp already...and that scent memory reminds me that the New Orleans Public Library's wonderful LA collection has an entire vertical file on "po-boy"....need to go down there and poke around in it, too.