Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge

top-secret ingredient measuring laboratories costing millions of dollars, so that
every omelet received exactly the most efficient amount of ingredients to
guarantee that our taxpayers were not being overcharged, but that our boys in
uniform still received the nutritious portion of eggs, sausage, ham, and cheese
required to defend our country from the communist hordes.
It was late in the morning, and there was no one I knew from the
Comm Squadron in the chow hall, so I picked an unoccupied table in the corner
and sat down to read propaganda in the Stars & Stripes newspaper and enjoy a
late Saturday morning breakfast. A few minutes later the tall, blonde cook who
already remembered that I always ordered a no-cheese, two egg omelet with
mushrooms and onions, sat down across from me with a tray holding enough
food to feed a small army.
"You're a vegetarian, aren't you?"
I nodded, wondering if he was going to play the "why do you still eat
eggs?" game that so many non-vegetarians do to trick vegetarians into admitting
that they really eat meat.
"How are the eggs? I cleared a section of the grill of all the ham and
bacon grease before I cooked them."
"The eggs are okie doke," I said in a very bad imitation of the Swedish
Chef in The Muppet Movie telling all his Muppet pals that the film was fixed.
I am not sure how I knew that he would get The Muppet Movie refer­
ence. Men in the Air Force are far more likely to get references to Debbie Does
Dallas, which doesn't even have a cool soundtrack, but I didn't even think
before speaking, and from the way he laughed I knew he understood.
For the next ten minutes we did bad impressions of Beaker, Fozzie,
Professor Honey-Dew, Dr. Teeth, and the whole Muppet gang, and then he
introduced himself. His name was Jeremy, but I called him the Swedish Chef,
and before long the nickname caught on and every one in the Comm Squadron
was calling him The Swedish Chef, and then The Swede, and finally just Swede.
I don't know what the other chow hall people called him, because people from
the Comm Squadron don't really hang out with people from the Services
Squadron.
Comiso Air Station, Italy was a remote tour of duty. Remote means the
tour only lasts a year, and you can't bring your wife and kids. For the married
guys it was like a yearlong "get out of jail free" card. Most of them spent every
weekend at the combination Officer /NCO I Airmen's club getting smashed out
of their minds on American beer and listening to amateur DJs play a combina-
118