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A Wild Rollercoaster of California Living: Life as a Sandwich
Life as a Sandwich by Eric Peterson. Huckleberry house ISBN: 0-9824860-5-7
California is a mercurial place where nothing is the way it seems. Take Wallace, for instance: middle aged, married man with two daughters, on his way with his girls somewhere and in need of an ATM. While fiddling with the obsequies of electronic banking, he’s beset by a common thug who demands his card, coin and for all Wallace knows, his daughters and his own life, too. Wallace thumps the thieving scumbag and drives on, not bothering to tell his wife. One would think he'd be a hero, but another kind of thug in the form of a newly minted, snotnosed PD butterbar has it in for him to burnish said lieutenant’s checkered rep among his own peers. No good deed goes unpunished and in Wallace’s world, the punishments are nonstop.
Life as a Sandwich is a tale of life in California at the beginning of the 21st century about people striving for some self-respect and status amid the dog-eat-dog worlds that envelop them. Characters who might be expected to be on the same side turn out to be enemies; near strangers turn into lovers if not friends—or something—and emperors get publicly called out for not having clothes. Wallace has an interesting, if not exactly charmed life as an aspiring entrepreneur in a start up software company hungry for clients and barely able to survive. He’s opposed by his wife—a no-nonsense flight attendant who is wedded to safety far more than him who has the hots for a scheming Bible beater peddling a snake-oil notion that God is a Republican with an ace percentage marketing strategy for the Chosen. Wallace’s mother in law is another God-fearing pain in the ass of the most intolerant kind, and his boss is a lying imbecile who’d do anything for a dollar—including tell the truth, if necessary. There’s a long-suffering Indian IT guy, various women that are trouble with the usual capital T and the mother of all venture capital vultures; a character named Trek Reese, who looms into the story the way the iceberg loomed into the Titanic. It’s a wonder that Wallace doesn’t get on a roof with a sniper rifle.
Author Eric Peterson creates a character that mirrors our times and place: the angry man striving to be civil and true to his WASP upbringing even as he rebels against it while carving out his own place in the world or at least digging himself out of the self-imposed wreckage of his past. Peterson’s Wallace is a kind of hippie who never went in for the hair and beads but who needs to find himself by tuning in, dropping out and coming through the other side with some dignity intact and even able to do good for others. A side plot concerning electric trains and their afficionadoes is a Walter Mitty-like take on redemption where Wallace finds solace amid old men who think he’s an economic shaman like the one he’s trying to impress. At least Wallace is able to achieve something for those who depend on him, and this contrasts him with the two Macchiavellian princes with tons of capital who take all around them for suckers.
In the end, there’s transcendence, even though it’s unlike anything Thoreau might have approved of, but then this is California and the 21st Century and Wallace is perhaps as good as many of us are ever going to get. Life As A Sandwich is an overstuffed Dagwood filled with enough plot material and twists to fill your plate. Read it soon.
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