Wallace and Gromit Be Damned

For many years it was my privilege to work as a cheesemonger in the Gourmet Grocery department of an upscale wine and liquor store. The grocery featured an open-air, floor-to-ceiling cheese case. We hand-cut to order from the finest artisan domestic and international cheeses. Some of our best-selling cheeses came from England.

Popular favorites included Stilton, a super-rich, creamy, strong-flavored blue cheese that I particularly enjoyed with cracked walnuts and a small glass of port on the afternoon of Christmas Day; Cotswold, an orange-colored cheese made by blending chives and spring onions into Double Gloucester; cheesecloth bound Cheddar, a crumbly, pale-yellow, sharp-tasting cheese, originating in the English village of Cheddar in Somerset; Huntsman, a festive cheese that we often suggested for cheese trays because of its colorful layers of Double Gloucester and Stilton; and Stinking Bishop, a semi-soft, washed-rind cheese made exclusively from the milk of Gloucester breed heifers.

Starting the week before the Fourth of July, as soon as I clocked-in in the morning, I would take all our English cheeses out of the case and move them to our Sub-Zero refrigerator in the back of the grocery. When my manager, Josette, came in, an absolutely delightful and wonderful woman from Quebec, Canada, who I cherish as one of my dearest friends to this day, and who taught me everything I know about cheese especially, and good food in general, she would say, in her heavy French accent, "What happened to all the cheeses?"

I would say, "I put them in the fridge."

She would blink her eyes, with those incredibly long lashes, and say, "Why?"

And I would say, "I refuse to sell English cheeses this close to the Fourth of July."

Whereupon she would slap me in the arm. (Looking back, she did that a lot.) Josette is bright, intelligent, and professional, with a keen sense of humor, every bit my intellectual equal.

"Get those cheeses right back on the shelf, mister!"

The thing was, whenever she talked with that funny accent, I would just smile at her, and neither of us could take it seriously. It was us against the world, or at least against corporate, and she would say things like, "We complete each other." What she meant was that we complimented each other in the grocery, working as a team. When I told my wife what she said, my wife was not amused. (Actually, she was laughing her butt off. Josette and my wife are also close friends.)

"No," I replied. "I'll sell the customers something else."

"Steeeve, that's goofy."

"I don't care. The British committed all kinds of atrocities during the Revolutionary War. I won't sell English cheeses. It's an affront to me as an American. At least the French were our allies," I would answer.

She would abruptly turn away from me, walk over to the refrigerator, and start to move the cheeses back out to the front of the shop.

"I won't sell them," I said emphatically.

"Fine. If someone asks for any, I'll wait on them," she said over her shoulder.

And that's where we would leave it. Until she took a bathroom break, a lunch break, or when she came back in the next day, only to find the English cheeses removed from the shelves.

Vive la liberté!