Swiss Cheese

Dear Louie,

01-21-10

The other day, in Madison, awaiting the Wisconsin - Michigan Basketball Game, I drank a coke and ate a Swiss Cheese, ham sandwich... A Ham and Swiss sandwich. This was delicious, somewhat greasy, but with onion rings a true delight.

Swiss cheese is a tasty cheese, a cheese with holes, a cheese which never produces a true replication, one slice compared to another. The holes defy replication. Something like people.

Swiss cheese comes in many varieties. The variety determines the ingredients, processing, and characteristics of the cheese. Cheese can be made of pasteurized or raw milk, and the milk imparts different flavors. Milk is heated, acids are added, some types get rennet, an enzymes from the stomach of calves; starters cultures are used early in the cheese-making process to assist in coagulation. The starter cultures lend special flavors and prevent spoilage. Streptococcus salvivarius, lactobacillius casei, and lactobacicillus are typical starters. The milk is heated, treated, the starters are added, agitation is begun, time is spent, observation and care are given in specific times and doses, and the product is nurtured.

Carbon dioxide, produced by the bacteria, is released, controlled, and develops the holes in the cheese; the eyes of the Swiss. The individuality of the cheese is in the quality; the taste, appearance, the “Panache” of the product. All of this is enjoyed for the moment, in a bar awaiting the “Game.”

This cheese-making is like life. The enzymes of nurturing, along with the bacteria of living produce the cheese and whey. Swiss cheese with its individual holes, never two pieces alike are likened to people; never two alike, never two equal, never one without some blemish, and most giving off gases, not always innocuous carbon dioxide.

I knew a Swiss cheese-making family, I knew them well. A jolly hard-working family. The father and mother arrived from Switzerland in the early teens of the twentieth century, settled in the area, and eventually had their own cheese factory, a small operation eight miles from town. There the boys grew, rather well. The older learned the trade and was successful in making an exquisite cheese; the younger spent his career in the vegetable packing industry. Both were excellent musicians, and played in bands and orchestras for years; both sang in choruses and sang well. All were relatively happy until the ravages of time and disease were declared, as the unique holes.

A slowly progressive personality change developed in the cheesemaker. Initially noted was a withdrawal from outside activities, a more casual approach to the cheese and whey process, and an inability to make music as he once did. He became somewhat reclusive, withdrew from family, became morose, lost interest in the business, and eventually allowed the sale of his vats and rennet curd.

He began to demonstrate the withdrawal of Alzheimer’s Disease, that dreaded disease of our culture and time. That disease which causes the destruction of neurons and cells in the culture of life, the brain. The brain, the seat of the intellect, the source of our personality, our driving force, that which makes you, you; and me, me: was destroyed by the relentless destruction of organization and function of his God inspired soul. And so, the wonderful uniqueness of his life’s work, the holes of his Swiss Cheese, was declared in the uniqueness of his death; the holes in his neuron brain, his Alzheimer’s complex.

Jim