THE LIMBURGER INCIDENT

The following story is about an old friend of mine from way back. Wayne Trout is no longer with us, but what an incredible character he was. If you were ever to have a gathering of friends and acquaintances and wanted it to be upbeat and successful, you just had to invite him. He was, without a doubt, the proverbial life of the party. Wayne had an incredible wit and sense of humor and, in the central Florida area, was a noted radio personality. He was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever known, too. Very down-to-earth, Wayne was the consummate social director who knew how to throw the best pool parties. All kinds of parties! For example…

Over the years, I spent a lot of Saturday afternoons with the guys at Wayne’s watching college football. Occasionally, a girl or two would slip in, but it was definitely a guy thing doing guy things (whatever that might be in today’s world.) In those days, it was sports, booze, and belching.

One day at happy hour, Wayne asked me what I was doing on Saturday. Nothing in particular, I responded. “Great,” he said, “we’re having a ‘Limburger cheese with onions on pumpernickel party’ and you’re invited. Come on over around noon.”

That meant tequila shots, too, with grapefruit instead of lemons because he had a grapefruit tree out back. Bring your own beer, of course. I had never eaten Limburger up to that point and it’s got to be one of the stinkiest cheeses on the planet. I know, because my father used to eat it when I was young, and I would have rather smelled his feet, to be honest with you.

Eventually, Saturday arrived, sooner than I had hoped, and I dressed in my stinky cheese finest. I mustered up the courage and drove through the drizzling rain to Wayne’s. He had set up a spread of cheese, sliced onions, pumpernickel bread, and the usual sides, like mayo, mustard, salt, and grapefruit slices. My understanding of the delectable cheese was that, underneath its horrid smell, it tasted a bit like heaven, and I was about to find out. Maybe heave was more like it.

One-by-one, we put our food on paper plates and found spots to eat. I will say this: I didn’t gag as I took my first bite, and it’s true, the flavor was soft and smooth. It’s exactly what I’d heard and anticipated — once you get past the smell.

That’s all we had to eat that day, as we watched football, usually the Gators. The more we ate, the easier it was to eat, if that makes sense. It’s as if the aroma simply subsided. Yup. Tequila, beer, and Limburger with raw onions! What better way to spend a rainy day?

I don’t know how many sandwiches we ate but, eventually, the food was gone, the day was winding down and, through the large plate glass living room window, the night was trying to let the darkness in. It was then that most of the married guys decided it was time to go home to their unsuspecting wives. Poor things. The rest of us just lingered for a while until Wayne exclaimed, “Let’s go to Harper’s!” Harper’s was a Winter Park neighborhood bar with an upscale French restaurant attached. The bar was a great hangout and we were all for it.

Slowly, we huddled near the front door. There must have been at least a half dozen of us. Outside, it was still drizzling. Suddenly, without warning, we got a whiff of each other, and it’s an indescribable odor I will never forget. We smelled like the concentrated dregs of… well, you don’t want to know, but it was at least six times the aroma of the smelliest of all stinky cheeses in the world, plus onions.

We looked at each other and said in unison, “Naaaah, we ain’t going anywhere.” We knew we’d have been asked to leave. No, check that. Not asked. They would have DEMANDED that we go. No telling what they’d think we’d gotten into, so we simply went back to our chairs until, one-by-one, each of us decided to go home. Our day was done. So was the night.

It was only that one time I ate Limburger cheese. It was quite an interesting experience and a quirky rite of passage, but would I do it again? Probably not. It would take a special man like Wayne to convince me and, with him, the mold was broken.