On the first day, I had three fried wontons, a marinated shish-kebab sandwich, a taco, and a cantaloupe Italian ice.

On the second day, I had an egg-roll, a felafel, another shish-kebab, and an egg cream with a pretzel.

On the third day, I had a bowl of Fu Manchu stew, a plate of vegetable tempura, another taco, and a tall cup of fruit salad.

On the fourth day, I had a cheese-steak, a knish, a bag of peanuts, a glass of fresh orange juice, and a chipwich.

On the fifth day, I had a roast pork and onions hero, a bag of apricots, two eggrolls, a papaya shake, and a soft ice cream cone.

And over the weekend, I dreamt of Sixth Avenue, where the pushcarts are bumper to bumper for 10 long blocks--both sides of the street--and I smelled beef charbroiling and batter deep-frying and fruit squirting and ice-cream melting, and I saw that it was really, really good.

When anyone asks me what I did last summer, I am compelled to describe the job I had writing reading comprehension tests for a research company in midtown Manhattan. But that is a lie. What I did last summer--what I thought about and planned out on paper and lived for--was lunch.

For a few weeks, I had my lunch indoors, in a sawdusty bar and grill on Eighth Avenue called the Blarney Stone. I patronized the Blarney Stone's grill, but the bar was never short for business. Each day, a cluster of grizzled old guys huddled around one corner of the counter, nurturing their pints and carrying on what appeared to be an endlessly repeating discussion of welter weight boxing. And at a table in the back, two small mailmen sat down everyday, without fail, and quietly drained a pair of enormous pitchers of ale.

My order at the Blarney Stone was brisket on an onion roll--a huge sandwich that came with a plate of home fries and a bowl of thick homemade soup. I ate it at the back of the restaurant, where I could watch the mailmen.

One day, I brought along a beautiful Adams House sophomore who was working as an intern at the local public television station. "What an interesting restaurant," she said as we walked in, picking up the tail end of the morning's boxing seminar. I smiled and bid the counterman to throw the brisket on the slicer.

My intern-friend scanned the menu--a decaying chalk-board with a few scrawlings on it--and finally asked for a Tab and a tuna-fish sandwich. The counterman produced an old can of tuna from the back of a shelf under the grill and spilled some Pepsi into a highball glass.

I was ready to sit down, but my friend walked over to the bar. So I walked over with her and asked the bartender if I could have a glass of water. My friend smiled and then sweetly asked for a gin and tonic, while he was at it. "It's for my headache," she explained to me.

That was my last meal at the Blarney Stone. For the rest of the summer, I pounded the pavement for my lunch. It is now a full half-year since I ate my way down South Avenue from 55th St, to 49th St, but the landscape is still fresh in my memory, and I can--and often do--recite the litany of pushcarts that fed me last June, July, and August. In order, walking downtown.

The Chipwich cart. Chipwiches were the marketing phenomenon of Summer 1981. All around the city, hundreds of identical little brown carts sprang up and sold a single remarkable item; a scoop of ice cream between two chocolate-chip cookies, I only began to pass up the chipwich vendor when I realized that at a dollar a shot, I could buy two david's cookies and a small scoop of Haagen Dazs.

Larry's Ices. Larry's, another chain, sold Italian ices with the same flavors as a tropical fruit pack of Life Savers. Larry (and his franchisers) made a mean ice, but they were a little expensive to make a habit of.