Yes, We Can

Yes, We Can!

“Any questions? If there are no questions, we shall begin. Do I have a nomination for Chairperson… no? If not, I will assume the position... I will preside over the meeting. Now…”

He rambled on for a good half hour. It was difficult to hear, so I got only part of what he was saying. We were seated on bar stools around a pool table, that doubled as a meeting table.  The plywood top, usually used to keep the hurricane winds outside where they belong, was placed over the felt to keep any accidents from ruining it. One of Bill’s rules.

Our meeting space shares a wall with the dispensary next door, and the people that work there play their music very loud. Loud enough so that when you’re playing pool, sometimes the balls start moving on their own. It a lot of fun on Halloween, but other times it’s really annoying.

Crispin, we call him that cause he eats very few things, chicken nuggets being one of the things, and cookies, the other. How he remains alive is beyond any of us, but then that’s his problem, I guess.

It don’t matter which kind of cookie either, like it does with the chicken. He’s partial to organic free range. I’ve spent a lot of time telling him that labels mean nothing. I saw a program about just that. They keep the chickens locked up until the last couple of days before they get made into whatever they make out of chickens. The chickens are so frightened by the daylight, they refuse to go outside. But it doesn’t seem to matter to Crispin where the cookies come from, or what they look like.

He likes Oreos, and peanut butter cookies with real peanut butter, not those chips they use, the ones that look like baby’s tears. He says they taste like they are made of plastic. He says those little chips is like most things they claim tastes like chicken, if you don’t know what really good chicken tastes like. I could see his point, but those baby chips he’s talking about, aren’t made of peanut butter, they are butterscotch.  When I pointed that out to him, he said it don’t matter, cause they all taste like he wants them to taste. I was going to ask but decided against it.

I bring Martin along when we go to Bobby Joe’s. No one calls it that anymore since the fire. We all call it The Greasy Spoon; Bill don’t seem to mind. He’s just happy we all still come down, as it does take some time, getting used to that Smokey smell.  It kind of lingers on your clothes for a few days, even after you wash um.

It was Bill’s idea that we should enter the contest. Bill runs the place. He said he saw the contest advertised on the baking channel. I didn’t even know there was a baking channel, but Bill says its got quite a following, specially in England, which seemed counterproductive, as they have a more regimented sense of propriety. But then to each their own, I suppose. 

Bill said we should check out the channel, so Crispin did. None of the rest of us were all that enthusiastic, as we don’t really care much for cookies. Chicken and beer is fine, more than fine actually, no matter whether the chicken is freed or not. But cookies and beer?  Most of us draw the line at. Especially the cookies with the fake chocolate chips. The chips keep falling off into the glass when you dunk them, and you get a real rush when you get down to the bottom, especially if you forgot they were there. And they are dangerous.  If a whole lug of those chips lets go, and gets in your throat all at once, you could choke. Too much of a good thing turns out not to be such a good thing. Unless it’s chicken, Crispin says.

Also, Marty, our softball catcher and manager, who washes dishes for Bill, now that his tab has reached the quarter of century mark. I don’t know how much that is, but it sounds like a lot. Bill said Marty would either have to stop commin in or start washing dishes. Mainly glasses since the fire, but then that’s where I was headin. 

The chocolate chips on the bottom, if not all drank after a time, under the bright lights, tend to stick, and he says getting the glasses clean is time consuming as hell, and his debt gets reduced, by the glass. I saw his point, and like I told him, I don’t much care for cookies, I’m more of a S’mores guy.

Anyway, Crispin calls this meeting to discuss this contest. I’d talked with Bill to get the scoop, what with him having watched the baking channel and all. He says it is legit. The team that can make the largest cookie, edible of course, wins a trip for as many as six bakers to the Betty Crocker Bake Off in Minneapolis, the home of all kinds of flour and baking stuff, and beer. I think it was the beer that got everyone so enthusiastic about this baking stuff, everyone I think but Bill. They got these silos filled with grains they use for making beer, painted like cans of beer. A huge six pack the brochure says. I’d like to see that.

Bill says it is a logistical nightmare though. The last several bake offs ended in everyone being disqualified for using materials not OK’d by the committee. He says they are real strict about stuff like that. He thinks they are afraid of stuff happening, like nuclear ovens and alien yeasts.

He also says he’s given it some thought, and Crispin agrees, that the inflatable pool he has, would be just the thing. He says Crispin agreed to let us use his canoe paddles, and Marty said he’s got a line on some real powerful baking soda. Not the junk they got in stores he says, but the stuff from his stash that he used in the bathtub submarine races back in grade school, and up till now, couldn’t find a use for.

He’s also donatin, a five-gallon ice cream tin of baking powder. He says his grandma is a hoarder, and she can’t pass up a deal. He says you couldn’t believe what’s down in the basement of her house. “She’s got ten years of cat litter, and don’t have a cat.” And he says she can’t park in the garage cause it’s full of toilet paper. Not the cheap see through stuff they got now, but the old stuff, that’s tough as a mechanics overalls.  

The real debating however didn’t begin until we was wondering about how to bake something that big. Apparently, according to Bill, the present champions, some girl scout troop from the Peninsula of Michigan, made a cookie five feet three and a quarter inches in diameter. And it was measured while the chocolate chips were still melty. Bill says it probably shrunk about an inch after it cooled, but still… 

Marty said he’d given it considerable thought as he has lots of time to think when he’s washing glasses, and came up with the way we can bake it. His brother Ronny has a hot air balloon. We wait until the Fourth of July. The contest isn’t till the seventh, or right around then, and the temperature is usually over a hundred, and the parking lot at the bowling alley is empty cause everyone is down at the parade. I don’t know how he knows this, but he says if we wait until about three in the afternoon, assuming the sun is shinin, the temperature he says on the asphalt will be somewhere around 175 degrees, which should take our dough about four hours to bake. Assuming he says, that Ronny can hit the parking lot. If he misses, he implied it could cause some real liability issues. Can’t blame him for being concerned about a thing like that.

Marty thought it was a good idea, but then Ronny is his brother. I really didn’t care much; except I would like to see Ronny drop that thing from a hundred feet and hit anything he was aiming at. Got to get that high to miss the power lines. Suppose he could let some air out, but then if the wind picks up, he’s on the highway.

Crispin said, that being he was nominated Chairperson by majority, it was up to him to decide if our plan had merit. I thought the whole Chairperson thing had kind of gone to his head, but then no one else wanted the job, so you go with what you got. 

We would need six of our ball team to work the cookie dough, and the remaining three will man the lines of the balloon, until Ronny gives them the signal. He’s the captain and knows about wind velocity and stuff like that, so no one objected. 

Overall I thought the plan was doable, and I really wanted to go to Minneapolis; anywhere really. We were to meet on July third at the Greasy Spoon to finalize everything. Make sure we had qualified ingredients; cause Bill says they do some kind of test to make sure we wasn’t cheatin. Being the Fourth was a Sunday, Herman our short stop said he and his brothers could man the ropes. We all hoped silently they’d be somewhat more capable than they were at playing outfield.

It looked like things were comin together. The swimmin pool, we would set up where the pool table was, as we wouldn’t need a meeting table at that point. Bill said he thought the fire hose would reach that far, and if it didn’t, he had lots of pitchers that no one would use until after the parade anyway. It looked like even Crispin, who said because he was Chairperson, should get first taste, was ready and willing to go. No one objected about him havin first taste, but no one seconded his motion either.

The time flew.  The morning of the Fourth was somewhat colder than normal, but then the sun hadn’t really had a chance to make its self felt. We got everything to the Greasy Spoon, set up the pool, which surprisingly didn’t leak. Bill hauled the hose over, and Crispin started showin us how to use the paddles correctly.

He said the J stroke would probably be the best, being the dough startin out might be a bit thin, but that as it thickened, the J would allow us to get the paddles out without damaging the pool or getting sucked into the goop. We figured him being Chairperson, he knew as much about paddling dough as anyone should, so we all nodded our heads like we understood.

Ronny and the boys were out back firin up the balloon. Ronny said the winds might be a problem, so we’d better, “get a move on it.”

Bill reminded everyone that we shouldn’t rush, as baking is an art that depends on quality ingredients and patience, especially when it comes to letting the dough get to its correct consistency and reach its fermentation potential. We were glad we had asked Bill to be our advisor. Not as prestigious as being Chairperson, but more meaningful by Greasy Spoon standards.

We paddled like crazy, wrestled the concoction into a plastic fifty-five-gallon garbage can and loaded it onto the balloon as the first black clouds rolled in. The heat generated by the burners heating the air was supposed to help the rising process, Bill interjected.

Ronny, although somewhat discouraged, was intent on seeing if he could hit the parking lot while missing the high-powered electric wires and the highway, no matter the wind. The boys dropped the ropes unexpectedly as the first thunderclap was preceded by a Zorro slash in the purply green western sky. Ronny despite everything seemed to be having the time of his life, even though the wind blew him away from the bowling alley parking lot towards Speedy-Mart.

The rest of the team decided we’d almost completed more work that day, than we’d done in the past two weeks, so we went into the Spoon to celebrate. Bill said the first pitcher was on him if everyone agreed to not eat cookies, as Marty hadn’t showed up. He had to go to his grandma’s and help her unload her new finds. 

The rain sounded nice hitting the old tin roof. First time we’d been able to hear ourselves talk, or think for that matter, in some time. It being Sunday, the dispensary was closed, and the music men were at the parade. Crispin yelled, “Thanks be to God,” for a reason we weren’t quite sure of, but then we were never definitely sure of most things. 

We all agreed after complaining about the weather, and not being able to find Ronny, to give it a shot next year.  Kind of make it a ritual of sorts, possibly a festival, maybe even an event. Bill liked the idea. He said maybe by next year the smell would have leveled off and everything wouldn’t taste like chicken. He’s a lot smarter than he looks.