Cooking Under Pressure

“What you doin?”

“What does it look like I’m doin?”

“Don’t rightly know, or I wouldn’t be askin.”

“Makes some kind of sense. You really wantin to know?”

“Like I said, I wouldn’t be askin if I…”

“Ok, OK, I’ll tell ya if’n you don’t know.”

“Well, alright then!”

And that’s the way it seems to go. Been goin on like this for generations, and each one passes and leaves something behind for us to be wondered about. Great Granddad, picture of him and the long saw, on the shop wall. Him and his buddy, Rooty Two Toes, cutting down some tree wider across than the house they had back then. 

Then it was Granddads turn. He started out makin wagon wheels. Did pretty good, what with all the city people comin out west to make a wealthy man of themselves. But as things go, it went too. He became a ranch hand back when you needed to know which end of a cow you fed. He died younger than most. Mostly they said, from eatin his own food. 

His last job was runnin the chuck wagon for a bunch of wranglers that went back and forth to the rail lines from Texas up to Kansas. We forget cause it was a while ago, but they didn’t have no refrigerators back then. Wouldn’t have been to practical on the trail no how. But they got creative, saltin most things, brining and dryin others. He died young too. Said he got some kind of disease from germs that could have come from undercooked meat, or his stomach just got tired of workin so hard and took off. Took him along they said, yellin and moanin. Would like to have seen that.

Then there was Pop. I’m not really sure he was even related to granddad; they don’t seem to be much alike, in oh so many ways. Stories of Granddad being ornery when things didn’t go his way, was probably most of what the two of them had in common. 

Pops one time, when some old fella was askin for a rare steak but wouldn’t commit to what rare was meanin. Pops they say, pummeled the guy rare to show him the difference between medium rare, and rare. Story goes they made him do the dishes for a couple of weeks, or until he learned to be more civil. Don’t know if that was true, as I was too small to remember things like that, but I did inherit some good things. One was the ability to believe in my own recommendations, whether they made sense or not. Lots of folks called me fool, some stupid, but then you can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself, or so I’ve heard said.

I know it don’t make no sense, but I kind of think they talk to us. Those that have gone but can’t rest till they leave us something to remember them by. Granddad was like that. He used to take me squirrel hunting, mushroom hunting, any kind of huntin really. It wasn’t the huntin we went for I realized later. We never shot nothing. Never found a mushroom, but we’d walk, and he’d tell me stories of times before him when I know he couldn’t have been back there. He was old, but not that old. He said one time before he left that we get to tell stories, and then there are stories that get told to us. Never understood what he meant till recently.

It was like that with the cooker. Pressure cooker, he called it. Said he invented it. I don’t know if that is true, like I said some stories get told to us. He was mighty convincing though. 

He said it came to him in kind of a dream. Said my Great Granddad Enoch, came to him one night after Theodore, his father died of some food disease. Told him what he needed to do. He’s tellin me this and he’s all excited. Face lit up like drunk clown. He said he blew a few holes in the kitchen floor above. Said Grandma made him do his experimentin in the basement cause of there wasn’t enough room in the kitchen or on the stove for the two of them, and the kitchen was hers. He said it made sense after he shot a few lids through the floor. His ceiling, he said.

Took a while he said to figure out you had to have a way to let the pressure out. He said it was like pickin a blister to get the pressure off. Didn’t hurt so much then. Well, anyway Pops took his cookin pot and began to fiddle with it. Oh, should tell you for I get too far along, that Granddad died in the basement, with his boots on, and a bigger than normal hole in the Grandma’s floor, or his ceiling.

Pops said he figured what went wrong. Same thing as the oakum we’d put around the well pipe so it wouldn’t leak. Got dried out or melted to the metal and the steam built up till she blew. He thought so anyway. 

Don’t really know if he ever got it figured out completely to his satisfaction. He got sent off to the war cause he was so good at blowin things up, and well, he never come back.

Happened to see one of the things he was workin on in the hardware store, the other day. Asked the guy what it was and half way through him tellin me, I realized it was Pop’s pot, someone got it to workin; had instructor words and everything. He wanted to know why I was so interested in it, as you can just go own to the corner, they got a whole store of things already in cans. Don’t have to do anything but open them up and eat what’s inside. Said if you get sick you can take them to court. If you get dead, then your relatives will get the reward. Then he tried to sell me a can opener, so I left.

Last time I heard anything about O rings, was when the space ship blowed up. Said it had something to do with the ring getting froze so it didn’t work. I was thinkin if Pops would have been around, he could of told them, sometimes things don’t go according to plans. Better maybe do your experimentin out where you can’t hurt anyone. Somethin happens to you experimentin, you can always come back and let me know. I like a good story, as well as the next fella. Don’t mind tellin one once in a while, neither.

"Well, alright then."