Porch View

Recently I got a chance to meet up, briefly, with a childhood friend, one I hadn’t seen in decades. It was wonderful to catch up with him again, even if we didn’t have a lot of time to talk. In that short exchange we, as you might imagine, talked about the days of old when we were little kids and he used to come over to my house to play. And, it didn’t take long for him to bring up the porch.

Now, the house we grew up in was big. It had eight rooms, three baths, and a huge basement that was divided into four more rooms. So, yeah, there was plenty of space inside. There was plenty of space outside, too, as the house was on a double lot, meaning it had a huge yard. But, one of the places where we spent a lot of time was small. Very small. The porch.

We called it “the back porch”, but it wasn’t in the back. The patio was in the back. The porch was in the front. But. That didn’t stop us (read: La Soeur and me) from calling it “the back porch” when we were growing up. Yeah. We’d say, “We’re going to play on the back porch.” And then go to the front of the house. And, that right there probably sums up all you need to know about us as kids. But, I digress.

The front porch was both short and narrow. The front door opened into the middle of it (and, yes, we called it the front door and still called the porch on which that door opened the back porch…again, all you need to know). On the right side of that door, as you were exiting the house, there was room for one lawn chair. On the left, where the steps leading down to the sidewalk and the front gate were, you could, if you squeezed them tightly, fit two lawn chairs. And, such was the width of the porch that, even sitting in a lawn chair against the wall of the house, you could put your feet on the front railing. Yeah. Short. And narrow. And the confines, for many years, were made even tighter by a small wooden table we had out there. But, again, the lack of space didn’t stop us using it. A lot.

As kids, we spent a lot of time outside, especially in the summer. Now. Mom was not one of those mothers who forced you outside and wouldn’t let you back in. If we wanted to come in, unless she was involved with some big cleaning project or something, that was fine. Thing was, we didn’t want to come in, because the fun was out there. So, save for the odd bathroom, drink, or meal break, we were out all summer. Unless. It was raining. And, that’s where the porch came in.

If we were out playing ball or doing some other outside activity (or inside activities like games or cards that we often transported outside during summer weather) and the raindrops started to fall, well. We knew we had two choices. Inside or the porch. Because, while we absolutely did not know enough to come in out of the rain, if we attempted to stay out in the rain, Mom, using that very question (“Don’t you two know enough to come in out of the rain????”) would make us come in. But. The porch. That was the compromise.

The rain would start and we’d race for the porch. And, if we were playing ball or doing something we couldn’t do on the porch? Well, in we’d go to get a game or a card deck. Mom: “It’s raining!” Us: “We know. We’re going to play ‘Battling Tops’ on the porch!”

Yeah. Time to digress. “Battling Tops”. We played that a lot. And, if ever there were a game on which a company (Ideal) made, oh, I don’t know, 95 percent profit, it was “Battling Tops”. If you never had the game, here’s what it contained. One hard plastic “arena” (cost? 34 cents). Six tops (cost? 4 cents each) and six decals (cost 6 cents) and six pieces of string (cost 1 cent…for all six pieces). The cardboard box it came in cost more than the entire game.

But, all that simplicity was good. After all, we were little kids, and anything requiring any assembly or reading of rules would need adults, at least the first few times. Not “Battling Tops”. Six tops. Each in two pieces, a long stem and a flat disc you fastened to the stem. Then those six decals. Color coded to go on each of the six tops…giving each of your “Battling Tops” a name. “Tricky Nicky”, “Hurricane Hank”, “Smarty Smitty”, “Super Sam”, “Dizzy Dan” and “Twirling Tim” (seriously). Yeah. We had adults put on the decals. Other than that, well. Pick a top, put it in the arena, wrap the string around it, pull, and watch it battle with the other tops. Even we could figure that out.

And, “Battling Tops” was a great “porch” game. No small pieces to lose. Nothing paper to blow away. And, it was perfect for playing when it was raining, because, when the wind blew some of that rain on the porch (and, with a porch that small, if there was a wind, someone or something was getting wet…sometimes everyone and everything), well all that plastic would dry nicely. And, you could play “Battling Tops” with as few as two players and as many as four. And, four was about all you were getting on the porch, so…

Did I mention there were six tops? But, there were only four areas from which the tops could be launched. Meaning two tops were always left out of the battle. One was almost always “Twirling Tim”. One was never “Tricky Nicky”, my favorite, both because it was green…my second-favorite color after blue…and because it freaking ruled. For some reason, “Tricky Nicky” turned out to be the best top of the bunch and won more often than any of the others. No idea why, but it was and it did. But, I digress.

We played games on the porch while it rained. Games of all sorts. The previously mentioned “Risk” and “Monopoly” were two of those. Of course, both of those had cardboard “boards”, so you needed to shield them from the rain. Both also had cards that needed protected, and “Monopoly” had all that paper money that needed secured. But, believe it or not, the big problem playing those games on the porch in the rain wasn’t any of that, it was the dice. Because, while we’d find ways to make sure the cards and boards didn’t get wet and the paper money didn’t blow away, there were a few of us who would not change their dice rolling methods to adapt to conditions.

Dice rolling, believe it or not, was often a bone of contention in the old neighborhood. And, if you’ve read this space before, you believe it, because there was nothing we wouldn’t argue about, often at length. Some of the guys hated it when you rolled on the board, because, of course, errant dice could knock over the “armies” in “Risk” or the houses and hotels in “Monopoly”, for example. So, most of us rolled off to the side of the board. But, it wasn’t just the “where”, it was also the “how”.

See, we were all watching one another for signs of cheating, as well we should have been, since cheating in the old neighborhood was as rampant as steroids were in baseball post-cancelled World Series. So, you had to, as some of us put it, usually loudly, “actually roll!” No dropping the dice or tossing them so lightly as to have them only roll over once or twice. No, we needed a full roll. And, while that could be tricky in the close confines of the porch, it could be done. Problem was, a few of us, tired of constantly being harangued about “actually rolling!” (or, more likely, just being the little putzes they were), took things to the extreme.

Rather than roll the dice at all, they fired them wildly into the air. Now, while there’d be no doubt that they weren’t trying to cheat with that kind of roll, what would be in doubt would be where the dice would land. And, in those close porch confines, they often ended up either on the small sidewalk that ran in front of the porch between it and the verge of the road, on the verge, or even on the road. And, if they ended up in any of those places, well. That was better than the alternative. Because, while the dice could easily be found there, or if they went off the left side of the porch onto the steps or the sidewalk below it, you didn’t want them flying off the right side. Because beneath that side of the porch was a small area of bushes and shrubs with high grass and weeds between.

Now, the rule was simple in all these cases. If you tossed the dice and they went off the porch, you had to go get them. If it were pouring rain? You’d be wet. If they ended up in one of the thorn bushes on the right side of the porch? You’d be bloody. But, you were getting those dice. And, we were going to stay dry and unbloodied and probably laugh at you while you were doing it.

Another porch game was “Hands Down”, which, while not quite as cheap as “Battling Tops” was certainly a leader in profit margin. A pile of cards and, rather than the “arena” of “Battling Tops”, the “Slam-O-Matic”, Seriously. Actual marketing people sat down and came up with that name for Milton Bradley. (If you’ve never seen the game, the “Slam-O-Matic was a circular piece of plastic with four paddles.) “Hands Down” was actually a card game, but the “Slam-O-Matic” came into play when someone had a pair. They’d shout “Hands Down” (or, if they were one particular member of the gang, say it in a stupid accent) and then everyone would slam their hands down on their paddles. Last person to do so “lost”, meaning the “Hands Down” player got to take a card from the loser’s hand. There was a scoring system, but no one actually cared. I don’t think we ever totaled the scores one time at the end of the game (which came when all the cards save the lone joker had been paired). In fact, I don’t think we ever got to the end of a game without things degenerating into just hammering down on the paddles over and over again. Amazingly, the “Slam-O-Matic” was sturdy enough to withstand that, so, maybe it wasn’t quite as cheaply made as I thought.

But, no matter how cheaply any of those games were made, they couldn’t hold a candle to one other popular porch game, or, actually games. These were nothing more than pieces of paper that came out of Pop Tart boxes. Remember those? If not, they were sports games made to be played with a deck of playing cards. And, when you bought a box of Pop Tarts, you got a game. I had soccer, football, baseball, basketball, and bowling. I’m not sure what others were available, though I’ve heard there was at least one other, hockey. It was football and baseball, though, that got the most play.

Both games were as simple as could be. You had either your field or your diamond in the middle of the big piece of paper. Along the edges were various results determined by your draw of a playing card. Some were just based on the card type, others on both the type and suit. So, for baseball, the visiting team began by drawing a card and comparing it to the results chart. If it was an out, pull the next card. Walk or a hit? Place something, usually a piece of lint or a small rock, on the appropriate base on the diamond and continue. Football worked in a similar fashion, except that the rock or piece of lint (or sometimes a tiny ball of paper) was used to mark the ball after the play. And, football did have a down marker and a set of “chains” you could cut out for use while playing the game.

Like I said, both simple and cheap. But, also plenty effective when you were trapped on the porch in the rain. As long as there were only two of you. More than that, and you needed to bust out a different game. But. Two players? These suckers were fantastic, and, heck, they were also free. They came out when I was about eight years old, and we played with them for several years, to the point where tape needed to be used on the folds, since the paper was coming apart. But, tape or not, we had fun waiting for the rain to end so we could get back to real football or baseball.

Four people. Two people. Even one. The porch was a great place to be in the summer. There weren’t a lot of “one” days. Someone was usually around. But, if not? Well. Grab a lawn chair and get a book…or even one of those Pop Tart games, because you could play those games solitaire, and have some fun while you waited for some of the guys to show up. And, if it were raining? So much the better. I’ve always loved thunderstorms, and the “back” porch was a great place to watch them. Even if it wasn’t in the back.

The Little Time Machine

Time travel is a well-worn trope of all sorts of fiction, but, as we all know, it is not, at least for now, a reality. But, it also sort of is. At least in very small doses.

We’ve talked before about how sounds or smells can bring back a memory, but, today, we’ll be talking about something different…about how something…a sight, a sound, a smell, maybe even a taste, can bring back not just the memory of something past, but also the feeling of actually being there and doing that. Not for long, of course, just briefly. But, those little trips in the time machine are pretty special.

I’ll bet it happens to you. Here’s an example. Several times a summer, I’ll look out a window and see a tree with the sun shining on it at just the right angle. And the time machine fires up. I’ll instantly be transported back to the old neighborhood during those endless childhood summers, when I’d look out a window at the sun shining in the trees and think about all the great stuff we were going to do today. The feeling, of course, is quickly gone, but, for just an instant, it all rushes back, how great those days were, and how great the anticipation of those days was.

Here’s another. This happens once a year, every year, the very first time the furnace kicks on at the house. It’s that distinctive smell, the one you’ll become nose blind to very, very soon. But, not having smelled it in months, you notice. And, the time machine kicks on. And, I’m back in my old bedroom in the old house noticing that smell and feeling the heat for the first time since the previous April and realizing that fall and the cool weather were really here. Poof. Gone. But, for just an instant…

Honeysuckle. Each and every time I smell it, I’m back, for just a second, in my grandmother’s back yard, where you could smell honeysuckle all summer long. We spent tons of time back there as kids, playing and having cookouts, or, as Dad called them, “cook ins and eat outs”, because, Grandma’s idea of a cookout wasn’t any stinking burgers or dogs. No, these were full meals with pasta and the like, carted out to the back yard to a big wooden table under the grape arbor where we ate, the delectable smells of Grandma’s cooking mingling with that honeysuckle.

Wild garlic. Poof. The time machine sends me back to mid-to-late summer in the old neighborhood. The hills behind our house were covered with wild garlic, and by mid-July, you could smell it everywhere. The smell, for some reason, got especially strong after dark, so that smell often transports me back to sitting in the yard playing cards with the gang. Just for an instant, of course.

The buzz of a bumble bee. Hear that and I’m back on the porch of the old house, again, for just a second. Right at the gate leading into the yard of the house I grew up in was a purple Rose of Sharon bush. And, the bumble bees absolutely loved those big purple flowers. They’d be all over them all day long, buzzing around, not bothering anyone.

A rattle of wood, poof. Back to the old bedroom. The house, for most of my childhood, had wooden window frames in the upstairs rooms, including my bedroom. And, the window in my room fit just a tiny bit loosely in the frame. Not enough for, say, anything to fly in, but loosely enough that, when the wind really got going outside, the window rattled in the frame. I can still remember the first storm after Dad had all the upstairs windows replaced. I was sitting on the bed reading, long after dark, when the wind started to howl. And all of a sudden…something was different. Took me a minute to figure out what. Yeah. The window wasn’t rattling. But, sometimes, it still does.

Not always, but, sometimes, the smell of charcoal can set the time machine to operating. Not sure why it’s only sometimes. Maybe it’s a subtle difference in the smell or something, but, sometimes…poof. Right back onto the back patio where Dad has dogs and burgers on the grill and we’re impatiently (as always) awaiting dinner.

Also not always, but, sometimes, the sound of a lawn mower takes me back to the old neighborhood with the old gang, on summer vacation, hanging out listening to the sound of one of the adults mowing the grass. But, the smell of cut grass, especially the first one of the year, often takes me to a similar place, but a different time, with me, as a little kid, with the rake, watching as Dad finished mowing the grass on a Saturday. Next, we’d “rake up the yard”, get a cold drink, then we’d head inside to watch “The Game of the Week”.

Red dog. If I see red dog, no matter where, the machine takes me back to one place, the parking lot of Clem’s Café, which was at the bottom of our street. When we were walking to town, rather than use the sidewalk which would have taken us in front of the bar, we circled behind through the parking lot as part of a little short cut. And, if I see red dog, I can immediately, hear the crunch of it under our feet as the gang walked across those stones on the way to town, or, perhaps, to Big Mac Stadium for a football game.

Oh, and said time machine operates regularly when I smell fries in a deep fryer. I instantly go back to Friday nights during childhood on the way to the stadium. Why? Clem’s Café again, where the smell of deep frying bar food spread into the cool night air as we walked past on our way to the game.

If I see a tomato plant, I always touch the leaves. Why? Because it puts that smell on my fingers, and that smell activates the time machine, and, poof, I’m at the far back end of my grandparents’ property in Borland Manor (a walk that seemed a long way when I was a kid) in Grandpap’s garden, where several varieties of tomatoes were grown every summer of my childhood.

Songs can do it, too. For example, sometimes, not every time, but, sometimes, when I hear “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by one hit wonder Deep Blue Something, the time machine fires up and I return to a cold, dark winter evening when I went to see a friend of mine who’s no longer with us. That song was playing when I pulled in, and, if I hear it in the car after dark, well, for just a second I’m on my way again.

And, like that little trip, the one I tend to go on most often leaves a bit of melancholy behind. It happens on Fridays, always on Fridays, and always about mid-afternoon. The sun has to be shining when I glance out the window. And, if it is, the machine begins to operate. And, I get that feeling, one of the best feelings you could ever get back in the days of childhood and the old gang.

Yeah, you know where this is going. What better time was there than mid-afternoon on a Friday for a school kid? Because, remember, for us, mid-afternoon was actually late afternoon, since, by 3pm, our week was going to be in the rearview. And, while each and every Friday about that time, my thoughts, if they hadn’t already done so, turned to the looming weekend, a glance out the window to reveal Old Sol shining brightly just brought on that feeling.

It was all ahead of us and, at the same time, almost here. Friday night, maybe one of those football games we discussed above or, more likely, as there were only a few of those a year, home for dinner and then some football or other activities with the gang. Then, the best day of the week. Saturday and our cartoons followed by afternoons outside with the guys and evenings the ‘rents often made special with things like pizza or popcorn and our favorite TV shows. And, Sunday, which was not only the buffer that made Saturday so great, but also another day to have fun before it all started again Monday morning.

Mid-afternoon Friday. A glance out that window, and I’m back there and one of those long-gone weekends is looming just a few minutes ahead. So, yeah, there’s some melancholy, since so many of the people that made those weekends so great aren’t around anymore. But, that melancholy is tempered by the fact that, hey, these weekends are still great. And, the knowledge that we did know how great those weekends were, and we enjoyed them while we had them. And, the fact that, on occasion, for just an instant, I can still pay a little visit.

No Wayback

I suspect every one of us has at one time or another, imagined how great it would be to be able to go back…or forward…in time, which is why time travel has been such fertile soil for fiction. (And we are going to stick to imaginary or fictional time travel for this missive, as you’d need someone much smarter than me to write intelligently about that subject and about if, sometime in the future, travelling through time might become a reality. Might. In the future. Because we all should {should, because some folks actually believe the freaking planet is flat) know that, at the moment, time travel is not possible.) But I digress.

Fictional time travel. As I suspect you have, I’ve read many stories about same, including Ray Bradbury’s excellent “A Sound of Thunder”. But the story that sticks with me the most isn’t that one. It’s a talewe read in class and the mists of time cover both the author and the title of the story. But, several decades on, I still remember just about everything else very, very well.

The tale revolved around an adult woman who was unhappy in her current life, so she took advantage of an opportunity to return to her childhood to relive a single day. For reasons those mists cover, she did not choose an extremely significant or “big” day, just one that was a little out of the ordinary, one of her childhood birthdays. And, unlike the characters in the Bradbury storywho had freedom of action but were sternly warned of actions they dare not take, the adult woman would have none. She could change nothing, do nothing differently. She could only relive the day exactly as it happened. And, as I’m sure many of us would, she jumped at the chance.

Initially, things went very well. The woman, now a girl, was overwhelmed with the sights and sounds and smells of a typical morning in her childhood, basking in both things she remembered well and little details she’d forgotten. It was all so special. And, slowly, that became the problem. Because, while the woman-turned-girl was thoroughly enjoying everything about this childhood morning, the people around her were not.

Oh, nobody was upset or anything. It’s just that the girl’s parents and siblings were simply going about their normal morning routine, and their minds were mostly elsewhere. They were thinking and talking about what the day would hold, what they needed to get done, what came next, all while being only sort of present for what was happening right now.

Soon, the woman-turned-girl was miserable. Only she could see how special this all was, how soon it would all be over, and how much everyone would miss it. She could see it. But she couldn’t communicate it. The others? They couldn’t see it because they were in it. It was a day much like any other to them, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing of import. By the time the story came to its conclusion, the protagonist was in tears, realizing the whole thing had been a mistake, that she’d have been better off just remembering the wonderful days of her childhood rather than attempting to reexperience them.

As you might imagine, since you already know that I remember this story several decades on, I picked up what the author was laying down, so to speak. And biggest theme here wasn’t quite as simple as “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”. It was deeper than that, more about the condition of the modern human and our tendency, caused by our busy lives with tons of external stimuli, to not be where we are, not fully engage in experiences. It’s a theme that’s become even more relevant as the years have gone on, of course. But there’s much more at work in this tale.

The story is also an examination of our propensity to romanticize the past. We’ve discussed same in this space previously, talking about how we often shine up our memories of bygone days, focusing on the great stuff while forgetting all about the bad. And that leads me to a story of my own.

Many of us are fortunate enough to have lots of conversations with our parents during our lifetimes. And, if you’re very lucky, those conversations get deeper as the years go on. And, if you’re even luckier, you get to learn a lot about your parents, not just as parents, but as people.

In her later years, I had a lot of those kinds of conversations with Mom. We’d be sitting in chairs with her TV on but muted talking about everything and anything, current events, what was happening around the town or the neighborhood or with family or friends, things like that. And we’d swap old stories, too. It was one of those stories that led to a question I’d been meaning to ask for decades.

Mom was talking about her teen years back in the 50s and a very good friend she used to have. Mom talked about that friend a lot, but all the stories revolved around their teen years together. There was nothing after that. So, one day, after meaning to do so for many, many years, I asked Mom what ever happened to that old friend. Mom smiled sadly and explained that she’d been killed in a car accident when they were teenagers, and that the accident happened the day after Mom and her old friend had had a big fight and vowed never to talk to one another again.

Why Mom had never mentioned that in any of the stories she’d told about the adventures the two friends had back in the 50s, I’ll never know. I didn’t ask. But it’s what Mom said next that’s germane to this missive. “You know,” she said, shaking her head and smiling, “If I could go back to the fifties, I would.” She stopped for a minute, and then said, “It was just a simpler time.”

At that point it was clear that Mom had forgotten who she was talking to. I have a degree in history and shelves and a Kindle full of books on the subject. I know the fifties were not a simpler time, nor were they a better time. And, on sober reflection, Mom would have admitted that, too. But that wasn’t the point.

The point was, the fifties were a simpler time in Mom’s life, a good time in her life. And what she missed wasn’t the fifties, it was her school days and the things she did back then, and, most of all, the people she used to do those things with, people who, in many cases, weren’t around anymore. So, yes, Mom was romanticizing history, longing for a simpler time that didn’t exist, wishing, like the woman in our story, that she could go back and do it all again. Even though, if she’d been able to do that, she would have almost certainly ended up just like the protagonist in the tale from my own school days.

And that brings us back to the first sentence of this blog. We’ve all felt the way Mom felt that Saturday afternoon when we were discussing her old school friend and what they did back in the 50s. Something brings back a memory, and we wistfully wish we could go back and do all that again, go back and hang out with those people again. And if you’ve read this blog, you know I’m as guilty of those sentiments as anyone…with one caveat. I know it’s better that we can only remember. And I also know it’s impossible to ever “go back”.

And now we’re getting into the real meat of this blog. Yeah. 1300 words in. Again. You can’t sue me. The kind of thing I do here, talking nostalgia, the kind of thing Mom and I did during those conversations in front of her TV, that’s harmless. It’s enjoyable reminiscing that’s not hurting anyone. But that longing to return to another time is, like all emotions, something that can be played upon, and often is.

You hear it all the time. “We need to get back to…” “We need to go back to the days when…” Now, to be fair, the folks saying this stuff don’t mean that we should literally go back, only that we should try to figuratively turn back the clock to a time when things were different. The problem is, those folks are either stupid or disingenuous, and I’m not sure what’s worse.

Anyone with any intelligence knows there’s no “getting back to” or “going back to the days when”. Because all of that is gone. And what’s changed is not just the single thing or the few things you’d like to return to the way they used to be. It’s literally everything else. Everything.And, while you wouldn’t need to reverse all those changes to effect the change you want, you’d have to, in every case, undo some things that are absolutely not going to be undone. In every case.

Here’s just one example. My generation remembers the heyday of Saturday morning cartoons, which we’ve discussed tangentially previously in this space and will, likely, address in further detail later. And, as special as that time was…and it was special, it’s never coming back. Why? Because kids don’t have to wait all week for Saturday morning to watch cartoons anymore. And, they haven’t for a long time.

There’s no point in listing all the changes that have occurred over the decades to give kids more options for entertainment in general and, specifically, the entertainment that used to be offered only on Saturday mornings by the then-three television networks. Because none of those changes are the point. The point is, none of those changes can be reversed and all of them would have to be to “get back to” a reality in which Saturday morning cartoons would make sense again. And, again, this is going to be the case any time you attempt to “get back to” or “go back to the days when”. Not some of the time. Not most of the time. Every single time.

Change is constant. And there’s only going forward. There’s no going back. The good news is, if you recognize that, if you accept that, you can spend your efforts trying to shape change in favorable ways. Fail to accept said inevitability, however, and you are fated to repeat the mistakes of the unhappy woman in the story, doomed to find out that, as much as we’d sometimes like to go back, we can’t. Not really. Because what happened happened. And, what happened since happened, too. There’s no changing any of it. And, those who suggest we try to do that are only distracting us from doing the one thing we can do, try to change the future.

Stay Out Of The Kitchen

Now, my dad was a multi-talented guy. There wasn’t much he couldn’t do if he put his mind to it. When I was a kid, I didn’t even notice all the stuff he did and could do. Plumbing? Sure. I watched him do more than change out washers. If it wasn’t heavy stuff, he could do it. Wiring? Yep. Watched him put in switches and things of that nature. Again, if it wasn’t detailed enough to require a pro, he could do it. Auto work? All the time. Roofing? Yes. Carpentry? Sure. Even TV repair, back in the days when you did TV repair.

There was, however, one thing Dad absolutely could not do, and that was cook. Now, lots of men of his generation didn’t cook well or at all because they came up in the days when this was considered “woman’s work”. But, Dad didn’t have those kinds of issues. He was raised by a single mother and didn’t have a problem doing the traditional “woman’s work” like cleaning. But. Cooking? Oh, to paraphrase Chuck Noll, he had problems, and they were great.

How great? So great that the most fantastic invention in history for those who can’t cook was actually a detriment to Dad. Yes. I’m talking about the microwave.

Now, some of us remember the time before microwaves became common. And, in those days, even reheating leftovers involved a form of “cooking”. You had to use the stove or the oven. And, both of those methods took time. But. Once that first microwave showed up in our kitchen, well. Everything got easier. Or, should have.

Dad was an accountant, so, as you might imagine he was good at math. Very, very good. He could do calculations in his head that most of us couldn’t do without a calculator. He could look at columns of figures and spot errors that most of us would never see. But, when it came to the microwave, Dad simply didn’t get that said device didn’t just cook faster than the stove or the oven, it cooked exponentially faster. (In Dad’s defense, he wasn’t the only one who had issues with such math. A friend of mine got a convection oven and warmed up leftover kielbasa in it the first day. Came back after several minutes to see the kielbasa on fire. But, I digress.)

Here’s just one Dad microwave story. He and I were watching a ball game one Saturday afternoon and he decided he wanted a snack. Turned out, there was leftover pizza in the fridge. Now, I absolutely love me some cold, leftover pizza, and Dad would eat it that way, too. But. Hey. There’s a microwave, so, he could have it hot, the way he preferred.

Now, time to digress about Dad and snacks. The vast majority of the snacks Dad ate required zero cooking or warming (fortunately). Dad loved chips. He loved Fritos. And, he especially loved Ritz Crackers. In fact, a favorite snack (and, sometimes meal) of Dad’s was an entire sleeve of Ritz Crackers. Sometimes with peanut butter. Sometimes without. Because, sometimes you feel like spreading some Peter Pan on your Ritz, and sometimes you don’t.

Dad was also known to make sandwiches. Very rarely PB&J, though. Almost always cold cuts and cheese. Or. Should I say, cold cut, singular. Because, a Dad sandwich was very often one piece of lunch meat, one piece of cheese, and two pieces of bread. No. Not making that up. And, this might have been as a result of scarring from his lunches back during his steel mill days.

When we were very little, Dad worked at Jessop Steel in Washington, and Mom packed him lunch every day. Once, Dad made what turned out to be the mistake of mentioning that he liked a particular kind of cold cut, pickle loaf, more commonly called pimento loaf or pimento and pickle loaf. Mom, of course, went out and bought some and made him sandwiches out of it all week.

And, believe me, it lasted all week, because we (read: La Soeur and I) were absolutely not eating that nonsense. And, Mom well knew it. So. Dad got all the pickle loaf. Which was fine with Dad. For a while. Because, Mom didn’t just buy pickle loaf that week. She started buying it every week. And, every single day, Dad was treated to the same sandwich, pickle loaf.

I suspect most of us, no matter how much we enjoy eating something, tire of it if we eat it too often, and such was the case with Dad and pickle loaf. But. He didn’t want to tell Mom, since she thought she was doing something nice for him by making his sandwiches with it every week. So, he made the mistake of complaining about it to some of the guys he worked with…and immediately became an object of good-natured ridicule. Each day, the guys would ask Dad what kind of sandwich he had, then laugh. Eventually, the teasing got to the point where Dad began finding out of the way places to eat lunch, so he didn’t have to, not only eat the pickle loaf, but be made fun of for eating the pickle loaf. That, however, didn’t work, as the guys caught on and began making fun of him for hiding while eating pickle loaf. Eventually, it came to a head and Dad asked Mom to stop buying the stuff. I don’t know if he ever had pickle loaf again, but, I do know it never came back into the house. And, I didn’t miss it. But. I digress.

The microwave. Dad was microwaving pizza. He tossed the slice in and started the microwave, then came back and sat down to watch more ball. Several minutes went by. The smell coming out of the kitchen went from good to, well, not good. Me: “Dad, how long did you put that pizza in for?” Dad: “Ten minutes!” Me: “DAD!”

I went out into the kitchen to stop the microwave. What was inside it was, basically, smoking and pretty much beyond description. The pizza had had pepperoni on it, and those slices were now the size of M&Ms and the consistency of, oh, I don’t know, diamonds. The cheese was completely desiccated and cracked like peanut brittle at the touch. The sauce had been vaporized into a hard red paint that was seared onto the crust. The crust, by the by, was now, basically, brittle cardboard. I picked it up and showed it to Dad, before taking plate and all over to the trash. Dad: “Don’t throw that out. I’ll eat it!” Me: “Dad, no human being is capable of eating that!” Fortunately, there was more leftover pizza. I nuked Dad another slice, and took out the trash. Because, I had to get rid of that smell.

And, it wasn’t just pizza. The ‘bro sometimes takes credit for inventing the Croissant Dog, because he was known to leave hot dogs in the microwave too long and they curled into a semi-circular shape that made putting them on buns impossible. On a croissant, however, they’d have been a perfect fit. Well, if the ‘bro specialized in those, Dad specialized in the Charcoal Croissant Dog. Me: “DAD! How long did you put that in for?” Dad: “Only five minutes…” Exponential, Dad. Exponential.

If anyone was aware of Dad’s, shall we say, limitations in the kitchen, it was Mom. So, she never asked him to apply heat to anything, ever. Oh, he could make himself a sandwich (though Mom usually offered if she were home) or get some chips or crackers or Fritos, but, heating something? Nope. Not even a can of soup. So. You can imagine our surprise when, one night, Mom announced that Dad would be cooking for us.

The mists of time obscure the reason Mom was going to be out on this particular Saturday night. Though it might have been the night that she and some cronies went to a Herb Alpert concert and spent a bunch of time trying to find out where Herb was staying so that they could give him a cake one of them had baked. (Member of Herb’s entourage: “Herb, some rando housewives showed up with this cake…” Herb: “Send that to the hazardous waste incinerator, will you?”) But, I digress.

Dad was cooking. Seeing the shocked (pained? frightened?) looks on our respective faces, Mom dropped the other shoe. Dad wouldn’t actually be cooking. Saturday was, traditionally, leftover night, and Mom had put aside some leftovers of one of our favorites, spaghetti. Now, we went from fear of severe gastric distress to excitement over getting to have spaghetti. The excitement would wear off.

Mom left for whatever adventure she had planned for that night, and, soon after, Dad ambled into the kitchen. Mom had taken care of everything, even getting out the pot the spaghetti was to be heated in (as this was pre-microwave) and instructing Dad where to set the burner and for exactly how long the spaghetti needed to cook. She even told him to stir it every so often, so that it would heat evenly. What could possibly go wrong?

Well. This was Dad and he was cooking. By way of explanation, let me tell you that Dad liked to season his spaghetti liberally with crushed red pepper. Being, like, six and seven, crushed red pepper was much too hot for us, so we never used it. Instead, we poured copious amounts of grated cheese on ours (so much that Grandma always threatened that we’d “get worms” as a result). Dad was aware that we didn’t use the red pepper on our spaghetti, but, that didn’t stop him from absentmindedly dumping a bunch of the stuff right into the pot with the warming noodles and sauce. Then stirring it in thoroughly.

As you probably know, heating red pepper flakes releases the oils contained therein, making them even hotter. Dad did not know this (again, cooking), but, he would find out.

Soon enough, dinner was served. We all three sat down at the table. Dad gave us each some spaghetti, then served himself. We poured cheese on ours. He put even more red pepper on his. We dug in…slugged down the water we had in our glasses, then raced to the refrigerator to get more. Our mouths were ablaze after just one bite. Dad quickly realized what had happened, and, after we put out the fire, he offered to make us something else. We settled on PB&J. Wisely, it says here. But, Dad was still plenty hungry, so he hammered down his spaghetti and ours, finishing the entire pot. He then spent the rest of the night dealing with the results. (“My whole chest was burning,” he’d later laugh. “But it was really good!”)

“Good”, my friends, is a relative term, and one never used to describe Dad’s skills in the kitchen. But. Any time anyone would comment on same, Dad would always smile and say the same thing. “I’m not such a bad cook! Remember that time I made spaghetti?” Yes. Yes, we do.