The Sugar Shack
by
Trey Taylor
Things didn't move very fast living on the farm, especially technology. It seemed when something new hit the market, we were always the last people to get it. My family was a little old school and I think it trickled down from my grandfather.
My grandfather just wasn't impressed with technology unless it involved farm equipment, and then it had to be something drastic like going from picking cotton by hand to a cotton picker.
Granddaddy, as I called him, was just a hard worker. I reckon it was the way he was brought up. I can't remember anyone his age being any tougher, and most people thirty years younger had a hard time keeping up with him. He worked in extreme cold or hot weather, and it never seemed to phase him. Grandaddy would work from daylight to dark, only stopping to eat at lunch or maybe take a thirty minute power nap to get him through the rest day.
Now when I say old school, I mean old school. He didn't like his drinks cold - only room temperature or well temperature. His food was cooked with lard and the closest thing to homemade butter as he could find. His milk wasn't from the store. It was bought at Snook Davis' dairy, straight out of container that came from the cow's nipple.
My grandmother, or granny as she was called by her grandchildren, cooked a homemade meal for him everyday if she was able, and it was good. I can remember her cooking for all her children, grandchildren and all the farm hands that worked on the farm everyday rain or shine.
This story pertains to the microwave oven that my grandmother got in the early eighties. She must have put her foot down at some point, or the girls told granddaddy that she needed one. Otherwise she would have got it.
I thought it was the greatest invention since the Six Million Dollar man. You see it could do the grandest thing - warm up granny's biscuits that had been left over from breakfast. If you don't think those biscuits were a prize, just ask some of the grandchildren about them. They were worth their weight in gold. I remember fighting with my sister and cousins over them on a regular basis.
The other thing that I can remember a microwave did well was cook a boiled egg fast. Seeing that my grandfather liked boiled eggs this made it easy for my grandmother to cook him one in a hurry. Instead of having to go through the long process of boiling them in water, she would poke a hole in the egg and cook it for about two minutes in the microwave. Sounds easy doesn't it?
Well on one occasion, my grandmother had gone somewhere and wasn't able to cook for my grandfather. So when he got home for lunch, he decided that he wanted a boiled egg. He had watched my grandmother cook the egg in the microwave, but had never seen her poke the hole in the egg.
So he gets the egg out, puts it in the microwave and cooks it. Everything is still going well. He takes it out and peels it. Unknowing to him the membrane has shrunk down real tight on the egg and somehow he manages not to puncture it while peeling the egg.
When he puts it in his mouth and bites down on the egg BOOM!!!!!! It goes of like a M-80 firecracker, blowing his false teeth out of his mouth on the floor. It knocks the glasses of his face and scalds his mouth pretty bad. Plus, by his account, it nearly knocked him out!!! After he shakes off the cobwebs, he somehow recuperated from the explosion and picked up his teeth and glasses then doctored himself up a little bit to go back to work on the farm.
Granny came home to find his false teeth on the counter. When he got home she asked why he left them behind. He proceeded to tell her the story and how he couldn't put his teeth in because his mouth was too badly burned from the exploding egg.
I can only imagine my grandmother trying to hold in the laughter. To my grandfather, this was serious and not a laughing matter.
Nevermind him not seeing her putting the hole in the egg, in his mind it was the radiation that caused the egg to explode. It was the dangerous machine in the kitchen, and he did want anything else cooked out of it. He was serious too.
I remember just about dying from laughter when granny told me the story, but you didn't dare tell the story around grandaddy. When he was serious about something you better not dare laugh about it, especially if you were a grandchild.
I'm 45 years old now and have never heard of this happening to anyone else. I am just about 100% sure granddaddy never ate an egg cooked in the microwave again, and to this day neither have I. Just precautionary measures on my part.
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