As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I think I was telling Richard and Stephanie about my Thanksgiving preparations and Christmas, as I am an odd sort, in while I am looking forward to the food, my treat is I get to cook in one of my hissing pots, a Presto.
I obtained two recently, a 6 quart and a secondary large canner with the rubber gasket, which I intended to use for Christmas in a roast goose. In a trial run on a roast, the 6 quart has a bit too much fluid retention in cooking and is almost too full, so I thought the big Presto would be my treat.
It has a top handle which was broken and replaced, and I really did not pay much attention to the 5 dollar cost as I put it in the garage and honestly forgot about until the Holy Ghost brought it to mind. Today as things warranted on slow internet, I went out and fetched it in, and noticed there was this old picture display in it like people had for casket shots or wedding photos. It was empty.
There was though a canning book from the 1960's from the US Department of Agriculture and the original Presto cook book, which had separated from the back. As I was fixing it, I noticed there were some things in it, an AT&T phone flier, a note which asked a person to please send a dress pattern for the 20 cents enclosed and then an old check deposit.
When I looked at it, I realized this was my neighbors from about two miles away, a German Dutch couple and then I became sad.
They are both alive, and I think close to 100 years old. They lived in what I would call a Norwegian house, as Norwegians always built these little frame houses with steep slanted roofs for the snow in Norway, and as wood was non existent the rooms were crowded with three people in them.
They never were flashy, and always bright white. They were forlorn homes with the look of a too thin Montana woman after nursing 5 kids and living on half rations all her life.
I remember as a child when they "sold out" and moved to town. They sold the farm place to a couple who lived by my Beloved Uncle, who had a son and a new house, but promptly on the old farm site, bulldozed everything, including the trees, replanted them so it is the same damned windbreak and put up a ranch house and a steel shed.
I like the people as they are nice, but it just bothers me in this canner cooker, as it signals they are now in the old folks home and the kids are dumping things in the junk pile.
Solomon wrote in the humanistic Ecclesiastics that all in Vanity of Vanities, and I look at this couple who are Franz and Lo, how they could live their entire lives of almost a hundred years in a an area 3 miles in the round, raise 3 children, be good neighbors, and my last memory of him is his driving by about 15 years ago to go fishing at the lake.
I never talked to either of them and my one memory of him was telling the story of naming his cat "Fuzznuts" and his granddaughter on storytelling at school told the teacher about Fuzznuts, much to the delight of the children and the discomfort of the the teacher, so Fuzznuts became Fuzznuh after that.
I just can not understand how people can have lives, their entire farmstead is gone. Her family which was huge Catholic only has one nephew in the neighborhood. His family homestead is falling down as it is owned by some inheritors a state away.
The canner book's copyright was 1954. So much has changed. I guess she bought it out of Sears Roebuck as there were no stores around here that carried anything, about like now in the internet age.
Inside she had written a sauerkraut recipe and a minced ham recipe that has pineapple in it. I do plan on giving that a go sometime as I have never seen that recipe before, but I suppose it was for lunch when people cut silage together as that was long after threshing crews.
I am going to cherish this cooker as it bothers me how people can live their entire lives, be good Citizens and all trace of them disappears. It seems impossible, but I have watched assholes tear down houses they grew up in and put up these inferior new homes with all those toxic poisons in them.
I can still see their house as we rode by on the bus. They had a couch on the porch and these three Norwegian elk hounds, who never moved. Their cousins one the bus used to just shake their heads, and use Franz words like BAHnure spreader of Manure Spreader. I still use that term for my own amusement.
I am sad though for Lo as I think that suffering woman deserved better. Then again maybe I care more about Lo things than she ever did. She took care of her things, but somewhere in this it was utility like the farm, in it was a living and once it was over, it was sold and they moved to town. Now that the canner is no longer necessary it is shed like a winter's coat in spring by her children.
I just am different in I remember things as a child. I remember things that matter to me and I keep them or lust after them and want them. I have my Uncle's binoculars, my Gramma's canner......still want my Grams other canner, I just think about things like that in they meant something. It is not that Lo had the world as they were poor like most people, but somewhere in this my not having anything translated a fondness and them having something translated as throwing things away, as in the in their children tossed this canner aside.
I probably am one of those people that all of my shit is going to be burned or thrown to the junk store. No one will notice the 22 short I have sitting on my clutter which is a momento of my Beloved Uncle. They will throw out my homemade lanterns and my odd pebbles I pick up will be thrown to the dirt.
It is romantic to look forward in my nothingness to cook two feasts in a Presto as I remember the things cooked in that pot for 40 years, without air conditioning and only because it had to be done as a good wife. I keep my bridges near and not too far. I make special those things mundane so that they will be an event, or I would not have anything to look forward to at all.
I was just looking at the canner and thinking, mine had wooden handles so it is really old and this one has plastic handles from 1954. It means nothing in my melancholy. I actually prefer Lo's as it is imperfect and has a history.
Odd to care so much about things no one else does.
Additional note, in testing this cooker as TL suggested, I steamed her up, and the thing smelled like a Tide whorehouse. Nom de Deus was toxic perfume. Put coffee in it, and that did not cut, then Mom said try vinegar which I scrubbed it all out.
Still am in process of getting this thing ready, but Lo what on earth did she do to this canner to brothel it.
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