Monday, April 11, 2011

A JELLY OMELET

They always said my Grandma was the first woman to have a drivers license in Johnson County. I don't know if its true or not, they always said a lot of things but I'll tell you what is true.

Grandma made the best scrambled eggs I ever had.
She had this little Cast Iron Skillet, it was just my size when I was 4,and she would put it on the stove next to the strangest coffee pot I ever saw. It was glass,with a top and bottom, and the water started out in the bottom and it moved up to the top as you watched, and passed through the grounds and finally ended up as coffee in the top. It was a magical thing to behold, and even though I understand the physics of it today, there is still some mystery left within the memory. I've never seen another coffee pot like it, ever.

But back to grandma and those eggs. Her trick, that is to say what she did that made them so good in my eyes, was she would cook them till they were a little brown. My momma cooked them for me like that too, but she didn't have that little black iron skillet, and they just weren't the same. Especially after Grandma reached into the icebox, past the row of six-and-a-half ounce bottles of Dr. Pepper, and pulled out a little Grape Jelly to put on my eggs. Mama never did that.

Grandma would let me help her in the garden. She showed me how to clip off old blossoms on her Roses, and how to snap the little buds off the Mums, explaining how this would make the remaining buds bloom into bigger flowers. She was a member of the Grandview Garden Club, and had a flowered bonnet and friends that came by while we were outside to talk to her, and take a good long look at me. Then we might go hang some laundry on the clothesline, or she might take me to the Crawdad pond, right there south of the house before you got to the High School.

I remember one day after hanging the laundry she went back inside the house to get a string and bacon and a safety pin so we could do just that. I got a little bored waiting for her to come back out, and started to shaking the T-Shaped Laundry pole. It made a funny buzzing sound, and the laundry bounced up and down on the pins clipped to the wire, and the whirring buzzing sound got louder and I shook shook shook the heck out of that pole and then my grandmother was there at the back door to the house and waving her arms and hollering something but I couldn't hear what she was hollering because the buzzing sound was so loud and then I saw a hornet. And another hornet and another, and I started running as fast as I could because now there was that loud buzzing and a cloud of hornets all over my head and they were stinging me as I flew towards the house where Grandma was hollerin' for me to "stop shakin' that pole".
Because there were hornets in there.

What really kills me though, what I think of most when I think back on this, is how no kid in these days of excess would be happy with one little six-and-a-half ounce bottle of Dr. Pepper.

9 comments:

SL said...

My Grandfather ate apple butter with his scrambled eggs. I've never seen anyone else do it except me, because like so many other things, he was absolutely right. It's delicious!

SkippyMom said...

I smiled through this whole post because it reminds me of my Grandma. She made me kinklins and to this day the only other person that can make them almost as good - is me. No one else will even attempt them - and they certainly don't have a shop for them, but they still aren't the same as hers.

I love the mini cans! They are so cute and the perfect size to drink, because they don't go warm before you finish them. I have an 8 pack of coke in the fridge now, but those are cans. My FAVORITE are the 6 oz green bottle cokes. YUM. :) And those sizes are all the kids get - and they are happy to get one of those.

bulletholes said...

SL< i'll have to give that a try!

bulletholes said...

Hi Skippy! What the heck is a Kinklin? some kind of sausage?
You got you some good grandbabies i betcha!

Kim said...

yowza! I bet that hurt. I also bet that your G-ma had a remedy for hornet bites in her kitchen. How did she treat them?
{wish I had a DP now}

Kim said...

I quit drinking sodas a few weeks ago and have been really wanting one all day. Your post about DP put me over the edge. I went to the fridge and dug around at the back and found one of those 6 oz cokes that has either been in there forever or was just created for this moment. I am a firm believer in the power of the mind to create what it wants. I feel like I won the lottery. I'm gonna go someplace private and drink my coke now....

Barbara said...

Hornets can be nasty. I remember my mother stopping the car once as she was taking me home from school to help a poor little girl in my class who was walking home and at that moment covered by a swarm of hornets.

You are right about kids today. The Big Gulp concept has relegated those little bottles to ancient history.

Martijn said...

Steve, your Childhood Memories are an absolute goldmine. Fantastic stories. What can I say?

(But... ounce bottles? Isn't ounce used to express weight, not fluid quantum? Well, okay, Dr. Pepper can be expressed in weight too. Never mind.) Hey!

njamobile said...

Steve, another great story! I could see my own grandmother as I read about yours.