January 12 '02
Volume 290
Rotisserie Oven For The Man Who Has Everything
Returning to work after being off
It's a question for which most folks prefer a short answer, much like the greeting, "How are you?" that is best answered in a single word…"fine." If one is not fine, it's still better to lie than expose the questioner to all that ails you. It's okay to tell your best friends how you really are, but for everyone else, tell them you're fine. For me, a good Christmas is one in which I'm healthy, and my family is healthy; there's more food to eat than any of us need; the roof doesn't leak; Santa doesn't leave me a stocking filled with switches and ashes; the Christmas Spirit enables me to enjoy the act of giving, and through all the hustle and bustle, I'm still able to find time to recall the reason we celebrate Christmas. Anything above all that is "icing on the cake." My typical answer to the "good Christmas" question, is "Yes, I did, and how was yours?" And, I may add something about eating too much, though this year I managed to stop short of gorging myself. While I truly did have a good Christmas, there was one thing I really wanted that I did not get. I'm not upset. Surely, I'm not as disappointed as I was all those years of my childhood when I asked for a bicycle or a pair of sidewalk skates and never got either. Back then, I was dependent upon the graciousness of my parents to supply my needs, and today, if there's something I want and nobody gives it to me, I can always go out and purchase it for myself. I may have been fourteen or fifteen years old the year my dad bought a Barbecue King oven for our grocery store. Operating it became one of my Saturday morning chores. It was a rotisserie oven that used three light bulbs for the heat source. The bulbs were 1,000 watts each and were about a foot long and as thin as pencil. At twenty dollars each, they were not cheap. The rotisserie utilized six, aluminum, double-pronged skewers, each capable of holding five medium-sized whole fryers. The Barbecue King was made portable by setting the five and a half feet high unit onto a heavy-duty dolly. Each Saturday morning, it was my job to load the cooker and roll it from the meat market to the front of the store then wheel it outside and into the north corner of our storefront. Upon plugging it into the 220 outlet and setting the controls, it could be left unattended for about an hour and a half. At two hundred fifty degrees, the chickens would be a golden brown after two hours, but because they cooked so tender as to fall off the bone, it was a good idea to watch them closely during the last thirty minutes of cooking, just in case one or two began to tumble off the skewers. If one fell, it would usually cause the fall of several more, and on more than one occasion, I've known of nearly half of a capacity load to fall into a pile at the bottom of the oven. They were still delicious to eat; they just didn't look very appetizing. Once the chickens were removed from the oven, they were quickly dipped into a vat of barbecue sauce (specially formulated, and I remember the recipe), bagged in a foil-lined paper bag, and placed in the warming oven where they awaited a hungry customer. On most Saturdays, two or more cookings were needed to supply the demand. I'm not certain what spelled the demise of this form of barbecued chicken. It may have been a problem with rising labor costs, retailers overpricing the product, or it could have been the invention of plastic film, the kind supermarkets use to package most of the fresh cut meat items. If foil-lined bags were messy, barbecue sauces seeping from poorly packaged barbecued chicken were more so. Whatever the reason one and possibly two generations of youngsters have missed out on a food delicacy. Last summer I watched an infomercial on Television where a guy was hawking a kitchen appliance that brought back some mouth-watering memories of how good that Barbecue King chicken tasted. Roughly the size of a toaster oven, the rotisserie oven he touted had features I no longer remember, but he indelibly imprinted in my brain the phrase, "Set it and forget it!" I got enthused enough to write down the price and the phone number to call, but I hesitated, and thinking what a great birthday present it would make, I passed the information along to my wife whom I entrusted with sharing said information with my two children. When my birthday came and went without a "set it and forget it" oven, I figured it might still arrive on Christmas Day. A few Saturdays before Thanksgiving, I saw the same guy and the same oven on a different network, and the price was twenty bucks less. I ran (walked or called out, most likely) to get my wife to see what I had earlier described to her. "That's it! That's the one I was telling you about, and look…it's on sale!" I stated exuberantly. "If somebody wants to know what I want for Christmas, tell them that's it right there, the 'set it and forget it' model. Here's the price and the phone number." Like my birthday, Christmas came and went without the rotisserie oven. I suppose it's possible my valentine might produce one by mid-February, and if not, I could wish for one on Father's Day, and kids (hint, hint), my August birthday is not out of the question, but it is a bit long to wait, and I don't know how many more Christmases I'll live to see (guilt, guilt). If the above hints go unheeded, perhaps I'll spring for the rotisserie oven. I know the chicken can't possibly taste as wonderful as it did forty years ago in the age of the Barbecue King, but it won't be the fault of the barbecue sauce. The sauce recipe makes a gallon and a half, so I may have to cut it down for household use. Stay tuned, and I'll let you know how things develop.
Mop Broom Which Came First Eons ago, people lived in caves. In areas experiencing population proliferation problems, people adapted by building huts or houses, while others invented tents. I'm no expert on the development of family housing, but it has been my understanding that dirt floors were once common in America, whether it was in an Appalachian log house or a sod house on the Great Plains. Indians often lined the dirt floors of their wigwams with animal skins and/or blankets, as did other nomadic peoples. I can't say which came first, the mop or the broom, but I would presume the broom would serve a greater purpose on a dirt floor than a mop would. At least, one wouldn't have to worry about a broom sticking to the floor, whereas a wet mop might really gum up the works or put a glaze on an otherwise flat-finished floor. However, as wooden floors became all the rage among homebuilders, mops and brooms came to be a household necessity. Until the last century, mops were pretty much comprised of a stick with some thick strings tied to the end of it. Likewise, brooms were sticks with straws bound to one end. As an industry, mop and broom making didn't require highly skilled laborers, and even blind people got into the act. In time, people discovered they could line their wooden floors with rugs and carpets (probably read it in an old issue of The Frontiersman), and with these coverings being excellent dust collectors, sweeping the floors with a broom was gradually phased out. Oh, folks still kept brooms around to hem up the dirt in rooms whose wooden floors were not covered and for sweeping off the sidewalk, but by the middle of the last century, brooms were almost relics of the past. Once, while playing on the den floor with his son, John Jacob Electrolux discovered his carpet was terribly dirty. Being an engineer, Mr. Electrolux invented the vacuum cleaner, and life for the American housewife was forever changed. His idea was so good that competitors, men named Hoover, Kirby, Kenmore, and Oreck, designed and built a great variety of vacuum cleaners. Pretty soon, vacuum cleaner salesmen were going door to door to spread the word about this revolutionary new product. These days, one can buy a vacuum cleaner shaped like a broom. That's no joke; I'm looking at one in my computer room, as I type this article. At the end of a metal pole is a thin, broom-shaped vacuum cleaner with a self-contained motor powered by a rechargeable battery. It is designed to be used as a broom, with a sweeping motion, but it also sucks the dirt into a tiny pocket inside itself, so one does not need a dustpan. We've had the device for two years, and if memory serves me correctly, it's been used less than ten times. I guess it must work quite well, if the dirt doesn't come back. Personally, I prefer a straw broom to the electric model or any of those newfangled things with metal handles and plastic bristles where the broom straw ought to be. While the old-fashioned broom is still around, I'm not sure if it has undergone as many changes and modifications as has the ordinary mop. At the mention of the word mop, I think of a wet mop, but I'm aware of dust mops that folks whisk over polished hardwood floors to pick up miniscule particles of dirt and dust. As far as I can tell, wet mops have been around for a few centuries, and sailors once swabbed the decks of ships with them and probably still do. Like the straw broom, wet mops have undergone a metamorphosis of sorts themselves. The once common string mop is found less and less in modern homes. Instead, sponge mops and squeeze mops have all but replaced them. The dreaded chore of wringing the water out of a wet mop is gone. Why, at the flip of a lever and with gentle pressure (almost a feminine amount of pressure), the excess water can be squeezed from the mop head of a squeeze mop. I thought I was up to date on mop trends, until my wife brought a new one home last week. Hearing a commotion in the kitchen, I walked into the room to find her assembling her recent purchase. "Whatcha' doing?" I asked, curiously. "Trying to find out where the batteries go in this mop," she replied. Needless to say, she had my attention. "A battery operated mop? This I gotta' see," I mused. It was a Swiffer WetJet cleaning system consisting of three major components.
According to www.homemadesimple.com, "Swiffer WetJet is an all-in-one, ready-to-use system that quickly and easily cleans even the dirtiest floors. The prediluted cleaning solution can clean through even the toughest dirt. Then the disposable, super-absorbent pad absorbs and traps the dirt. Your floor is not only clean, it also dries in moments." For all the hype, it's still a mop. The string end of a wet mop swivels and gets into hard-to-reach places. The mop strings serve the same purpose as the cleaning pads in absorbing and trapping dirt, and the cleaning solutions mixed with water in a bucket are much less expensive and of a far greater variety than those used by the Swiffer WetJet. Sure there's some convenience in the disposable pads, the premixed cleaning solution, and the battery powered sprayer, but it comes at a much higher price than a common mop. I hope my wife loves it, because there's not much space in my computer room to store a seldom-used "cleaning wonder." Note: Portions of the above are tongue-in-cheek.
Bodock Beau The Shanty The editor tells me he has some familiarity with shanties of the sort described in the poem below, but I don’t know whether to believe him or not. Somehow, I can't picture him in one. The Shanty One of my bygone recollections As I recall the days of yore Is the little house, behind the house, With the crescent over the door. 'Twas a place to sit and ponder With your head bowed down low; Knowing that you wouldn't be there, If you didn't have to go. Ours was a three-holer, With a size for every one. You left there feeling better, After your usual job was done. You had to make these frequent trips Whether snow, rain, sleet, or fog-- To the little house where you usually Found the Sears-Roebuck catalog. Oft times in dead of winter, The seat was covered with snow. 'Twas then with much reluctance, To the little house you'd go. With a swish you'd clear the seat, Bend low, with dreadful fear You'd blink your eyes and grit your teeth As you settled on your rear. I recall the day Grandpa, Who stayed with us one summer, Made a trip to the shanty Which proved to be a hummer. 'Twas the same day my Dad Finished painting the kitchen green. He'd just cleaned up the mess he'd made With rags and gasoline. He tossed the rags in the shanty hole And went on his usual way Not knowing that by doing so He would eventually rue the day. Now Grandpa had an urgent call, I never will forget!!! This trip he made to the little house Lingers in my memory yet. He sat down on the shanty seat, With both feet on the floor. Then filled his pipe with tobacco And struck a match on the outhouse door. After the tobacco began to glow, He slowly raised his rear: Tossed the flaming match in the open hole, With no sign of fear. The blast that followed, I am sure Was heard for miles around; And there was poor ol' Grandpa Just sitting on the ground. The smoldering pipe was still in his mouth, His suspenders he held tight; The celebrated three-holer Was blown clear out of sight. When we asked him what had happened, His answer I'll never forget. He thought it must be something That he had recently 'et! Next day we had a new one Which my Dad built with ease. With a sign on the entrance door Which read: No Smoking, Please! Now that's the end of the story, With memories of long ago, Of the little house, behind the house Where we went cause we had to go! Submitted by Kenneth Gaillard A little girl asked her mother, "Can I go outside and play with the boys?" Her mother replied, "No, you can't play with the boys, they're too rough." The little girl thought about it for a few moments then asked, "If I can find a smooth one, can I play with him?"
Contributed by George Rutledge Copyright © 2000 - 2001 RRN Online.
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for
most of the two weeks comprising the recent holiday season, I've had a number
of persons inquire of me, "Did you have a good Christmas?"
