One of the writing groups had a prompt which reminded me of something that happened with my father. I don’t even remember exactly where it came from but I remember what it made me think of. I had found a picture about a month ago of an old pressure cooker that looked exactly like mother’s old pressure cooker. After mother was in the hospital following her stroke I was cooking dad a pot roast in the pressure cooker.
As usual dad was out at his boat. He was a big time fisherman mainly on Stanton River down near the Virginia, North Carolina border. For the first ten years of his lodge’s annual fish fry he caught enough fish to feed over 200 people. It was his pleasure to have an excuse to go fishing a lot all summer to be able to provide fish for his lodge’s fish fry. He was always inventing a way to make his fishing trips better, and safer. He could drop and raise anchors at both ends of the boat from one end; along with other time and labor saving devices he invented. He was always tinkering with one idea or another. If you wanted to find him the first place to look was the boat.
That is where I found him when the roast was ready. I stepped out on the porch and told him, “The roast is ready; we can eat as soon as the pressure goes down.” I thought he understood me and went about my business. In a few seconds I heard a boom. Dad’s hearing was not that good apparently, he only heard the first part and came right in and opened the pressure cooker. I rushed downstairs and found most of the roast in the hallway at the foot of the steps. The carrots were stuck to the ceiling hanging like stalactites. The potatoes were wherever they landed after bouncing off the ceiling they were to heavy to hang off the ceiling.
