HOMEWORK
I Learned
It Myself
By
Harriman Nelson
It beckoned. From the middle of the living room, it sat with a couple of old dolls,
stuffed animals that had certainly seen better days, and an even older fairy castle. The items were apparently destined for new homes or the trash, but this one item shone like a beacon of comfort and warmth.
God
knew I needed some. So did my best friend Jiggs, who’d I dragged with me.
I needed
some R&R from another long boring cruise on a cramped, antiquated sub which should have been scrapped years before. Jiggs was in the doldrums and needed a change of pace after having had to put up with
his posting as an aide to the Commander of Submarines Atlantic for the past year.
Little
had I realized that we’d be coming to an empty house, my parents not having planned on their sailor son to come home from the sea any time soon. I hadn’t been able to contact them about my
unscheduled leave, but I’d had no idea they’d go and flee to Florida. I suppose I should have thought about it.
It wasn’t the first time they decided to leave snowed under Boston for the sunshine state.
Apparently,
they’d also taken the live in staff with them and let the day staff off
for the duration, at least that’s what the bank manager said when I called to make sure nothing was wrong. (If anyone
knew anything about the Nelsons coming and goings, he did.)
“Well,
at least they left the power on,” Jiggs slapped me on the back. That was his way of trying to make me fell batter.
“And
the heat,” I added, finding myself walking toward the old toy. “I never knew Edith had one of these.”
“The
packaging is pretty good marketing,” Jiggs said as he fingered the artwork of the cakes, brownies and cookies on the
original package of the EZ Bake Oven. “I remember the ads on TV, ‘so
easy a child can do it’, or something like that. Not too bad looking for something baked by a light bulb. Hey, it still
has some packaged mixes in it! And utensils! You know, this might be worth something.”
“Only
if it works,” I said, not realizing that collectors might not care if it worked. The value of old stuff can be complicated.
“Those
brownies sure look good,” Jiggs said of the picture on the box.
I think
he was drooling. I know I was. Our captain didn’t think cookies or brownies were the kinds of things his crew should be eating. He thought
such things were ‘effeminate’. And in those days, that also meant
‘soft’. And no crew of his was going to be soft if he could help it. I’d tried pointing out to him once
that the chemical equations of such items were variations of bread and cake,
but after he raised his eyebrow at me, I didn’t dare mention it again.
“Harry?”
Jiggs interrupted my musings, “you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Needless
to say I was soon in charge of precise measuring while Jiggs was the master of the spoon. We gave nary a thought to the fact
that the premade mixes that came with the oven were old. But in our defense,
there were no ‘use by’ dates on packages back then.
“Harry?
It’s not working.”
“Maybe
the light bulb’s burned out, “ I replied.
“Do
you smell something burning?”
“Well,
it’s sure as hell not the cookie. It’s not even baking.”
“Uh
oh,” Jiggs said. “You got a fire extinguisher?”
“Damn!
The wire’s fried!” I yelled and unplugged the unit.
“Shit. Just when I was in the mood for a homemade cookie.”
“All’s
not lost,” I said, “I don’t have a master’s in electrical engineering for nothing. There may be some
electric wires from my old lab downstairs.”
“Lab?”
“Yeah,
I was a smart kid. As long as I didn’t blow up the house my father didn’t mind. And the basement’s good
and solid. Now, you go get a new light bulb from that cabinet over there. Just to be on the safe side. Let’s fix this
sucker! “
Our
first attempt repairing the oven was a lesson on how to use the fire extinguisher before the unit melted .
The
second attempt was learning how not to use anything other than a standard, incandescent light bulb over 100 watts. The ‘soft light’
bulbs don’t work either.
By the time we got the oven to a reasonable state of readiness, at least we hoped so, the packaged mixes were about used up. We weren’t even sure if there was enough
to make anything else.
Jiggs
spooned what he could of the last of the dough onto the little cookie sheet.
“Here
goes,” he said, crossing his fingers.
I suppose
no EZ Bake oven has ever had anyone wait and watch so intently, continually checking
for any accident waiting to happen, while checking our watches almost continually.
‘Five,
four, three, two, one, zero,” I said as if I was at the fire control panel of my boat’s torpedoes.
“Harry?
Just what does golden brown mean?” Jiggs asked.
“How
the hell should I know? I’m a submariner, not a cook....it looks set though...”
“It
doesn’t look like that on the picture,” Jiggs pulled over the box.
“Maybe
a couple more minutes.”
‘Tick...tick...tick..’
my watch sounded loud to my ears as we waited. And waited. And waited. Or so it seemed.
“This
is just no damn good, Harry!” Jiggs fumed and opened the drawer.
“Be
careful! That tray’s hot!” I warned.
“Well
it can’t be that hot if it didn’t even bake the damn cookie and...ow!” he dropped the tray, and the lone
cookie onto the floor.
“It
didn’t break!” I exclaimed in surprise, picked it up and began to examine it. “It feels like a cookie should
feel, only...uh, Jiggs, I think we over cooked it. Kind of hard. Doesn’t look burned but...”
“Here,”
he snapped the cookie into two pieces. “We went to too much trouble to consider where it landed, road salt and snowboots
be dammned,” he popped it into his mouth.
“Well?”
I asked, anxiously.
“Tastes
like sawdust. But...we did it Harry. We actually baked a cookie.”
“Must
have been the mix.”
“Of
course! That’s it!” Jiggs said, spraying me with crumbs, “c’mon, let’s go to the store. They
got to have something like this in stock, don’t they? I mean, they haven’t discontinued this toy, have they?”
“You
can’t be serious Jiggs. Just let the thing cool down and we’ll pack it up for the jumble sale like it was originally
intended.”
“Aw
c’mon Harry. After all, we know how to use the thing now...surely a new one won’t have any kind of electrical
or light bulb problems, not to mention outdated mixes. Besides, I’m still in the mood for a homemade cookie.”
“Will
that be all gentlemen?” the clerk at the toy counter asked. “Do you want this gift wrapped? And how old is the
child? We have to ask because the product is not recommended for anyone under 8 years old.”
“Um,”
I felt my face turning red. “No gift wrap. No problem with the age,” I forked over my hard earned cash, took the
box and fled, while Jiggs just laughed.
Needless
to say, the new EZ Bake Oven worked to perfection. In fact, we two became rather proficient with it. Except for Jiggs over
cooking one batch of brownies because
he didn’t pay attention to the directions quite as scientifically as I did. Not that my brownies or cookies were in
the same class as those at a bake sale, but at least they were homemade and immeasurably comforting.
So,
what did I learn?
Never
underestimate the power of an old light bulb.
