My Take
DiVoran Lites
Bill shows me the stress cracks in the round tray that goes into the bottom of our pressure cooker to keep things from burning on the bottom. I’ve never heard of a stress crack before, but I see them, tiny tracks from one air hole to the next. Bill studied them in Aeronautical engineering school, could tell me a lot about them. The engineer friend he admires could tell us even more.
I’ve used the pressure cooker for forty years. Bill’s aunt Jessie gave it to us. My dad used it when he and mother came to visit from California. He loved cooking beans, and he is still famous for them, at least in our family.
I cooked roast beef, custards in small bowls, and what on Sunday our boy called Pharisee chicken (for fricassee).
The block cracked on our Corvair right after we drove it from California to Florida with two toddlers constantly trying to climb into the front seat with mommy through the opening between the bucket seats. Is that a stress crack? No matter. This is what I recall about getting here.
We drove into amazing lightning and thunderstorms, dark jungle of night, no lights, frogs jumping in our headlights. We knew they were squishing under our tires, but there was nothing we could do. We were alone in the dark, no house, no car, no moon, driving on a raised highway on a bridge over a swamp like river. Nothing to do but keep going.
When we arrived at The Town Motel, our destination, I got sick in the night. The next day Bill went to work at his new job at the Space Center and the children and I stayed in the room all day. It was too hot to go out, anyway.
During the three weeks we looked for a house the children and I began to walk down to the Indian River and watch the fish jump. Our three and a half year old daughter walked alongside me, but our two and a half year old son sometimes needed piggyback rides.
We had come to a quiet place unlike the smoggy city where the children were born. We found a house, we found a church, we found the woods, and we developed ourselves as a family. I don’t think any stress cracks show now, or do they?
Old Things R New 