by Paul Perkins

continued..

     One evening, I asked Linda how to work their stove, saying I was going to cook dinner for myself. She told me how to turn it on, and looked confused, maybe even shocked, that I didn't know how to work it without asking her. For her this was basic knowledge. For dinner I bought what fit the budget: Spam, mustard and white bread to make a sandwich. I wanted to cook the Spam in a frying pan to make it crisp. I turned the fire on, all the way up, and remember feeling uncomfortable with the way the burner popped on and made a low puff sound. I got a room temperature frying pan out of a cabinet and put the piece of Spam in it-without oil, butter or anything else to slick and seal the pan, which I then set on top of the fire. I used a metal spatula and a teflon pan, together! After about four minutes, it started smoking. It smoked and smoked, until it was too late and the smoke alarm went off, loudly. Linda came running down the stairs and into the kitchen: "What are you doing?" She raised her voice a little. There was an obnoxious amount of smoke by this time. Her 16-year-old son Damon came into the room: "What the hell?" I was a little embarrassed and panicky, to say the least, what with all the smoke clouding the kitchen, the alarm blaring and Mom and son staring at my disaster. Linda walked over to the stove and turned the fire off. She walked over to the alarm and turned it off. The piece of Spam, my dinner, was burnt. After Linda put a dribble of water in the pan to clear the smoke, I could see that the pan was burnt, too. I said something like, "I don't know why that happened," in a quiet, worried voice. I could tell Linda was really irritated with me. She said, "I just bought this pan." She then told me a thing or two about the proper way of cooking and stomped back upstairs. I didn't know how to cook, not even how to crisp canned ham in a hot pan.
       One year later, living on my own in an apartment with enough space to work on my art, I got a job cooking. This was real cooking, not like the two other cooking jobs I had had in the past, full of frozen food products. It was at a place called the Sun Dance Café a bar and grill. When the owner asked me about my experience and what I was doing with my life, he must have misunderstood me, because the first chef I met asked, "So, what cooking school are you going to?" I had told the owner, Dave, that I was going to art school and could do a little bit of cooking. The cooking part was, of course, a lie. Flipping hot dogs and slicing ham don't really count as cooking, but I needed a job.
       The Sun Dance Caféwas a great place to work. Even after they found out that I didn't know how to cook something as simple as a burger, they kept me on and taught me how to cook-and I mean from scratch. I told myself that because of this job, I would never again be a hungry artist burning Spam.
       I have survived and grown a whole hell of a lot in the heat of a kitchen stove. I don't need a freaky, big yellow feather. After all ... cooking feeds.