The Boyfriend, The Brillo Pad, and the Well Seasoned Ironstone Skillet - By: Lynn H. R. - Taken from "Tales from the Blackberry Patch" - Personal - http://maxpages.com/prufrockcafe/The_Boyfriend_and_the

One of the things in Mom's kitchen that she valued most was her three ironstone skillets. Given to her as a wedding gift, she cared for those skillets almost as much as she did me! Never daring to leave them in water for more than a few minutes, she preferred wiping them out with a hot, damp dishtowel. As a result, the three skillets were the perfect example of what ironstone skillets were suppose to be. Smooth, well seasoned and black inside, nothing would stick to them. Over their many years of "just wiping out", they had become naturally non-stick.

Every morning Mom would go into the kitchen, put on a pot of water in her Corning coffee pot, take out her smallest ironstone skillet and fry up a pan of bacon. I shall never forget the smell of bacon frying in that pan, nor the sight of Mom standing there with a fork flipping it over to brown and at the same time making home made biscuits. Once the bacon was removed, Daddy would come in and scramble up eggs in the same pan while Mom would remove the biscuits and pour the coffee. My job was to set the table and put the butter and jam on the table. While we ate, the ironstone skillet would sit on the warm stove with a quarter inch of water in it until she could wipe it out. Once clean and dry, she would put it back in the bottom rack under the stove where it would stay until the next morning.

Those three skillets endured a lot for seventeen years. They had cooked hundreds of breakfasts, hundreds of salmon patties, and hundreds of pieces of chicken and steak. They had survived eight moves and a tumble down a flight of steps without even a scratch. There was just ONE thing they weren't ready for:

Boe

He was my first boyfriend and eager to make a good impression on my parents. Mom had invited him to our house to have salmon patties, pinto beans, and cornbread for dinner one night. He brought a bowl of potato salad purchased at the Piggly Wiggly and to my mothers delight, a little pot of flowers for her garden.

All throughout the dinner Mom and Dad smiled approvingly at him as he gobbled down five or six salmon patties . . . commenting on how wonderful they were. He even got bonus points when he asked Mom for the recipe so he could pass it along to his own Mom! And Daddy was charmed when he volunteered to trim the hedges along the porch.

All was going well and then even improved when Boe announced that he and I would do the dishes and clean the kitchen after the meal. Mom and Dad were floored . . . never in their wildest dreams did they imagine me bringing home such a fine, upstanding boy! They were thrilled and decided to take a walk down the street in the cool twilight while we did our job.

Boe took over, handing out orders as if cleaning a kitchen was something he did on a daily basis. He assigned me to washing down the cabinets and table while he cleaned the oven. Then he put me on drying duty while he washed and rinsed the dishes. With drying towel in hand I stood at the ready as he handed me dish after dish.

Looking over at the refrigerator, Boe quickly sized up the situation in GRAND military style and decided that the front of the refrigerator had to be scrubbed and polished. He fished out the window cleaner from under the sink and put me to work. I scrubbed that refrigerator with all my heart while he continued working on the dishes.

Glancing over a few times to take in the sight of "my boyfriend washing my dishes", I noticed that he was working particularly hard on moms ironstone skillet. Now I was seventeen years old and knew very little about the importance of the black buildup on an ironstone skillet. To me it looked as if Boe was doing Mom an enormous favor by scrubbing her skillet with the Brillo Pad. He was working tremendously hard, putting his entire upper body into that pan. Soon, little black chunks began to loosen from the pan and wash down the sink. Little specks of silver began to show through the pan and the gleam in Boe's eyes made me realize how proud to clean that pan he really was. We worked on, me washing the refrigerator and Boe scrubbing.

Eventually the majority of the bottom of the pan was free of the black and Boe was determined to render the whole thing shiny again.

Then Mom and Dad came back.

Daddy took one look at the kitchen and let out a thrilled "Wow"! Mom took one look at Boe working on her well-seasoned ironstone skillet and let out a thrilled, "NO"! Boe jumped as if her were shot, dropping the pan into the sink that was dotted with precious little black pan chips.

Taking one look at Moms face he realized something was terribly wrong, but he couldn't figure out what . . . so he just stood there, dirty dishwater dripping off his elbows. Mom ran over and took her skillet. Dad always said that for a second he wasn't sure Mom was going to hit him with it. Instead, Mom took it from him, thanked him for coming and opened the front door for him.

In stunned silence, Boe walked out the front door and left. We continued to date, Boe was accepted into the family as one of the fold, and was eagerly invited back to our home many times for meals. He always offered to clear the table and wash dishes, but Mom always insisted that the two of us take that walk in the evening twilight.

The pan went in a box of yard sale stuff years later, but was never sold. Instead, she passed it along to me for my hope chest. She held on to her other two iron skillets and continued to care for them same as always. I now proudly own the other two skillets. They sit in the drawer under my stove just as they had when Mom had them. I rarely use them, but it's very comforting just knowing they are there . . . black and well seasoned.

The frying pan that Boe rendered SPOTLESS that day hangs on my kitchen wall. Anyone who comes in usually asks about it and I'm always eager to tell them the story. As for Boe, well, we went in different ways ... he followed the military, I followed a shoe salesman and later found Eric!

I'm certain that one of these days Alli will bring home a dashing young man to have dinner with us. He too will probably offer to wash dishes as Eric and I stroll down the street in the twilight.

I plan to use my Revere Ware then.

Cowboy/Annie

"People Exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced." T.S. Eliot

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