My Aunt Jackie and Uncle Victor had a summer home in the Catskill mountains. It was paradise when I was little (actually it still is a paradise). They owned 100 acres of land and had horses, a dog, a pond, and multiple streams. It was never boring. And it was a privilege to get an invitation—and we (my brother, my cousin Richard and I) were always mindful to behave when we would vacation there---we knew a good thing when we saw it and we never wanted to jeopardize a return visit.
When my family would visit Aunt Jackie and Uncle Vic’s house—the “farm” as we called it—we almost always took my cousin Richard with us—this served 2 functions: it provided my brother and I with a playmate for the 2-3 days we were there, as well as it got my cousin out of Mount Vernon—it gave Richard a constructive thing to do—especially since his mother (my Aunt Fran) and my Uncle John both worked. My cousin Richard was our family’s “fresh air fund” baby.
Typically we visited the “farm” in August—my Aunt Jackie was off for the entire month and it coincided with my father’s vacation as a school administrator. But the weather in August was precarious—warm to hot during the day, and cold at night.
One of the things we liked to do was play in and around the pond. We fished and we also liked to catch things like frogs and crayfish and newts (baby salamanders). And we would catch them, play with them for a bit, and throw them back into their natural environment. Except for this one time. This one time we were catching newts and we decided that we should keep them as pets. And so we captured them, put them in a plastic container that my Aunt had given us to play with, and walked down with them from the pond to the house. Now we knew that maybe the adults would not really like our plan about keeping the baby salamanders as pets so we decided to hide them—and we chose the 2 decorative milk cans on the front porch of my Aunt’s house as the hide-out spot. We put the newts in the milk can with lots of grass and some water. And when it was time to go home from the farm, we planned to retrieve the newts, smuggle them into the car, and forever they would then live in fish tanks in our bedrooms.
That night however it was freezing cold—I mean actually freezing cold—as in the temperature dipped below 32 degrees. In the morning it was so cold that my uncle put up a fire in the fireplace and turned the heat on. And when my brother, my cousin Richard and I went to go check on the newts, they were frozen. And we felt terrible. But the three of us came up with a plan. We deducted from our knowledge of science that since newts were cold blooded creatures, that if we just warmed them up, they would start moving again---we just needed to fire up their metabolism. So we took the 3 frozen newts, placed them on the shovel used as part of the fireplace tool set, and put the shovel into the now raging fire in the fireplace. And we waited. And we noticed something—the arms and legs of the newts were moving ever so slightly and the abdomens were just barely puffing up as it they were breathing, and we thought that in a few short minutes we were going to successfully get those newts running around again. And so we waited. And my Uncle came into the room and said What’s that stink? What are you kids doing? And we told him. And he said that is ridiculous. And we said But Uncle Vic—look --they are moving—and he said they are moving because you are cooking them—they are expanding from the heat. Oh we said. We hadn’t thought of that.
So Uncle Vic came over, took one of the other fireplace tools and scraped the cooked newts into the fireplace. And he said nothing.
And the 3 of us were worried. Did we blow a good thing? Was Uncle Vic mad at us? Were we ever going to get a return invitation? And despite our concern we were too afraid to ask him directly. Uncle Vic was a quietly assertive man. He didn’t yell—ever--he just looked at you with disappointment-- and that was way worse than a temper tantrum. So we very contritely said We’re sorry Uncle Vic. And he nodded. We were okay. He had forgiven us for being stupid children. All was right with the world again.
When we brought my nephew Andrew to restaurants when was around 3 or 4 years old, he would shake salt and pepper into his water glass--- and then he would add sugar and sweet and low packets to it---and maybe some lemon too. And then he would stir it all together until it dissolved. Andrew called it “playing scientific.”
“Playing scientific” almost cost my brother, my cousin Richard and I a lifetime of “farm” invitations. Science is dangerous business. Cryogenics in particular.
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