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December 22, 1965 It was within such an idealistic setting that Uncle Cap came for one of his legendary visits on this day. After becoming a widower on December 25, 1959, in subsequent years he developed the custom of spending Christmas with relatives, presumably to address the particular loneliness that understandably accompanied the holiday for him. He would alternate between the households of his four brothers, seeming to prefer those with young children. Uncle Cap was a jovial fellow with a big ruddy face and a generous smile. The slightly receding crop of stringy gray hair atop his head advertised well the fifty-six years he had known in the world. He was quite tall, with broad, thick shoulders - shoulders formed from shoveling coal in an underground mine for nearly five decades, work that for a man of his height had often been torture. When working in the mine he often had to move about on his hands and knees or even crawl on his side. Still, it was work nonetheless, and enough of it over the years that at the age of fifty-four he was able to retire from mining and buy a farm in Monroe County. When Uncle Cap visited he would always bring gifts, some for placing under the tree and some to be handed out immediately, the latter typically being candy for the babies. Daniel and his little sister, Bronte, would anticipate his visits with immense interest, often sitting at the living room window and monitoring the driveway for hours. Upon his arrival there would be great fanfare and rejoicing followed quickly thereafter by much gumming of treats. It did not matter if it was right before dinner. It did not matter if it was bad for their teeth. Adam and Nina gave the moment to the children, and perhaps especially to Uncle Cap. He would quietly sit and watch them. A smile would soon triumph over his face. And for a time, peace would rest upon his brow. The curative powers of happy babies cannot be overstated. Uncle Cap knew this very well. He had learned that for a few cents worth of candy, he could obtain the most potent medicine in the universe. Usually at some point during a visit by Uncle Cap, Daniel’s parents would go shopping in the city, go to a movie, or have dinner at a nice restaurant, sometimes not coming home until after midnight. On these nights, Uncle Cap would stay with the kids. Refusing to watch television, he would instead use the time playing games and telling stories, mostly the latter. Not conventional stories about dwarves or witches however. His stories were about the old days back on the farm. He told the stories with fantastic lucidity and enthusiasm. There was a reason none of his stories came from books. Being the eldest son, he had been sent to work in the mines at the age of seven, so he never attended school. Uncle Cap could not read. During the course of these evenings Uncle Cap would also prepare supper for the children. However, since most of his existence had been spent hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the earth, he never had the opportunity to master the art of food preparation. He always relied on the skills on his wife Natasha in such matters. Still, he had developed a tradition of cooking Salisbury Steak for her on her birthday. Despite his difficulties with cooking in general, with thirty-odd tries now to his credit, he was usually able to put together a pretty snappy serving of this one item. His few experimental attempts at other dishes had proven to be totally disastrous, mostly because of his inability to read a recipe. Experience had taught him therefore, to stick with Salisbury steak. So that is what he did. Around 5:00 p.m. Uncle Cap commenced to gather the raw materials for his signature dish that would be served to the children as their evening meal. He quickly surveyed the kitchen for the basics. These included some saltine crackers, an onion, a green pepper, various seasonings, and an egg. He located these and assembled them into a neat collection on the counter. However, in his haste he had not detected the essential pound of lean ground beef needed to complete the recipe. He looked in the fridge again - nothing there like it. He then systematically removed the contents of the freezer, hoping that a pound of hamburger might have escaped discovery the first time - no luck. Although he had never substituted before, he then frantically searched the entire kitchen for something, anything with meat in it that might offer the opportunity. Just as he was about to panic, he noticed something curious in the storage area beneath the sink. There, wedged between several containers of cleaning products, was a package of individually wrapped hamburgers. Joy, joy, the day was saved. As Uncle Cap gazed at the cryptic markings inscribed on the package, he fully appreciated the fact that he had not encountered individually wrapped hamburgers before, especially ones not needing refrigeration. But he’d never met John Glenn either, yet the earth had been orbited. The world was changing fast, maybe even too fast. He reminded himself that nothing should surprise him anymore. After all, he was very familiar with TANG, the concentrated orange juice substitute that, with much manly gusto, the astronauts were sucking through little plastic tubes in outer space on a daily basis. So it was completely reasonable to suppose that NASA had invented a reliable way to preserve hamburgers for the rigors of extended space flight. “What a wonderful idea!” he thought. “I bet these babies are space burgers!” Uncle Cap wasted no time combining the ingredients and placing them in the preheated oven at 350 degrees for thirty minutes. Sure, he noticed that the patties smelled a little naughty, but no worse than some of the day-old hamburger he had used before. He just added some extra garlic and pepper to balance it out. About twenty minutes into the cooking process, little Bronte came into the kitchen and offered a comment. “They don’t smell like the hamburgers Mommy makes!” Uncle Cap smiled. He then explained to her how these were not just regular hamburgers. “Don’t worry darling. These burgers are special. They’re space burgers, just like the kind the astronauts eat while up in orbit.” “The astronauts?” said little Bronte. “Oh yes Sugar, don’t you know that after a hard day of tooling around the universe in their rocket ships, there’s nothing the astronauts like better than to chuck down a heaping plate of hot space burgers and then chase ‘em with a jumbo squeeze pouch full of real TANG. Shoot, they're so darn good I bet they eat them even when they’re not in outer space!” Hearing all the talk about space and astronauts finally lured Daniel into the kitchen. His primary ambition, like millions of other boys back then, was to someday be an astronaut. By this time Uncle Cap was really jazzing it up, like he always did when telling a big story. After removing the pan full of Salisbury steak/space burgers from the oven and setting them aside to cool, he continued: “In fact, you ought to consider yourself to be very lucky, because tonight we’re going to have what can only be described as a magic space dinner.” As he spoke he was whipping up an extra big batch of TANG. Presently, he placed the pan on the table and put the gallon pitcher of TANG beside it. He dispensed a full goblet of the fluorescent orange compound for both children and then delicately sloughed a single burger onto each of their plates. The children looked at the burgers and then at each other. Bronte was the first to offer a comment. “They don’t look like the hamburgers Mommy makes!” “Yeah, Uncle Cap, and they smell funny too. Why are they swelled up so big? They look like bubonically incubated walrus snouts. And why are they pulsating?” Daniel added. “Bubonically incubated walrus snouts! Jeez son. You kids ought to try them before you start complaining. They’re so big because I used a special kind of space meat.” “Space meat. You mean – like meat from dead aliens? I don’t know Uncle Cap...” replied Daniel. “...Mommy never makes us eat meat from dead aliens.” little Bronte sheepishly added, as tears began to well up in her big, pitiful eyes. “Now hold on boys and girls, whoa there little doggies. I never said that. I said space burgers, that’s all. They’re made from cows right here on good old Mother Earth. That’s right. Earth cows. Cattle grown right here by fine American farmers. They’re special because they’re the kind that the astronauts eat. You’re not afraid to try a little bit of space meat are you?” Daniel knew all about space meat. He had just seen a movie called The Blob. He was very familiar with what a little bit of meat from outer space could do. Poor Steve McQueen had to use every fire extinguisher in town to freeze that pesky blob thing. But having his guile challenged together with his growing hunger finally motivated Daniel to act. He glared at the space burger. Wiping her tears, little Bronte watched intently as Daniel cautiously and gently tested random points on the surface of the pulsating burger with the tines of his fork, not unlike an astronaut might do before taking his foot off the last rung of the ladder of his space ship and placing it onto the soil of a strange new planet. There seemed to be some resistance, but nothing remarkable. Then, exchanging a subtle nod with Bronte, he eased the fork forward, penetrating the surface about half an inch. As he pushed the fork deeper however, the burger seemed to offer proportionally increasing resistance. And when he finally released the fork, the burger quickly expelled it causing it to strike the table with an extraordinary clang. Bronte screamed with fear. Daniel then looked at Uncle Cap who was radiating one of his famous smiles. Again exchanging a subtle nod with his little sister, Daniel retrieved the fork and quickly probed to the horizon reached previously. Upon achieving this level, he then with great prejudice, vigorously sounded the burger to its farthest compass, until less than an inch of the fork’s handle remained visible above the surface. Satisfied he had hit bottom, he made as if to extract the fork. Yet when he pulled on the handle of the stainless steel utensil, his tiny fingers slipped off the tip which had become slathered with grease. Then, as he reached for a napkin, all were suddenly horrified as they watched the remaining part of the fork abruptly disappear beneath the surface of the burger, as if controlled by some hideous intelligence within. Uncle Cap’s smile was instantly exchanged for a look of frankest concern as he screamed: “You kids get away from that thing right now!” Bronte and Daniel immediately complied, knocking over their chairs in the process. Trembling, they embraced one another against the wall at the opposite end of the kitchen. Uncle Cap took a pair of butcher knives from a drawer and boldly impaled the extraterrestrial protein sphere with such force that the point of the blade perforated the plate and lodged in the table. He then pushed the second blade down along the side of the first knife, thereby bisecting the dreadful meat being. With two more powerful lunges, the burger fell apart, lopped into roughly equal lobes, with the remains of the fork exposed in the middle, now only a twisted hulk of mangled steel. Upon the final thrust, all present would later swear they detected a barely audible yelp emanate from the burger. Uncle Cap then swiftly enforced the same martial policy on the other five alien spheroids, each in turn seeming to yield a faint death cry upon its closing breath. Convinced that the burgers were now lifeless, Uncle Cap summoned the children back to the table. They seemed hesitant. So to demonstrate to them unequivocally that the objects no longer constituted a threat, he decided to take the first bite. He hacked a sizeable chunk from a burger and clamped it into his enormous maw. The children watched very closely. He got in about three complete chews when he abruptly and in a most spirited way cast out the unwholesome material in a formidable cone-shaped plume. The greenish-red ejecta formed a cascading debris field across table, chairs, and floor. Many fragments united with the ceiling above the table. He then as quickly bolted for the door and prolonged his objections in the back yard. The children automatically thought the worst. As Bronte sank into near hysteria, Daniel instinctively went to retrieve the fire extinguisher from the cabinet beneath the sink. That’s when he noticed the empty Gaines-Burger box. He knew it had been full less than an hour earlier. He then made reference of the six empty plastic wrappers beside the mixing bowl. Logic subroutines cascaded in the higher order domains of his neurological tissue. He put the fire extinguisher back into the cabinet and closed the door. He approached Bronte and showed her the empty box. Her dismal weeping transformed first into sporadic giggles and then quickly to unrestrained glee. Uncle Cap had pretty much stopped gagging when the kids came out looking for him, and was finally able to sit up by the time they found him. He was resting his face on his raised knees, motioning his head slowly from right to left, as if caught in an acute bout of gesturing “no” over and over. Their dog Trixie, was wagging her tail and licking Uncle Cap on his ear. “Are you okay Uncle Cap?” “I’m alright now. Sorry kids, I just didn’t know.” “We were really worried about you.” Added Bronte. “Don’t worry about me. It’s them you should be thinking about.” Puzzled, the kids looked at one another. “Who, Uncle Cap?” Fighting back the tears, he raised his arm and pointed to the stars. “Those poor astronauts!”
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Uncle Cap retired early that evening. The kids stayed up and cleaned the stove and washed the dishes. Daniel used a mop to dislodge the meat particles from the ceiling. Trixie helped too. She was kind enough to remove every trace of the burger residue from all of the affected surfaces in the kitchen that she was able to reach with her formidable tongue, including the furniture and the linoleum floor tiles. By the time she finished, the entire floor gleamed like it had been polished by a professional home restoration expert. For her efforts, Trixie received a special treat. She was allowed to eat all of the space meat she could hold. She consumed three entire burgers before hobbling away from the pan. The kids wrapped the remaining burgers in aluminum foil and placed them in the fridge. After completing these important tasks, they went to bed. Daniel and Bronte were awakened the next morning by a curious noise. They looked out their bedroom window and saw their father standing in the back yard wearing nothing but his jockey shorts. His face seemed wrenched in a profound snarl, not unlike the look one might expect to see on a person who just consumed an entire unpeeled lemon. It was the kind of look Daniel’s grandmother used to warn him about. Whenever he made funny faces or crossed his eyes, she would say: “You better stop it young man or you’ll get stuck that way.” Maybe this was what she had been talking about. Maybe Adam had somehow messed around and gotten his face stuck in a permanent citrus snarl. He also appeared to be feeding the leftover burgers to Trixie. However, although grateful, she undoubtedly was still full from her late snack of the previous evening. So when she seemed somewhat unenthusiastic about what ordinarily should have been considered a tremendous windfall, Adam offered only a terse mumble. “I don’t blame you dog.” Then they saw their mother open the kitchen door and step out onto the back porch. She was dressed in her big pink frilly house coat and holding a cup of steaming hot coffee. “Adam what are you doing? Why are you out here in your shorts? You’re going get pneumonia! What’s wrong with your face?” “Never mind all that. Get on back inside and leave me alone. And by the way, how long has this meatloaf been in the refrigerator? You ought to throw out stuff before it gets spoiled. The damn dog won’t even eat it!” “What meatloaf? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t go getting all huffy with me mister. I came out here to thank you.” “Thank me! You mean for taking you out to a movie last night?” “No, for waxing the kitchen floor.” |