FlashNano2024 No. 26 The Beanpot

1888

I'm a beanpot and like all traditional beanpots I'm round with a cover.

Medora found me, brought me home. Every Saturday night she filled me with beans, an onion, a piece of salt pork and mollasses mixed with water and let me cook all day.

Supper included her children Archer and Florence and sometimes her husband Charles. I preferred it when Charles wasn't there. He was a nasty man and the meal was at its best tense and worse unpleasant. One day he left and never came back. Good riddance, I thought.

The only bad thing about him leaving: Florence, who was a great student, had to quit school in her junior year to work and bring in money.

1900

Maude has married Archer and Walter has married Florence. Saturday night suppers with me in the middle of the table were fun. Walter usually excuses himself early to study for his engineering exam.

1910

The family has moved. Maude and Archer are in a new house with their son Lawrence. Walter and Florence are entranced with their son Gordon. Maude and Florence alternate using me every Saturday night. The conversation might be about plans to finish the house which Walter and Florence  bought or something like the Shirtwaist Strike in New York. One Saturday night, Florence revealed she was pregnant. "We're hoping for a boy to play with Lawrence," Florence said.

1915

I stayed on the shelf for several Saturday nights. The family was in mourning. Although Lawrence and Gordon were healthy little boys, Lois from the moment she was born, failed to survive. Walter insister Florence get away for a day, but on the way to Gloucester, Florence became hysterical about going home. I heard her walk into the house from my place on the shelf, open the door to the nursery say something to the baby and shriek.

1917

Dorothy hasn't take the place of Lois, but her arrival has made the family hopeful again.

1929

I don't know much about the stock market and crashes, but the Saturday night conversations are teaching me a lot. I sit in the middle of the table. Walter and Archer still have their jobs. Medora is not that well and sometimes my beans are carried upstairs where she spends almost all her time in bed.

1941-42

Beans and rationing are the subjects at the table. Gordon is now grown and working as an insurance salesman. His blood pressure is too high so he can't join the army, which was his first reaction to Pearl Harbor. Dorothy has married a French Canadian, Jimmy. Maude and Archer have moved to New Jersey where he works for the telephone company. They talk about his climbing the ladder. That makes no sense to me if he had an office job.

A new little girl Donna is born. Dorothy is an over protective mother in my opinion. The wars go on in Europe and the Pacific.

1949

I've been moved to West Virginia where Jimmy operates a typewriter franchise, whatever that is. Everyone feels as if they are in a foreign country.They are called those damned Yankees.

1953

We have been back in our New England home for a long time. Somehow I got packed away and not "found" for a few months. It is so good to be back on the table with my bubbling beans. Bubbling beans. I love alliteration. I don't know who this McCarthy chap is, but Saturday nights everyone talks about him saving the country from Communism. I don't know what Communism is either.

1961

Lots of snow for JFK's inauguration. No one in the family is happy about it except Donna, who is now in college. So different around the table. Florence cooks, that's the same. Gordon, Medora, Walter are all gone. Jimmy and Dorothy divorced. Saturday is also game night after the dishes are done, although this Saturday night, they are doing a jigsaw puzzle with a picture of a lake. Everyone seems happy.

1990

A lot of time has gone by. Donna found me in the basement after Dorothy died, and quickly packed me away. I know I've travelled a long way to a place called Switzerland. She doesn't use me every Saturday night and sometimes she uses me during the week. She has a card written by Medora back when I was new that says how I should be filled. When company comes, Donna says I'm a family treasure.

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