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smoky dinner party
Friday, April 15 2016
The days have been getting gradually warmer, and today they somewhat exceeded norms for this time of year. The sun was out, and by early afternoon the best place to be was outside. I decided to take advantage of the conditions to repair the stone wall around the garlic patch, which had collapsed in two places. When I repair a stone wall, I like to make the repair much more substantial than whatever had been there (and failed) before. With that in mind, I set out down the Farm Road with the handtruck, looking for big blocklike boulders suitable for the foundation of a wall. There are lots of rocks along either side of the Farm Road, but they tend to be a bit more rounded than one would prefer when building walls. Still, I managed to find a couple really good ones that were so big I had difficulty getting them onto the handtruck. In the past I would take such loads out to Dug Hill Road and then to their destination via our driveway, but after all the often-cart-assisted firewood gathering there are now two different handtruck-suitable paths connecting the Farm Road directly to our backyard. When transporting very heavy loads such as these rocks, these paths prove to lean a bit too much and to run a bit too steep, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that I spectacularly spilled loads at least twice. It was warm enough that I was soon working shirtless. It was good to have the sun shining on my torso for the first time since visiting the Galapagos.
Repairing the wall meant digging all the way down to the bedrock and adding the big new rocks somewhat outside the oval defined by the existing wall, thereby forming turret-like structures. The only way to get one of the big rocks to where it needed to be was by rolling it across a bed of tender young Tiger Lilies just bursting forth from the ground. To keep them from being completely smashed, I first lay down a series of flat rocks between the lilies like stepping stones so that I could roll the big rock across them without pounding them into the mud.
Meanwhile Gretchen had begun cooking for a dinner party tonight, so at some point I began a smallish cleaning jihad, though the vaccuuming had to wait for Gretchen and her telephone to go elsewhere so the conversational therapy she was providing to a friend wouldn't have that roaring in the background.
Five additional people and one additional dog came to our party, and they started arriving a little on the late side of the appointed time. There was chaos in the driveway as Neville greeted the attendees of his first real dinner party. He doesn't really know to get out of the way of cars, so he just stood there in the way wiggling his whole body with excitement as the cars honked their horns to no effect.
I made myself, Julianna, and Lee vodka tonics using locally-sourced Core Apple vodka from the Harvest Spirits Farm Distillery.
When Michæl showed up with Penny, Neville retreated upstairs and hid in his dog bed. Evidently he saw Penny (a tall dog who could have had a Timber Wolf for a grandmother) as a threat. After a while, though, he decided she was okay and joined the party.
Just as we were moving on from our soup course to our risotto course, the smoke detector went off. David had said he was cold, so I'd just built up a hot fire, and evidently something was wrong with the stove. I went over to it and, other than being a little on the hot side, it seemed fine. Always the chicken little, Susan suggested I call the fire department. Instead I choked back the air supply and, got a ladder, and used a flashlight to examine the chimney pipe for smoke leaks. I didn't see anything obvious until I got a ladder and climbed up higher. I eventually found what seemed to be a eighth-inch inch gap in the junction of two pipes. There was a flame-shaped tongue of soot licking vertically out it, suggesting it had definitely leaked smoke at some point. It had probably been plugged with creosote that I dislodged when I scraped the pipes a couple days ago. Out in the messy garage, I found some furnace cement (it was a bit old, so I had to add water to get it to the right consistency) and used that to fill in the gap. When I was done, the pipe looked like it had one of those still joints you see in Moonshiners, where temporary junctions are typically sealed with a paste made from oatmeal and water. Once I'd done this, the miasma of smoke gradually dissipated. I returned to my place at the table and ate quickly; nearly everyone else had already finished. The conversation at that point was just about to turn to the topic of the wacky overstyled hair of the late 1970s and early 1980s. David referred to the severe feathering-back of hair as being "like two walls" on the side of the face, and I said that you can still see people with that hairstyle at the Hannaford and "you know exactly when they lost their virginity."
Everyone left at around 10:45pm, and I immediately began washing the dishes. It's amazing how many dishes seven people can generate over a three course meal.
Much later, Gretchen and I had a jocular conversation about that 1980s Ratt song called "Lovin' You's a Dirty Job." She'd never heard of it. After looking at the lyrics (featuring such poorly-considered lines as "I've got the glue to glue it," I started coming up with additional lines, including an ethnically insensitive one that ended with "Jew it."
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