Two big black skillets

My mom is going through one of her periodic frenzies of downsizing, which usually benefit Angie and me in some way first, then Mom's friends and then Goodwill. I have warned my mother sternly that if she keeps giving all her stuff away, her house is going to start looking like the world's biggest hotel suite, but she assured me that she is very, very tired of her many years of accumulated STUFF and wishes to open cabinet doors in her kitchen and see blessed tidiness and order, instead of a 9x13 inch Pyrex baking dish falling out on her foot.

Yesterday she and Poppy hauled a van load of stuff our way and these were a couple of the items I said I wanted: two big black skillets. This was how the conversation went, Mom being very businesslike in her chipper manner and me, a bit crazy around the eye at being trapped in a phone conversation that was looking to last more than thirty seconds:

Mom: I have a banana bread-scented candle in a rectangular glass container with kind of a rusty -- now, is that real rust or fake rust? Because I just don't know, all this rusty stuff you see lately. Whose idea was that? -- lid on it....

Me [slumped over the desk]: Sure. Candle. Banana bread. Rusty lid.

Mom: ....and I have two dozen cloth Christmas napkins with candy canes embroidered around the edges....

Me [praying for a merciful death to smite me]: Yes. Napkins. Rusty candy canes.

Mom: And I have two cast iron skillets, one that belonged to Grandma Houser and the other that belonged to Grandmother Marshall.

Me [springing back to life with a vengeance]: WHOAAAA!!! Those two cast iron skillets?

Mom: Definitely. They're huge and heavy and take up a lot of room.

Me: But they are HEIRLOOMS. You can't give them away!

Mom: Yes, they are heirlooms and I am going to give them to you, if you want them. That's what you do with heirlooms...you pass them down to the next generation.

Me: BUT HOW ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE FRIED CHICKEN FOR US?!?!

Mom [comfortably]: Oh, I bought an electric skillet for that. Much nicer. Takes up less room.

So from now on in our family, heirlooms are going to consist of small appliances bought at Wal-Mart for $24.99? Hmmm... It will seem very strange to sigh, "Oh, I have such fond memories of Granny and that toaster oven."

Anyway, the two big black skillets are mine, as pictured above. And yes, I figured out why my digitial pictures were so fuzzy: I was standing too close. Turns out there's a little zoom button you can use to, well, zoom in on things. Who knew! Now, if I can just figure out how to reduce the flash.

The biggest skillet belonged to my paternal (great) Grandmother Marshall, who was born Burnice Hoy in 1893 in South Bend. She graduated from the Indiana University as a registered nurse and was the mother of my grandma, Mary, Susie's mother, Margaret, and Carol's mother, Madeline, and our mutual uncle, Miles. (As I've said before, all those names, and I still had to become a Catholic.)

As far as we know, that skillet is at least seventy years old, possibly older. It makes the best sausage gravy, like, ever.

The smaller, deeper skillet is the celebrated fried chicken skillet. It belonged to my maternal great-grandma, Hazel Williams Houser, who was born somewhere around 1893 in Henry County, right here in Indiana. Grandma and Grandpa Houser lived on a farm when I was little and I enjoyed many, many happy hours there. There were animals, a big yard to play in, a garden to help weed, popsicles always in the deep freeze, and Grandma was never too busy to sit down at the kitchen table and play Old Maid.

I don't know how old that skillet is, although it is older than I am which makes it...*ahem*....a very young skillet indeed. Shut up. Okay. It's probably fifty years old.

Now they're mine and heaven only knows where I'm going to put them, but I am very glad to have both, heirlooms used now by four generations of women on both sides of my family.