Grinding It Out

Not All Memories Need Be Shared

My father smoked Polish sausage in a hand-made smoker which he built by soldering together two enormous steel drums. The fire would be lit in the lower drum and the heat and smoke would travel up into the top drum via slits he cut in the metal. The sausage would hang on a bar across the top of the drum.

I’d come home from school on some days, usually around Easter or Christmas, to find the drums glowing red hot in our driveway and I’d know we had some good eatin’ ahead of us.

He’d make the sausage by hand as well, using a heavy iron grinder that fastened to the edge of a table and which he’d crank where the sausage would pop out into its skins, ready for smoking.

All these memories came rushing back recently because a recent garage deep cleaning uncovered that original grinder, complete in its original, dented metal box, heavy to hold and weighted as well with memories.

I knew we had it but wasn’t sure where it had wandered off to, one of those things you lose track of sometimes. I was so thrilled by this connection to her grandfather, that I rushed inside to show Little Bean.

“Check this out,” I said opening the creaky box, “can you guess what this is?”

“Uhhh…” She pinched her nose. “Whatever it is, it stinks.”

“It’s a sausage maker. You grind the sausage there and turn the crank to make it.”

She looked up at me with a look that said, ‘I can tell this means something to you so I’m going to humor you, but really it’s sort of gross.’

I sighed. “Well, we’ll bring it out sometime and make sausage maybe.”

“Maybe,” she said and smiled.

Sometimes, memories are just yours. They don’t all have to be passed down every time.