In the passage of two decades, I’d come a long way in my definition of culinary esoterica, and was now simply seeking a big oval pan in which to stir-fry a few garden-variety veggies. Nothing fancy, no brush, and hey, I could probably expropriate skewers from the fondue pots littering the Goodwills of white-bread southern Oregon. I fully expected my search here could take months and might only resolve with a few mouse clicks and a credit card number.
But…one summer day while driving through the hills of a small rural community, I saw the signs: Estate Sale. After a very long drive (during which I was mostly muttering, "This better be good…"), I finally arrived at a huge plot of land in a drop-dead gorgeous setting I had no idea even existed. One of those tree-strewn patches of green grass and deep brown earth for which some 17th-century English poet coined the term pastoral.
I walked about ¼ mile from the parking area to the sale, where two gals in their 40s, husbands, brother, kids, and sundry other family members were stationed, trading words back and forth. Shopping the outside tables, I slowly pieced together that they’d inherited the property after their mother, then father, had died. I sensed the deaths had happened recently, yet they’d had enough time to pull themselves together and put on a stoic face, despite the daisy chains of memories strewn around them.
I inquired about a few tools I needed and was directed up a hill to a very large barn, where one of the husbands was assisting. I told him what I wanted, and together we rifled through dozens of implements that had evidently begun accumulating here before WWII had been decided. It seems that Dad had been a tinkerer, and for 50 cents a pop, I could assume ownership on any number of tools that, despite dings and rust, still had a bit left. The husband did his job well, carefully examining the ones I picked for their edge, degree of utility, and years left. He was not going to let me leave without the very best option for tightening my closet pull. $2.50 later, I had five starter tools I needed—and the assurance that I could return the 40-year-old Craftsman screwdriver to Sears at any time for a free replacement.
Walking back down the hill, I surveyed the land, pasture all around, a gracious small farm that had fallen into fallow status, as the kids had moved away and age and modern economics had conspired against agricultural pursuits. I yearned to see the inside of the house, though I knew from previous estate sales that homes of the recently dead often carry an eerie sadness. I walked through the living room directly into the kitchen and fought back a double take. The room, with its vintage stove and pantries, could have been the subject of a Norman Rockwell painting, or a page out of a 1940s Life magazine documentary spread about canning peaches on the farm.
I began sifting through stacks on countertops and open drawers. This was one well-equipped family. And aptly so at a time when cooking three meals a day for a family of six must have occupied much of the day. (No TV dinners, no pizza deliveries, no fudging it with takeout from the Whole Foods deli case…) Mom had assembled the culinary equivalent of Dad’s toolbarn, with everything one could possibly need to flip a pancake or bake an Alaska. In short, it seemed the very antithesis of my own childhood, in which my mom owned exactly one kitchen implement, a half-broken rounded spatula that she used to press down the chopped meat in the frying pan as if searing it into submission. I was tempted to purchase everything in the entire kitchen outright, take it home, and create a whole new childhood for myself, a new legacy. When friends stopped by to visit, I could show them pie pans handed down from Grandmammy. This would be the kind of culinary street cred you can only buy—from authentic country kitchens in rural Oregon.
Quickly realizing that this would be viewed as an Eastern city-slicker country-style grab, I decided to politely snag a few little absolutely darling objects (a wooden-handled potato masher from the 50s!) to brighten my gadget collection. However, I had never shopped such fascinating kitchen drawers, so had to employ some Herculean restraint.
In the midst of this internal tug-o-war, it occurred to me that a cook this dedicated might just have…
Impossible. This was not Paula Deen’s Food Network kitchen. This was not even a suburban NJ circa 1989 kitchen. But when one of the women asked if she could help me, I thought it worth inquiring.
Got wok?
Impossible not to note was a certain black protrusion from its right side, which the gal summoned her sister to see. “Check this out—it looks like a Dad special,” she said with a big smile. The other woman just laughed. Seamlessly and very securely bolted onto the pan was a thick, black, long braided handle. “That was Dad, all right. That’s just the kind of thing he’d do for her. Took it out in the shop and just went to town on it. But it’s practically brand new—I don’t know if she ever used it.”
They both exchanged glances and the room got very quiet, like they were about to cry. I could have cracked a few tears myself. We stood there silently taking in his work. Finally I asked them, “Did you both grow up here?”
“We spent our whole lives here until we both got married. Have you seen the rest of the house?” They led me down the hall toward the bedrooms and let me explore by myself. Each room was quiet, spare, simply decorated: a table, a lamp, a twin bed or two, a framed reproduction on the wall. Yet each room felt clear and orderly, like it seemed to have enough. Not overstuffed. Just right. The bookcases held a few Reader’s Digest condensed books, The Joy of Cooking, farmer’s almanacs, maps, car manuals, East of Eden, a Carl Sandburg collection… The closets held clothes and some board games: Parcheesi and checkers, Scrabble, Chutes and Ladders. And from every window, views of rolling hills, vibrant green vistas, and sky. I wanted to return when the stars came out. I longed to hunker down in one of these bedrooms with its peeling floral wallpaper and sit in the blonde straight-backed chair, set a ream of paper beside a Smith-Corona typewriter, and stack crisp, clean sentences into a novel.
I tried to imagine myself growing up here, on what was probably the only house for acres and acres, just me and my family, the crops, animals, the farm chores, the cycle of the seasons, a few books, a few games, the only connection with the world beyond a static-y radio. In a sense I couldn’t begin to conceive of it, so different was it from my own youth in the path of a relentlessly charging, hungry ghost of a city. A place where it was just me and two parents, lobbing grenades in an all-out civil war. A place where tempers flew with no rhyme or reason across dinners that were served late and cold. A place where each day I tried to piece back together an eggshell china bowl that had shattered to bits the night before.
What would it be like to lie on one of those hills, flower in hand, staring up into the heavens like the girl in the Wyeth painting? To gaze into a clear pond in autumn and see my reflection cast beside red and gold leaves, a single fluid canvas? To spread out into the arms of childhood knowing that mom and dad, the earth and the sky, had me tucked into their wings—warm, safe and well-fed?
And so this wok sits in my kitchen, on the eve of a new year, reminding me of that family, that house, that plot of land, the love a farmer showed his wife, the love that wife showed her family. It’s amazing how concave objects can carry so much, like vessels of memory—those of our selves, those of others, which become our North Stars.
