Things My Daddy Taught Me, Part II - Frying Eggs on Flat Rocks

     The art of frying an egg on a flat rock, balanced on sticks in the middle of a creekbed, is darn near impossible.  How do I know this?  The countless hours and eggs used by me trying to do it.  If you think robbing the chicken coop at the barn,  Mom's refrigerator, and a few mean ole setting hens was hard, try carrying them, riding bareback on a horse that had a mouth of iron and a mind of his own.  WHOA meant something entirely different to him, and only he knew what it was.  His name wasn't Savy Nada for nothing. It fit him well.  We'd gather up some eggs, wrap them in a cloth and then a sack, lead the horses to anything tall enough for us to step up on, then slide on the backs of our horses. Tempie, my best friend to this day, is the little rat in my pocket when I say we.  She learned a lot from my Daddy too, since we were partners in crime all the time.  It didn't take long for us to figure out it was going to take a lot of eggs, especially if we kept hauling them horseback.  The first couple of trips, the eggs just didn't make it, so we decided to walk to the creek with the eggs in a bucket.  That worked better, but knowing what I know now, we should have just settled for scrambled.  We'd get to the creek and build a fire in a small hole in the sandy gravel.  Next we'd go flat rock hunting up and down the creek and haul them to our camp.  We worked a long time making sure the rock was level, laying on our bellies eyeballing it real good, adjusting and readjusting until it was just right.  Or so we thought.  Next we let the rock get hot, hot enough to fry an egg by our estimation.  It got hot alright, so hot it busted right into.   Back to square one.  This time we didn't let it get so hot.  With our setup just right, we cracked the first of many, many, eggs.  Cracked it on the side of the rock and slowly poured it on our apparently, not so flat rock.  It slid off that rock, right into the fire faster than a blink of an eye.  Actually, we couldn't believe our eyes.  We both just sat there with our mouths wide open, in total shock.  We couldn't believe all our hard work AND our egg, went up in smoke.  Back to square one, again.  And again.  And again.  I could go on and on and on.  But sooner or later, wasting so many eggs became a big problem.  After enough eggs to feed a small army wound up sliding off that so-called flat rock, right into the fire, in stepped Daddy.  No amount of leveling, or finding the fastest rock, or begging, made any difference.  He was not, at all impressed with our little venture. 

      So, hence the lesson: 

1. determination and stubbornness, are not the same thing
2. chickens can only lay an egg a day
3. rocks out of the creek bed are Not perfectly flat
4. eyeballing is not the way to level anything
5. it's not honest to take things without asking
6. eggs from the store cost money
7. there are hungry people everywhere that would have loved to eat those eggs, including my Daddy
8. rocks bust before getting hot enough to fry eggs
9. Easter is not the same without eggs to dye, so think of others and not just yourself
10. waste naught - want naught