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Last Laugh
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The SkilletBy Patrick F. McManus Pat's all-time favorite camping cookware Apr 11, 2008
The first camp stove I ever used was about the size of a deck of cards. It burned little white tablets which smelled something like kerosene. When my friend Gene and I were about 9, we caught a couple of little trout and decided to cook them over one of the capsules, mountain-man style, if mountain men used little aluminium camp stoves.
We threaded the trout on a sharpened stick and held them over a blazing tablet on the stove. The fish were delicious, particularly if you liked the taste of kerosene as much as we did. After our lunch, I developed a headache that could only have been worse if someone had driven an ice pick into my forehead all the way up to the hilt. In later years, I got this headache every time I caught a whiff of kerosene. I've never known the reason.
I probably bought the little camp stove from Henry P. Grogan, owner of Grogan's War Surplus. Grogan was always trying to kill me. He would sell me mountain tents that you couldn't get out of in an emergency. Sometimes when I heard some monstrous creature sneaking up on me, I'd have to run all the way home in the tent. Fortunately, my home was usually only ten feet away, but ten feet can seem pretty far when you have a monstrous creature after you. Grogan also sold me machetes and hatchets and knives and bayonets, anything that might cut off a body part if you happened to fall. He would even sell me black powder with which to make my own fireworks.
"How much powder you want?" "Oh, about fifty-cent's worth."
Grogan would pick up a scoop, dip it in a barrel of black powder, and fill up a little paper bag. It did occur to me that if Grogan happened to drop his lighted cigar in the barrel, half the town would be levelled. Fortunately, I lived three miles out in the country. (Oddly, townspeople claimed a sense of security from this fact also.) If I'd had the money, Grogan probably would have sold me a flamethrower. I could have used one, too, because we had a lot of thistles and stumps on our farm that I could have removed. Also, there was a bully who lived across the creek from me: "Okay, Raymond, one more step and you're toast."
I suspect Grogan also sold me my next little cook kit. It was made out of aluminum and consisted of a cup, pot, fork-spoon-knife combo, and frying pan, all of which fit together into a tidy little unit that was fastened together with something you did with the frying pan handle.
The little cook kit was not totally useless. I say this only for the reason that I carried it with me on camping trips for the next 40 years. It was one of those objects that survive only out of the belief that it might somehow come in handy. As far as I can recall, it never did. Perhaps if I had camped alone, the cook kit might have served adequately, but there were always at least two of us on every adventure and usually four. So over the years I put together a camp kit that would serve at least that many. Among these utensils was a full-size aluminum skillet. My friend Vern, who almost always served as our camp cook, hated that skillet, even though it was the only skillet we used for years. The sides of the skillet, for one thing, were much too low, and grease from, say, bacon would often dribble into the fire. This would result in bacon flambé. The bacon always turned out to be edible, provided you like extra-extra-crispy as much as we did. The problem was Vern's intense hatred of that skillet. He said it wasn't fit to cook a decent meal in, and if we didn't get rid of it, someone else would have to cook. Then he realized what he was saying. "Wait! I take that back. What we're going to do is find a regular cast-iron skillet. It will be worth the extra weight."
The only problem with the skillet was its weight. That wasn't so much of a problem at the beginning of a hike into the mountains. Then it probably didn't weigh much over ten pounds, but the person assigned to pack it always swore that by the end of the hike the skillet had put on 20 pounds for every mile covered. You might think the person was exaggerating but he wasn't. From the times I carried the skillet, I can report that in fact he was being cautious in his estimate, probably because he worried we might think he was lying.
Eventually, we got into terrible arguments about who had to carry the skillet. Finally, Vern said he had an idea.
"Look, most of the time, we hike into Ball Lake and camp there. So we'll just leave the skillet up there. That way we won't have to pack it in but one more time." "Some other campers might steal it," Kenny said. "What's your point?" Norm said. "Don't worry," Vern said. "I'll find a secret hiding place. We can wrap the skillet in a sheet of plastic to keep it from rusting and then I'll stash it away some place."
So, on our next trip to Ball Lake, after we had packed up and were ready to head home, Vern wrapped the skillet up in plastic and said, "Okay, now I'm going to hide it. You guys all stay here and after I get back, you go look for it. If you can't find it, we can be pretty sure nobody will just accidentally stumble on it."
That's what we did. For an hour or so we searched in every nook and cranny, under every rock and log on that side of the mountain, and could not find the skillet. On all our future trips to Ball Lake, Vern would make us all stay in camp while he went out to his secret spot and retrieved the skillet. I have lost count of the number of years the skillet has been hidden away up there at Ball Lake.
Vern died last year. Several of his vital parts failed him and he expired. I have not yet been able to forgive him for this act of treachery. Nevertheless, I have a theory about dying and that is that we float away in a wonderful state of freedom and then can go wherever we want. I suspect that Vern would have gone up to Ball Lake, our favorite camping place in the whole world. Maybe I'll run into him up there sometime. I hope so. I want him to tell me where he hid that blasted skillet!
Illustrations © Daniel Vasconcellos 2008
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I'm not sure which member of our camping group produced the skillet, because all our families had three or four of these big black cast iron skillets. This was because the families canned rabbit, chicken, and wild game, and used multiple skillets first to brown the meat. The skillet was a monster. My favorite story as a little kid was of someone skating around in one of Paul Bunyon's skillets, a grease rag strapped to each foot. Our skillet reminded me of Paul's. Vern used the skillet to cook all our meals, everything at the same time: bacon, fish, fried potatoes and onions, pork 'n' beans, whatever. In fifteen minutes or so, he could cook enough pancakes for the whole troop of us, with some left over to be used as bread. (Camping tip: We'd spread peanut butter on the pancakes, roll them up, and use them as rolls as sandwiches on our day trips away from the main camp to other lakes in the area.) Our meals improved a thousand percent with the new skillet. 
