Making
Hash
Kathy
Rhodes
I
remember when Mama used to make hash.
To
clarify, before the cops head out to 807 and put Mama in a hammerlock
and handcuffs and haul her off to jail, hash used to have a different
meaning back then than it does now.
Now,
it is slang or short for hashish.
I
discovered my gaffe in word choice and the gap between generations
when I googled “making hash” to see if I could find
a picture of the gadget Mama used to make hash with. There were
25,600 hits on “making hash,” and most of them had to
do with cannabis, leaves, stems, and blenders.
I
decided to see if the gap held in my own family, so I called Son
#1. “Do you know what hash is?”
“Hash?”
he said, “ha-shish? It’s like weed. It’s
a European or Middle Eastern version of marijuana, but blacker,
gummier, and stronger.”
He
didn’t mince his words.
I
asked Son #2 the same question. “Yeah, I know what it is.
It’s a condensed form of resin from marijuana like they have
in Afghanistan and the Middle East. It’s brown and comes
in little balls.”
It
sounds like he’s done his homework, too. I sensed a need
to scramble together an interrogation to find out how and where
they got their education. Jumping back across the Great Divide,
however, I stood on my own experience.
HASH.
A dish of chopped meat and vegetables, as of leftover corned beef
and potatoes, sautéed in a frying pan.
Mama
cooked a big juicy rump roast every Sunday, along with potatoes,
carrots, and gravy. She left it baking in the oven while we went
to Sunday School and church. We ate leftovers the following week,
but every random once in a while, Mama made hash with the roast
beef left over. I remember those times because the process intrigued
me.
She
had a metal hand crank meat grinder with interchangeable plates
to render the foods different sizes for different dishes. The
metal parts clinked and rattled as she put it together and screwed
it in place, clamped to the front of the countertop. It had a
crank—an arm with a wooden handle at the end for turning
and grinding.
We
had a circus-like kitchen floor, and I’d sit on the linoleum—beige
background with little spots of primary colors—and watch
her. She wore an apron over her shirtwaist dress, her hands were
in rhythmic and constant motion, and she always talked or sang
while she worked. Dad always stood around and watched, too. Anything
that involved a tool, he thought he had dominion over.
With
one hand, Mama would push meat down in the chalice-like cylinder
at the top, one clump after another, and with the other hand,
she’d turn the crank around and around, and the instrument
ground up the meat and regurgitated it through an opening in the
front, forming a big pile of pinkish-brown jumble on the counter.
Then
Mama would stick her hands down in the muddle of meat and diced
potatoes, scoop up some, form a ball, smack it between her hands
to form one patty at a time, then fry them all in Crisco in a
cast iron skillet. We’d plop ketchup on top and eat them.
It wasn’t the best dish Mama made, just the most memorable
. . . other than the time she coated chicken parts in sugar instead
of flour for frying. Hash probably took the longest to make and
had the most items to wash up afterwards.
The
parts of the grinder eventually rusted, and Mama gave it to Iva
Lou across the street to put in a yard sale. Thus, another piece
of my childhood—gone. My own children have never seen an
old-fashioned meat grinder, nor do they have a clue what hash
is.
Son
#1 passed a warning to me, along with his definition. “Mama,
if you’re gonna write a story, you need to know the definitions
of the words you’re using.”
Amid
snickers, his voice skewed sideways, as he told his wife that
his mother was writing a story about making hash—cluck, cluck,
chuckle.
“Ask
her if she knows what it is,” I said. “Ask her.”
“Do
you know what hash is?” he said.
“Yes,
corned beef hash, I know exactly what it is,” she said.
It’s
not a generation gap. It’s a gender gap.
©
Kathy Rhodes