Forget about listening to your favorite weather person for the daily forecast. Nothing says you’re in the middle of a steamy Georgia summer more than green eggs and melted crayons.
And there were no summers steamier than those during the seven years when we were making childhood memories while growing up a long, long time ago on that old familiar street not so far away called Flamingo.
A warning to all my young readers out there: Yes, it is possible to fry an egg on pavement, but please don’t try to eat green eggs. Even a small bite will make you very sick. I should know; I witnessed such a foolish feat.
Fortunately, this time it wasn’t me or my three brothers who did the foolish eat. That honor went to the largest kid who ever lived on Flamingo: Bubba Hanks.
When we woke Saturday morning, my brothers, The Sister and I didn’t know exactly what we were gonna do for the entire day. Sure, it being the middle of summer we would play, but playing at what? We argued that question over breakfast.
The Sister wanted to stay inside and help Mom, then play with her Barbies. We boys wanted to get outside as soon as possible. Not just because we loved being outside during the summer, which we did. But because it wouldn’t take long for The Sister to discover her Barbies were missing their heads again.
Barbie heads all were in a good place
Now in our defense, Barbie heads were the ideal size, weight, and shape as projectiles to be flung by our slingshots. Besides, they weren’t lost. We knew where they were, just not exactly where they were. The high weeds covering the vacant lot across the street were keeping the Barbie heads nice and safe.
Right after breakfast, my brothers and I went outside and soon met up with the other kids on Flamingo for an epic morning of bike riding. It had taken two days for the crews to finish their repaving of Flamingo, and it was finally time for us kids to make our first test rides.
After hours of racing, jumping ramps, and playing bike tag, we decided that the new smooth surface made our bikes go faster than ever. Finally collapsing on our front lawn, lying back in the tall fescue grass trying to cool off, we realized how hungry we were. It had to be lunch time, but we were too tired to get up. And that’s when Bubba came up with his idea.
“Wouldn’t it be great, if we didn’t have to go inside for lunch?” Looking over at the waves of heat coming off the pavement he pointed, “It’s so hot, bet we could cook an egg out there.”
Now we had found something to do
Bursting through the front door, we almost ran into Mom heading back to the basement with a load of laundry. She asked us what we were doing, and we answered her with pride, “We’re going to fix our own lunch.”
“Good idea. I’ll be in the basement for the next couple of hours.” As we retrieved a dozen eggs and a stick of butter from the refrigerator and a plate and fork from the cabinet, Mom could be heard in the basement yelling. She did that a lot while doing laundry. Guess the laundry monster was giving her fits again, or she had found another frog in our pocket we’d forgot to let free. We would’ve helped her catch the frog, but we had lunch to fix.
Heading back outside, I grabbed a pack of crayons, thinking if the street was hot enough to fry an egg, then it would be hot enough to melt crayons. And no, none of us were going to eat cooked crayons right off the street – we were smarter than that. But eggs?
Kid’s Logic
If asked, parents would say that some things their kids do are not just logical. But then again, they are thinking like adults. Ask kids why they did something dangerous, and more often than not, they’ll say one of two things: “I don’t know” or “We thought nobody would get hurt.”
The Kid’s Logic that we used: You don’t cook eggs in a dirty, cold pan without butter. No cars had driven on our newly paved street yet, so that meant it had to be clean. And the waves of heat coming up off of the blacktop proved to us it sure was hot enough. That, and even Goofy Steve was wearing shoes, and he never wore shoes during the summer.
Chef Bubba
Bubba Hanks started by melting a stick of butter on the street. After all, we didn’t want the eggs to stick so they couldn’t be flipped over. After cracking the eggs, the entire dozen was soon frying on the street. Peeling off the paper wrappings, we placed the crayons next to the eggs just to see which would happen first. Would the eggs cook first, or the crayons melt?
It was a tie
By the time the eggs were fully cooked, we had a melted rainbow of crayons streaming down the street. Strangely, the crayons kept their original colors, the red was still red, blues were blues, and yellow was still yellow. But the white from all the eggs had reacted with the pavement turning it green — the eggs, not the pavement. Except for our rainbow of melted crayons, the black top was still black after our cooking.
The proof is in the eating
It had been Bubba’s idea, and he was the head cook that day, so it was only logical that he be the first to eat a Flamingo Street green egg. That day there were a lot of firsts. It was the first time any of us cooked eggs on a street. The first time any of us ate a green egg. And the first time any of us turned green. But it wasn’t the first time any of us were rushed to the hospital.
Lessons learned
Melted crayons are a whole lot easier to scrape up off the street than fried eggs. If a fried street egg tastes crunchy, it isn’t the pepper you used for seasoning, it’s bits and pieces of the street. Watching Bubba turning green is a whole lot funnier than watching him throwing up on your shoes. And finally, no amount of Kid’s Logic will convince your parents that eating eggs fried on the street was a good idea.
This week temperatures will surpass 98 degrees — the perfect temperature for street egg-frying and a good old-fashioned melted crayon race. But our two granddaughters and I will skip on the eggs.
First, eggs are a whole lot more expensive than they were back on Flamingo. And second, except for our redheaded Sweet Caroline, Little One and I don’t look good in green.
Still, the Flamingo Street kid in me wonders … what green street bacon will taste like?
[Rick Ryckeley has been writing stories weekly in The Citizen since 2001.]
