I just got through cooking a whole pound of bacon. I became very happy while I was cooking that bacon. I knew that I was gone cook that bacon just the way I like it. What I didn't realize was how long that was going to take. Frying up bacon the way I like it takes a surprisingly long time. I guess that's because I'm so parsnickity about wanting crisply fried bacon. When I say crisp I mean every part of the bacon slice. I don't like no pooches of unfried fat poking up like a while whale. I literally quit eating in restaurants because I didn't like the way they cooked it. Ordering bacon for breakfast at a restaurant is sometime equivalent to ordering heated fat. I ain't no Eskimo, and I live in temperate climate. Ugh!

The biggest reason I haven't cooked my own bacon very much is because of the way I have lived on the run. I always traveled. I didn't live no one location for very long. Staying somewhere for two years would end up driving me crazy and I usually found myself creating whatever sort of diversion it took to find an excuse to fly. I liked to go on the bum and hitch-hike all around the country for months at a time, and even the trade I finally mastered forced me to travel to get work. The type of industrial structures that require the services of my trade were usually huge industrial complexes like refineries, power plants, chemical and pharmaceutical complexes costing tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Those kinds of industries don't get build just anywhere. Many times they are built in some fairly isolated places because of the danger of chemical leaks and/or explosions. So, the construction crowd that builds these sorts of edifices move around the country a lot. They get paid a fairly good wage for doing it, so while technically it is migrant labor, the wages can run close six figures a year if you're lucky enough to get enough work throughout the entire year. These highly skilled people are sometime referred to as 'road trash' by the locals of the communities they invade. I did belong to what's called a company union when I first learned to weld at a big shipyard in Mississippi. But, once I went on the road and started working construction jobs I didn't keep my ties with the union. I liked working non-union jobs. Getting a non-union job is a totally different proposition than being in a local branch of a national union. In the first place it's every man for himself. Getting and keeping the job was totally up to me. I had no advocate other than what wit and grit I could muster up to get along with people and perform the work skillfully enough to satisfy the man. There are some groups or crews who travel together and use their personal ties to help each other get jobs. Usually these crews were run by a strong leader who usually worked in the administrative or supervisory team. Some times it was a family thing with the majority of the crew being kinfolk of some kind. It could exist as a fairly secure situation because they stuck together politically and if you took on one of them you took all of them on. Somehow, I never did fall in with one of these groups. I liked to go to these remote places not knowing anybody who lived there or even know any of the people with whom I would be working. I like being a stranger in a strange land. It allows me to become anybody I want to portray, and as a stranger, nobody could prove the personality I pulled out of my hat was for real or not. What they perceived when I unloaded my tool box was all they had to go on, and that was more than just fine with me, it was the joy of my existence.

It just didn't work with my marriages. I would leave our bed in the mornings, go out and become someone completely different than the person I was the day before, and by the time I came back that night, not only did my wives insist that I become the person who left home that morning, but insisted that I stay that way until I could escape the next morning with a new voice inflection and a fresh look about my eyes to become a completely new creation just to see if I could make it work and get strangers to accept my creation without suspicion. During my hitch-hiking I got into a lot of cars with a lot of different people, and sometime ride with them for hours or even days of constant conversation. I might average spending some appreciable amount of one-on-one face time with forty or more different people a week for months at a time. How could I not imitate each one of them to at least some degree? The most fun for me is to watch various careactors mix and match to suit completely unpredictable situations without incurring blame. My wives wanted me to stay the particular persona that won their affection, but for me it was just a passing fancy. I hardly ever read the same book twice.

The bacon I was frying come in a package that stated that it was thick sliced bacon. When I opened the packaging I saw that there wasn't much lean meat in it. It wasn't sliced thick either. I was robbed! I started frying up bacon a few months ago when I adopted this low carb diet. This diet creates havoc with the food at the local restaurant I've been eating breakfast/brunch at for many years whenever I was in town. Now I'm in town all the time and going to this place to eat every morning had gotten stale. With the incompatibility of their menu and my diet I found myself eating at home more ofter.

Founding out that it takes a long time to cook bacon as crisply as I prefer it has been a revelation to me. I can only get it the way I like it if I keep the temperature of the burner hot enough to cook the bacon, but not so high that it burns the bacon before it crisps all the fat. So, after I warm my expensive new omelet skillet I reduce the heat to medium so it will cook thoroughly without burning up. It takes me up to thirty minutes to cook four slices of bacon. Because I hadn't spent much time cooking bacon before I didn't really understand what I was asking a cook to do to make me happy. Particularly my wives who also worked and we were usually so rushed in the mornings to get out the door, asking them to spend an additional thirty minutes to get my bacon right was pure thoughtlessness. Frankly, I don't think I was such a hot catch that they would jump through their butts to please me at all. In reflection I realize they gave more than I deserved.

The kitchen is downstairs. There is no heat downstairs. In fact, there are no panes in the window holes, only screen wire to keep out the bugs. But that doesn't really work all that well either, because there is lots of other holes in the walls to let them in. The subflooring I put in green has spaces a half inch wide in places where on a bright day the ground under the house can be seen between each board. So, I was dressed warmly as I fried all the bacon in the package. I had turned on the FM radio and was tuned into a classical station that was playing some light, cheerful music. After my feet got cold enough I didn't really feel them anymore. Actually the cool temperature seem to suit the entire situation quite nicely. It didn't matter if I took two days to cook that bacon. I didn't have anything planned until the middle of next month. Not one single scheduled event to which I would have to dash away and not get my bacon at just the rightj crispiness.

Several times while the bacon was slowly reaching perfection I turned down the volume of the radio and played my flute. My embouchure was very good today. I made up several protracted songs and played with great satisfaction. When all the bacon was cooked I had already eaten about ten slices. I felt this great joy envelope me. I'm a bacon frying son-of-a-gun!