The Kids Grow Up, Trish Hanan [books you need to read .txt] 📗

food.
“Man, babe, you make the best potato salad in the world,” Jake declared and all the kids grinned.
“You do, Dad, Aunt Kathleen puts pickle relish in hers and it’s disgusting,” Jackson said and all the kids giggled. Emma nodded.
“She puts pickle relish in everything, even her tuna fish and that’s just gross,” she said and Cassie nodded. Jake nodded too.
“I agree with you, baby girl, pickle relish is good on hot dogs but not in tuna fish,” he said firmly and all the kids nodded. Harry grinned.
“Well, some families like some things and some families like other things, you kids don’t like pickle relish in your tuna because I never put it in, but Stevie and Stephie do because their mother has always put it in,” he explained. Jackson shook his head.
“No, they hate it too, they think it’s gross and disgusting too,” he informed them. Emma giggled.
“Stephie thinks her mother is the worst cook, that’s why she loves coming over to our house, she says you’re the best cook on the planet,” she said with pride. Harry giggled.
“Well, don’t tell Aunt Kathleen that, you don’t want to hurt her feelings,” he told them and they all nodded.
“We don’t, we just ask for ham or bologna,” Adam told him and he looked at Jake and grinned. Jake ruffled his son’s hair.
“You’re a very clever young man, just like your dad,” he said and Adam grinned.
A few days later Jake and Harry took the girls up on their offer to watch the kids while they went exploring the mountain caves looking for ore. Harry had a Geiger counter in case they ran into a uranium deposit; he didn’t want to risk anything dangerous and wanted to be prepared.
They walked carefully into the first cave they found, they had never seen a bear or wolf but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.
“Here big bad bear, here big bad bear,” Jake called out softly as they entered the darkness. Harry giggled.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to call for them like that, honey,” he retorted and Jake shrugged.
“Well, I really don’t want to call one, babe,” he told him. They looked all around the cave and luckily there was no one home. Harry laughed with relief and they picked a good spot near the back corner and began to dig with their shovels.
“Hey, babe, these rocks look interesting, look how silver they are and they kind of look like metal,” Jake commented as he picked one up. Harry held one up to his computer sensor and lots of numbers flashed onto the screen. He grinned.
“I love this planet, honey, you found it, this is Glyph, this is the metal we needed to find and we found it on the first try, talk about lucky,” he declared and they kissed. Harry looked around the cave and got that look in his eyes. Jake shivered and found himself getting hard. He bent his head and nuzzled Harry’s neck, biting gently at the flesh which caused Harry to moan. Together they fell to the ground, pulling at each other clothes in a frantic need to get naked.
Afterwards they lied on the dirt, all entwined together and Harry laughed.
“Oh, I love this cave,” he declared and Jake laughed and kissed his neck.
“Me too, babe, this is my favorite cave on the planet,” he told him. Harry sighed.
“I could make love with you, Jake, eighty times a day and still not get enough of you,” he told him solemnly and Jake brushed his hair from his face and smiled down at him. He kissed him tenderly.
“I know, Harry, every time I’m in you I never want to leave, I just want to be a part of you,” he whispered and they smiled. Then they got up and got dressed and dug for a couple of hours and got a couple of bags of rock to take back to camp.
“Look what we found,” Harry announced when they arrived back at the cabin. Everyone looked up.
“Don’t tell me you found the metal already,” Steve said and the two men grinned and dumped their bags on the ground. Everyone picked up a rock to examine it.
“This is glyph?” Kathleen asked and Harry nodded and picked up her iced tea to have a sip.
“Yep, all we have to do now is dig out a ton of it, melt it down and make coffee pots and metal containers for everyone,” he said and they all groaned.
“Oh, man, every time you discover something, we end up picking or digging,” Charlie complained. Jake laughed and patted him on the back.
“You don’t have to dig if you don’t want to buddy, but when we build that foundry and all that ore starts melting, you’re going to want to be there,” he predicted. Charlie nodded.
“Yeah, you’re right about that, I’ve never seen metal melting, I bet that’s a sight,” he said. Harry nodded.
“Oh, yeah, liquid metal, that’s gotta be like lava flowing,” he told them and all the men looked impressed.
“Well, count me in on that,” DJ said firmly and all the men nodded.
“Oh, yeah, me too,” Hans stated.
“Well, I guess we’ve got our diggers,” Harry declared and they all laughed.
He sent out an email to town telling them about the ore discovery and the new metal they were going to be melting in the foundry they were going to be building and if anyone was interesting in helping make the coffee pots and metal containers wanted to be included in the process, well, they had to show up to help dig. All the men on Farm Two and Three rushed to the lake and the men on Farm One laughed at them. Even Reverend Milo thought the idea of liquid metal was fascinating and couldn’t wait to see the foundry in action. Dr. George thought it might be interesting too and showed up several times with Bernie. The rest of the men on their farm teased them but they didn’t care, their fascination got the best of them.
When they had dug out three tons of metal Harry said they had enough and they lifted it back to town with the Elizabeth and they began work on the foundry. It took them all summer because with school and all their busy schedules and everyone taking their summer vacations and weeding and the summer harvest and fall planting they could only work on it Saturdays and a little at a time but they finally got it done and they brought the ore in and melted it.
“Oh, man, look at those rocks melt, what’s the temperature in there, Harry?” Carl asked. Harry grinned and pointed to the temperature gauge.
“It’s nineteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit, Carl,” he announced and all the men watching grinned.
“How hot is lava?” Brian asked. Harry glanced back at his students.
“Eric, what’s the average temperature of lava?” he asked and the teen grinned.
“The average temperature of lava is thirteen hundred to twenty-two hundred degrees Fahrenheit,” Eric informed them proudly and they all they all looked impressed. Phillip put his arm around his son and beamed.
Next they moved to the pouring section and they all watched with awe as the machines poured the liquid metal into the shapes and then they moved down the line and the shapes came out and were put into the cooling tanks and they each got to stick their hands in and pick up one of the finished products which were still hot.
“Oh, man, this pot is still hot,” Roger exclaimed and they all gushed over them.
“This is so cool, we made a coffee pot, Harry, you’re a genius,” Frank declared and everyone grinned. DJ hugged him.
“This is the best factory on the planet, what else can we make here,” he asked. Harry shook his head.
“This is a foundry, we can make anything out of metal that you gentlemen think of, all we have to do is develop the molds and retool the machines and that’s not hard to do,” he explained. They all grinned.
“Hell, we got a mountain full of metal, let’s think of something else we can make,” Frank said and everyone cheered. Harry grinned and everyone shook hands.
The following Sunday they passed out coffee pots and metal containers with lids to everyone and bragged about their hard work. All the women were impressed with the pretty flower designs on the containers and the craftsmanship of the work.
“You men made these, why these are lovely,” Jenna gushed and kissed her husband who blushed.
“So you made a coffee pot, big deal,” Max snapped. Harry shook his head.
“It is a big deal, Max,” he told him. He looked at everyone and held up his pot. “Even if this wasn’t a special metal, it would be a big deal. You’re looking at something that was made from ore that came directly from the ground that we dug and then melted and poured into molds. We did it all by ourselves and none of us are professional metal workers. This is very impressive work and I am very proud of all of us,” he told them and everyone beamed. Then he continued.
“This metal glyph is a very neat metal,” Harry told them. “When you put coffee in this pot, it will stay hot for hours, all day and it won’t get bitter, it’s like a thermos only better. And if you put something cold in it, it will stay cold for hours, so if you put ice cream in one of these metal containers and take it on a hike, in a couple of hours, when you stop for lunch, your ice cream will still be frozen.” They all looked impressed.
“Wow, that’s pretty neat,” Jenna said and everyone nodded. Sarek stood up.
“We had such containers on our planet, what you call your refrigerators and freezers were made of this metal and we didn’t need crystals to power them,” he informed them and they all nodded. Harry grinned and then tilted his head to think.
“This might save us a lot in food storage, think of what will happen if we put our vegetables and fruit into containers made up of this metal. I wonder if it will stay fresh all year round? That would save us plastic bags. I’m going to make a couple of large containers, put some vegetables and fruits into them and do an experiment and see how they do after a year. If it works, we can put them in our basements instead of all the wrapping and canning that we do every year. We can simply wash our vegetables and fruit and then store them in our glyph containers,” he explained and everyone looked excited.
“Oh, that would be so great, I’m so tired of bagging tomatoes I could scream,” Linda declared and everyone laughed. Sarek stood up.
“Actually, Harry, you don’t have to experiment, we always kept our produce in metal containers on Minos and our food never spoiled,” he told everyone and Harry nodded.
“Well, men, it looks like we’re going to be retooling the foundry and digging some ore,” he said and they all grinned. Carl stood up.
“Well, you can count on me, boss,” he said and they all stood up. Harry looked at the men on Farm One.
“Since you gentlemen are going to be getting