By Anne Gagliano
The bagpipes are playing in Leroy and Lynda Sisley’s garage; the crowd is cheering them on while mixing sausage. My husband Mike is elbow-deep in our own second batch, but he desperately wants to film the bagpipers, so he begs me to do so for him. Only problem is, the cell phone is in the car, down the very steep and pork-slime-slick driveway. But it’s bagpipes … in a garage … with raw meat …. This photo op is worth the risk.
I head out to grab the phone, literally bracing myself for a potential bone-breaking fall onto slippery concrete, when I see yet another amazing sight: a neat, thick trail of sand now coats the entire driveway, providing safe passage for all who tread there. Firefighters. Will wonders never cease? They are without a doubt the most prepared-for-anything people you will ever meet. They party hard, they party in bizarre and unique ways, but they always partysafely!
We mix, fry, and sample sausage while enjoying a mini bagpipe concert for nearly three hours. I’ve been stretched by the event so far; I’ve had to adapt my girlish notions of a “date” from a civilized, romantic dinner out to this—grinding raw flesh and adding seasoning to taste while eating it with dirty fingers. I’ve been surprised to find that I actually like this; it’s not as gross as one would have thought, and apparently it’s just the “patty” kind of sausage—like hamburger. But just as I begin to relax and think the “worst” is behind me, that we’re just going to stuff our sausage into the zipper lock bags I brought and be done, I begin to hear rumors of another “station.”
Leroy the Dancing Sausage weaves through the tables laughing, encouraging, and instructing his guests on how to proceed–the perfect host/teacher/comic relief. He sees that Mike and I have successfully completed mixing all of our meat into three different batches and tells us to head out to the deck to make links. I pause—did he saylinks? Where is the deck? It isthroughthe house? Poor Lynda has had nearly 150 slimy guests traipsing through her home carting trays of raw meat—all day long! We have sausage on our shoes; we’ve been stepping in it because there are droppings everywhere! I almost can’t bring myself to do it to her, it seems so cruel; but we grab our pans, carefully wipe our gooey feet as best we can, then tiptoe through Lynda’s beautiful home to the last stop on this magical mystery tour—the link-making station.
当我想看到这一切,I find myself astounded yet again. Words elude me; I can’t even mentally absorb what my eyes behold. Under yet more tents on the Sisley’s large deck are two—twoautopsy tables (as if the sight ofoneautopsy table at someone’s home wouldn’t be shocking enough. And where in the world does someone purchase such a thing, let alone actually conceive of doing so—for a party?). The enormous stainless steel tables look so charming and innocent under the festive strings of lights that adorn them that one canalmost忘记他们被设计为drain blood from human corpses—almost.两端的每张桌子坐ausage presses, and gathered around each press are couples calling out directions to each other such as, “Turn it, pump it, you’re going too fast, oh it’s filling, it’s getting bigger.” Mike and I are speechless; we stand there holding our trays completely dumbfounded till Smokey Simpson (a buddy of Mike’s from Seattle Fire) sees us and takes us under his wing for the next leg of our strange journey.
He takes us to an available press and tells us to plop some of our sausage meat into the press part. Then, to my utter horror, he opens a Tupperware container and pulls out what can only be described as a long, whitish, tapeworm-looking thing. I didn’t know then and I still don’t want to know now what it actually was or where it came from. He begins to thread the “worm” or casing onto a tube jutting out of the press and someone behind me says, “It’s just like sliding on a condom.” Everyone hoots at this. Then Smokey puts the lid back onto the press and tells me to begin slowly turning the handle. He shows Mike how to “coax” the meat into the casing as it comes out of the tube. This is intense! One wrong move and we break our casing and have to start over! We begin: I turn; Mike “coaxes,” gently; we get a rhythm; and behold, long coils of link sausages emerge from our press! Throughout the process, Smokey calls out instructions, and I am suddenly reminded of scenes from a birthing class. It takes two to make a baby, and I now know it takes two to make link sausages—patience and teamwork required. This date has gone from raw meat to bagpipes to couples therapy to simulated childbirth on autopsy tables to phallic-shaped food with all the jokes that that implies! Again, only firefighters could make this stuff up!
We’re now ready to package our “links” and I, feeling clever, think to go grab my zipper lock bags. But before I can do so, someone sets down a stack of meat trays—actual Styrofoam meat trays lined with cotton pads—the kind from the grocery store—for our use. Forget the stupid zipper lock bags; what was I thinking? Smokey then shows us how to “roll” our giant snake-length sausage into individual links, neatly hosing down the meat droppings as he does so. I had forgotten for a moment that we were working on an autopsy table, but the strategic built-in hose once used to wash down “bodies” reminds me of this as I see the fleshy debris disappear down the table’s “drain.”
We now have stacks of trays filled with neatly cut sausage links. They are beautiful! They look delicious—they look likerealsausage—and we made them ourselves! We feel like proud parents as we wrap them securely at the cellophane “station.” We label each tray according to flavor and load them into grocery bags, also thoughtfully provided.
It’s late, we’re tired and cold, abd our clothes are stiff with dried pork slime. Our backs are sore from bending over for so long, and our throats ache from hours of chatting and laughing. We load our 25 pounds of meat back into our car and drive away. Silence. We’re both kind of dazed and unable to find proper words. How does one even begin to mentally process what has just occurred at our first Firefighter’s Sausage Fest, let alone begin to discuss it? We turn on the radio. We listen to classic rock, which reminds us of our youth. We grin at each other over the dashboard lights, savoring the shared pride of successfully creating something really cool, something we can stock our freezer with—something we can enjoy for many months to come. “What kind of meat should we bring next year?” I ask Mike. “The pork butt’s pretty good,” he replies. I agree.
There are many lessons learned from this completely entertaining and original gathering, and I will pursue them in my next column. Those lessons are along such lines as these: the blessings of incredible, generous hosts (like Leroy and Lynda Sisley); the awesome nature of firefighters; and what it takes to make a party, any party, truly sensational.
Anne G阿格里亚诺has been married to Captain Mike Gagliano of the Seattle (WA) Fire Department for 29 years. She and her husband lecture together on building and maintaining a strong marriage.
