My husband said: "Now, Mattie, be reasonable; all the army women
keep house with these utensils; the regiment will move soon, and
then what should we do with a lot of tin pans and such stuff? You
know a second lieutenant is allowed only a thousand pounds of
baggage when he changes station." This was a hard lesson, which I
learned later.
Having been brought up in an old-time community, where women
deferred to their husbands in everything, I yielded, and the huge
things were sent over. I had told Mrs. Wilhelm that we were to
have luncheon in our own quarters.
So Adams made a fire large enough to roast beef for a company of
soldiers, and he and I attempted to boil a few eggs in the deep
mess-kettle and to make the water boil in the huge tea-kettle.
But Adams, as it turned out, was not a cook, and I must confess
that my own attention had been more engrossed by the study of
German auxiliary verbs, during the few previous years, than with
the art of cooking.
Of course, like all New England girls of that period, I knew how
to make quince jelly and floating islands, but of the actual,
practical side of cooking, and the management of a range, I knew
nothing.
Here was a dilemma, indeed!
The eggs appeared to boil, but they did not seem to be done when
we took them off, by the minute-hand of the clock.
I declared the kettle was too large; Adams said he did not
understand it at all.
I could have wept with chagrin! Our first meal a deux!
I appealed to Jack. He said, "Why, of course, Martha, you ought
to know that things do not cook as quickly at this altitude as
they do down at the sea level. We are thousands of feet above the
sea here in Wyoming." (I am not sure it was thousands, but it was
hundreds at least.)
So that was the trouble, and I had not thought of it!
My head was giddy with the glamour, the uniform, the
guard-mount, the military music, the rarefied air, the new
conditions, the new interests of my life. Heine's songs, Goethe's
plays, history and romance were floating through my mind. Is it
to be wondered at that I and Adams together prepared the most
atrocious meals that ever a new husband had to eat? I related my
difficulties to Jack, and told him I thought we should never be
able to manage with such kitchen utensils as were furnished by
the Q. M. D.
"Oh, pshaw! You are pampered and spoiled with your New England
kitchens," said he; "you will have to learn to do as other army
women do - cook in cans and such things, be inventive, and learn
to do with nothing." This was my first lesson in
army house-keeping.
