"Five Short Minutes Alone Done Brought Me Twenty Long Years in Jail..."

Well, dinner was a disaster on an epic scale this evening! We had ham. Sort of.

The first problem was that nobody really wanted ham in the first place. The hams are twenty-five pounds each, and it took us so long to finish the first one that we didn't really want more ham for at least another couple of months.

The second problem was that Daddy and Mama and Maria had to trailer Lily back to the old house to grandfather in the livestock clause, so Daddy said before they left that when the stove timer went off I should turn it off. Don't take it out or anything, he said. And I mistook the 'it' in that instruction for the timer, not the oven itself. So I left the ham in the oven cooking for two hours longer than it was supposed to. It was considerably burned before anyone realised what had happened.

But Daddy cut off the burnt part and we all sat down to supper and Maria and I took a bite at the same time and looked at each other and very quietly put down our forks.

Because it was utterly spoiled.

Daddy was the only one who didn't notice, and happily continued eating his supper while the rest of us ate our potatoes and broccoli and pretend not to notice. It was only when I was clearing up that Daddy enquired as to why we hadn't eaten our ham, and Maria and I both looked at each other again, and Mama said,--

"John, it's bad."

"What?" said Daddy.

"The ham is bad."

I think Daddy nearly burst into tears. Twenty-five pounds of ruined ham.