The Way of Toast

Camp toast. It’s like comfort food on the trail and so simple to make. Spread some almond butter on it and top it off with some fruit, and you have yourself a hearty breakfast that delivers on nutrition with minimal time expenditure.

When I think of Camp Toast, I think of a buckaroo named Bill. Bill was a late hire on our Whip-It Crew. Being on a Whip-It Crew involved going into a post-logged slash area and cutting out all the little saplings and bushes that were sprouting, prior to re-planting. It was physically-demanding work that required staying focused and aware, as the vegetation had a way of playing tricks on you.

Being on the Whip-It Crew was not what I would call fun. The work played with your mind, and the day did not move quickly. The work involved tripping your way through acres of slash while being whipped about the face and body by lithesome sprouting trees.

To get an early start to beat the heat, we had to leave for the job in the we hours. We would climb into the crummy each morning, to save gas and to afford the non-drivers some extra sleep. Who knew that we were way ahead of the Rideshare curve?

Much to our ever-heightening annoyance, Bill used to arrive late to the crummy every single morning. He’d come roaring into our designated parking area, a wide spot on Highway 54, in his ’72 Chevy — spraying an arc of gravel while chewing on the end of wadded up cigar. I am guessing that Bill’s overall effect was one of eccentricity, and I’m sure funny as hell to anyone who didn’t have any alarm-clock association with him. But was he funny to us on the crew? Not so much.

I remember the morning Bill came skidding into the parking lot wearing some old WWII aviator goggles – the goggles being necessary as his windshield was blown out. When we asked him about it — how could you not? — he grumbled something or other about a Late Night and Trees that Jumped in Front of His Rig.

Who knows what the real story was, but I am suspecting it had something to do with reading his fortune at the bottom of a bourbon bottle. You would have thought seeing some old Bull of the Woods cruising down the highway wearing those vintage goggles, his longish hair blowing back in the 55-MPH-generated breezes, would have been hilarious. Heck, he could have likely pulled over alongside the road and charged tourists good money for a ride in his plane-mobile. But to us? His chronic lateness stripped him of any comic relief. I can laugh now, but not so much at the time.

Bill’s extra snooze time each morning cost us precious minutes at Caty’s Coffee Cup. Caty’s was famous for its fresh pie straight out of the oven and its hot cinnamon rolls the size of small dinner plates. You might think I am exaggerating their size, but I am not. One of those rolls could send you into a sugar coma for the rest of the crummy ride up the mountain to the unit. And it then took some serious suggesting to get us roused and ready to tackle the Whip-It work that lay ahead of us for the day, as we would still be in a stupor from all of Caty’s sugary goodness.

We loved Caty’s Coffee Cup — there was no other way to put it. We stopped there every morning before heading up the hill. Caty’s was the Dream Way to start out the morning. It made the morning tolerable, or as Bill would say: tol-uh-ble. Even better than her pie and rolls was Caty’s take on a “refill-to-go.” While taking care of the tab, one of the cheerful be-calico-aproned waitresses would fill each of our Stanleys to the brim with Caty’s Signature Yuban before we loaded our sorry asses back into the crummy.

Caty’s Signature Yuban had an extra sort of something to it that I could never quite put my finger on. One day I just up and asked one of the Aprons — what the unenlightened regulars affectionately (or otherwise) called the be-aproned waitstaff — what it was about Caty’s coffee that made it taste the way it did. Pink Apron said that Caty sprinkled ground cinnamon on top of the grounds before it started to percolate. Caty figured that the cinnamon made it kind of special that way. I am guessing that it was Caty’s way of making Designer Coffee out of a sow’s ear, being that Yuban wasn’t what I would call the most premium hipster bean on the coffee house market.

I can’t really say that I was ever that fond of Caty’s coffee additive, but I had to hand it to her for pure ingenuity. And those cork-booted boys loved Caty’s coffee, cooking, and service. When they saw a piece of hot apple pie with a slice of cheddar cheese melting on the top delivered to the table before them, they felt like no less than King Solomon.

Snooze Button Bill was one of those annoying patrons who thought he owned the joint. He would cluck about us starting the day with our orders of cinnamon rolls while he ordered himself his standard 2 eggs, 2 sausage links, and 2 slices of white toast. Every single morning.

When Bill ordered, he would state his preference as to the runniness of his sunny-side-uppers, the brownness of his links, and the degree of toasting that should be accorded his toast. His order wouldn’t have been so bad for the Aprons if he had simply stuck to the same script each morning. But he didn’t. It was all a Lesson of Degrees with Bill. He wanted the eggs pretty firm or kind of runny or clucking a tune back to the cook. The sausages were a pretty straight forward order, but he would send back the toast if it wasn’t Pure Palamino Gold.

Suffice it to say, none of the Aprons liked taking Bill’s order. Bill would extol his Varied Reasons for the Inadequacy of the Toast when he sent it back. He would go off on some commentary, saying that there is just something about burnt toast that says someone didn’t care enough to check the setting before pushing the lever down. Or someone simply was neglectful. Or someone had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. Silly stuff that only cemented the Aprons’ and our opinion of Bill’s backsidedness.

Of course, the cook behind the counter could hear Bill’s Toast Soliloquy, and I swear she would send out at least one Burnt Trial Balloon — all designed to get Bill’s dander up — before Bill finally got his Palomino-Gold toast.

Out on the trail was something different. We had cause to set up camp in a few of the more remote locations so as not to waste daylight hours driving up and down the logging roads. Bill didn’t have the Aprons or the cook behind the counter to boss or complain to. Cookie was pure Teflon when it came to Bill’s griping.

Cookie would pull out the campfire toaster and, after having had to listen to two consecutive mornings of Bill’s Palomino-Gold laments, we were all left on our own when it came to toast. We were wisely allotted a maximum of two pieces of bread each morning for our toasting pleasure. If we weren’t mindful and we ruined our Toast Prospects by burning it to smithereens, we were on our own. Cookie’s philosophy was pretty much Eat the Toast or return it to the ashes from which it originally came. You can’t argue with good sense like that.

I actually enjoyed the whole Mindful Process of Toasting Bread on a Campfire. You would be keeping a steady eye on your bread and it would be just about perfect for consumption and then — whoosh! — an errant draft would kick the flame into high action and your toast might get a dandy scorch. I must admit that I liked the Uncertainty of the Endeavor. And when it came to toast, I pretty much ate any degree of toasting — burnt or otherwise — that went with the benefits of butter and jelly.

And it is always true that food — as is life — is always pretty darned great when you are eating in the Fabulous Outdoors.

One morning in camp, Bill asked us to watch his toast for him. He must have thought we were Better People than we were — otherwise he wouldn’t have given up his Toast Autonomy to the likes of us. Maybe it was all those mornings that we had to wait for Bill to show up at the crummy. Maybe it was in honor of the patient Aprons who had been putting up with all of Bill’s Toast Nonsense. Maybe it was Juvenile Revenge — pure and simple. We waited for Bill to vacate the campfire premises, and we proceeded to incinerate Bill’s toast to the color and texture of a charcoal briquette.

The mind tends to wander back to the Glimmers of Unexplained Irrelevancy, and I am guessing that this is what has happened here. Bill’s role in this Ode to Toast is obtuse at best. He merely serves as the MacGuffin that brings Toast to the Campfire in this story. The real story here centers on how great Campfire Toast is when you are out in the woods . . . or when you are sitting around your own home firepit.

And I’d like to say that there is some kind of moral to share about Respect for Timeliness or Be Kind to Waitstaff, but there isn’t. All that the Great Incineration gained any of us was the way that we laughed our asses off until we snorted when Bill came back and saw his Beloved Toast nothing but a wafer of carbon.

The moral of the story: You can’t expect generosity from others when you are always riding their butts or acting all inconsiderate. We finished the contract but after the Carbon Toast Experience, Bill’s demanding ways grew to be more humorous than harmful.

He still arrived late to the crummy and we still complained about it, but there you go. There are times in life when you can’t change circumstances completely and this was one of them. Simply put, there are times when you just go with the flow . . .and I am thinking that this is the Way of Toast.