Posted on by Phil Strawn

Dispatches From The Cactus Patch…A Few Things You Might Not Know About


Pictured are my late father’s late cousin, Bell, and her husband, Alexander, showing off their 1952 invention, the “Head Phone,” which was the predecessor to the modern mobile cell phone. It was an awkward unit to use. The phone is attached to your head, and the braided phone line is carried in a backpack. Cell towers weren’t invented, so the unit and the lovely couple were tethered to the home plug by a five-hundred-yard cord roll. She eventually sold her phone ideas to some hot-shot princess in Monaco who came out with her own line of cute little bedside phones. ” Besides”, Bell said, “every time the damn phone rang, it gave me a massive headache.” Alexander, on the other hand, was unable to speak, smoke a ciggie, or drink his nightly cocktail, which impacted their social life.

Pictured is my first real grown-up science experiment kit, Christmas 1955. I asked our neighborhood mentor and mad scientist, Mr. Mister, to tutor me in the art of scientific experimentation. He brought home a few viles of Plutonium X3 from his job at Carswell Air Force Base, and with parts and dangerous minerals from the kit, an old Waring blender, and a Betty Crocker pressure cooker, he and I constructed and tested a small nuclear device right there in our neighborhood. Our garage was totaled, and we were all puny and hairless for a few months, but the family got over the effects of the radiation and, seeing they had a small genius in the family, awarded me a second kit the next Christmas. See Below.

Christmas 1956, I received my second kit, like the one above. I had no idea what Meth was, and the instructions were in Spanish, so frustrated with making 9 Love Potions and disappearing inks, I gave the kit to my cousin, Jock, who set up a cute little lab in his family’s camper trailer parked in their backyard. After blowing up their trailer and suffering non-life-threatening injuries, he was sent to the Juvenile Dope Farm for six months. The last I heard, he opened several pot shops in Ruidoso, New Mexico, after retiring from the Texas Senate.

Who knew that Lard was so good for you? My grandmothers would not have been able to cook a meal without a tub of Crisco, White Cloud, or Puffy Stuff lard. They also kept a soup can full of used bacon grease next to the stove, so if they were out of that soft, luscious lard, they could still fill our bloodstream with massive doses of saturated vein-clogging fat. My grannie soaked her chicken mash feed in Puffy Stuff and then fed the hens her secret mixture. She claimed it made the eggs bigger and better, and when she wrung the head off of one of the greased-up hens and cooked it for supper, the chicken was already basted and fried to a golden brown. Yummm. Gotta love that country cooking.

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32 Replies to “Dispatches From The Cactus Patch…A Few Things You Might Not Know About”

  1. Crisco was cottonseed vegetable oil. Terrible for you. Lard is much better. Saturated fat not the demon they make it out to be. Healthiest fats are olive oil, grass fed butter, tallow. Lard and coconut oil supposed to be ok but coconut oil really doesn’t agree with me and everything tastes like a pina colada. Not all bad if you add the rum. (Is it rum in that? Oh well you get the gist).

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    2. Avocado oil is excellent, too. Highest smoke point for cooking at 570°. Ghee (clarified butter) is great. I love the grass fed New Zealand butter. Grass fed tallow is fantastic. Lard can be problematic if not filtered. Meat pieces can ruin it. They become rancid. Coconut oil has a low smoke point, making it not any better for high heat cooking than olive oil. Coconut oil is better for personal care products, mixed with other things like shea butter, cacao butter, beeswax, castor oil…stuff like that. Coconut oil is great for oil pulling. Walnut oil is pretty good. Higher smoke point than coconut or olive.

      Soybean, canola (Canadian gear oil), sunflower, safflower and cottonseed oils are toxic & GMO. Peanut oil comes with the allergy (not a tree nut).

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      3. Mostly correct. But Avocado oil is higher in Omega 6. Grass fed butter and Ghee are lowest. Yes on lard, but better than most vegetable oils. I use grass fed butter, olive oil for salads, and some uncured bacon grease. Most nut oils also too high in Omega 6.

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      4. In the case of avocado oil, you missed the 70% oleic acid…the omega 9. It is well balanced as the 3/6/9.

        I agree that omega 6 is too high in many oils. Veg & seed oils are terrible.

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      5. Yeah, that’s it, oleic acid. I guess avocado oil is pretty low in oleic acid. I guess it is adulterated or something. As olive oil can be. I do like the taste of it. But I mostly use grass fed butter, olive oil, and bacon fat, I guess. Tallow would be good but I haven’t really used it.

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      4. Yep, it’s our go to cooker. I can’t grill a steak as good as the air fryer does it. Of course, my Neanderthal genes cause me burn everything to a crisp, so Momo cooks stuff in the AF.

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      5. I do hamburgers, whole chickens, chicken wings, chicken breasts, and french fries in it. But have never tried a steak. Oh, and pork chops occasionally. I wondered if a steak would sear well. I do like my grill pan for that in winter and prefer it to outside grill unless the steak approaches two inches thick to get that sear without over-doing it! Might give it a try. I just did some top sirloins from Butcher Box on the grill pan last (after I marinated them a while). Really nice little steaks.

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  4. Nobody in my childhood neighborhood had any of those cool science kits, but there was plenty of turpentine, bug spray, and old cans of lead-based paint to experiment with. Our jars of bacon grease would get kind of disgusting near the bottom since we always skimmed off the top for frying everything. Thanks for the laughs, Phil.

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  5. We keep a container full of bacon grease in the fridge for frying eggs and mixing in beans and stuff. You sure know a lot of famous and important people. We might be driving to Highlands Texas later this week and I’m thinking of going through Granbury just to see the awesome places. If we stop and eat or anything I will make sure and mention your name and all the wonderful stories you’ve told about the town.

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  7. I always wondered about those 50s chemistry sets. I’ve read where they had all sorts of goodies in them.

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    1. The nuclear one I did receive for Christmas. My father figured out it was dangerous got rid of the darn thing. I added the explosion and such for color. There wasn’t much safety regulations back then, it’s a wonder I made it at all.

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      1. Yea it’s amazing what they allowed in those kits. By the time I was a kid…they were more safe…dang it!

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      3. Fun times! Yea I missed those also. I’ve read where those cherry bombs could survive a toilet flush and then blow…

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