The Later Journeys - 3. Zipping Through Breakfast

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My hidden alarm was set for a half hour before sunrise, so I could get the cursed stove going for equally cursed hoecakes and blessed coffee. The guys got to sleep in awhile, so that I could soften Ben up over breakfast.

I didn’t sleep much that night, I can tell you. I think T and W did because of the pure physical effort they expended, as well as the buildup to this night. The hard part was over. We all hoped.

I awoke to my silent vibrating alarm, which was promptly stashed under a pile of linens in my wardrobe. Soon all our gadgets will be brought out into the open, and a happy day that will be.

By now I almost feel comfortable with our restored Monarch wood-burning stove and oven -- a massive thing. But regardless of the century, it’s touch-and-go as to whether I’ll be able to break an egg without massacring the yolk or getting bits of shell in the food. There’s a trick to it, involving the wrist, but it’s one of those tricks you can’t really teach an old dawg such as myself. I got lucky that morning, however. No shells, and the eggs were actually edible. To my thinking, the coffee more than made up for it. Like my questionable culinary skills, that’s one delight to the senses that has transcended time!

I knew that when the guys got up it would be back to the cookstove for me, but at least we’d be having most of our discussions around the big plank table in the kitchen, so I wouldn’t miss anything. Another thing to look forward to: Neither Trevor nor Warren is particularly adept with cooking, but each has a couple of specialties, and beyond a certain point, we will be able to order delivery and ultimately move the antiquities back to the warehouse and introduce Benjamin Franklin to present-day food, as well as refrigerators, freezers, microwaves and Instant Pots. Wi-Fi out here is a dicier proposition... but Gerry's working on that.

The house began to fill with homey aromas and before long, our esteemed guest appeared, moving slowly and tentatively. I remembered reading about the gout that plagued him much of his life -- not to mention his age, which for someone of that era was considered advanced. He accepted all the food that was offered and made the predictably polite morning conversation about how I had slept, etc.

But something was on his mind. I could tell. He hesitated just a smidge when I asked how he had slept and if the room was comfortable.

He made progress with his food and we talked some more. There was a scripted timetable for how much each day we would tell him. Break it to him gently, in other words. So I started by telling him how much we all admired his work down through the decades. This drew a funny little frown, and I realized that in the absence of Internet, we must have seemed like an obsessively inquisitive bunch to have known so much about his work and experiments prior to the dawn of his international fame as a result of the Declaration of Independence. Even “Poor Richard’s Almanack” wasn’t universally available -- nor was simple literacy, for that matter. We knew that sooner or later he would have to ask where we came by all that information about him. Depending on where we were in our “unveilings,” he would either hear about the great schools popping up here and there in the States, or the increasing availability of encyclopedias, or ... maybe ... if he held the question long enough, we could show him the delights of Wikipedia and Amazon.

“Yes,” he finally said, in between sips of coffee and forkfuls of hearty breakfast food. “I should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of mine, and God willing will do so freely and generously.” Well, that gave me a little thrill, since it was an almost direct quote from his Autobiography. “I am curious to know more about the inventions that you or your compatriots may have devised,” he said then.

I paused, not expecting this. I haven’t really invented much, though I did rig a foam coffee cup once, to hang under a cabinet and hold coffee stir-sticks that would otherwise have been in the way on the counter-top. This was nothing fancy, but it earned me the teasing nickname of “MacGyver.”

I was trying to recall whether Trevor or Warren had invented anything, and was about to defer that conversation to them (whenever they finally got out of bed) when Franklin cleared his throat and asked whether he “might inquire about something.” I said yes of course, but instead of posing a question, he rose from his chair and left the room. I waited, wondering if he wanted me to follow him, but soon enough, he was back, holding something white, which I recognized as the bed pillow we'd included in his room furnishings, along with numerous wool blankets, quilted comforters, a heating pan for the coldest months, and a wash basin and pitcher. The pillow was pleasingly plump, stuffed with down and feathers, just like any self-respecting 18th-century pillow, and it had been enclosed in a hand-sewn muslin pillowcase. This he pulled back.

In between the pillow and the muslin slip was something that 21st-century folks often take for granted: Another case, designed to fit snugly and immovably over the pillow. I cursed silently. How in the hell had we all managed to overlook that?!

“I find myself unable to puzzle this out,” he said in a tone that combined apology with a sort of eagerness. Ben Franklin, sometime late in the night or perhaps in the dawn hours, had inadvertently slipped his hand under the case, far back at the seam, and discerned something quite foreign.

He had found the invention introduced underwhelmingly at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and ultimately perfected and marketed in 1913 by Gideon Sundback, who received a patent for his “Separable Fastener" in 1917.

Again, the apologetic yet eager tone. “Can you tell me what... this is? It is something I have never seen.” He then grasped the metal tab, pulled it gently and we both watched the little railroad-track teeth divide, then fuse again as he pulled in the other direction. He was transfixed.

“It’s called a zipper,” was about all I could say. We watched the mechanism do its intended work and in the quiet of the morning listened to the “zip” sound it made as it went back and forth.

“A zipper,” Franklin marveled with the smallest of smiles, opening and closing it again and again at varying speeds.

“I believe Dr. Hopper, Dr. Montgomery and I may know of some new inventions that will interest you,” I said faintly, hoping that one or both of them would finally make an appearance and rescue me from this awkward exchange.

With immense gratitude I nodded as a door elsewhere in the house opened. At the sound, Franklin hesitated, then raised himself off the bench and placed the pillow under his bottom, just in time to greet Warren, with Trevor close behind him, as they entered the kitchen. I understood what had delayed their arrival: Like me, they were both dressed in full 18th-century style, up to and including stockings, high-heeled shoes and ridiculous powdered wigs. We had put them on, not knowing whether Franklin would expect it, and whether it would lend us more credibility. But what I did notice was, Ben wasn’t wearing one, and he didn’t seem to even notice that we were. I decided today would be my last day as a wig woman.

Dr. Franklin was just going to have to get used to a woman with red hair. VERY red. Redder than most red lipstick. If he wanted an invention, boxed hair color from Wal-Mart was one of my personal faves.

Fresh hoecakes. Fresher coffee. Porridge that relieved my apprehension about eggshells and yolks. Very typical host-to-guest banter about pleasant nights and early rising.

Franklin smiled. “Yes, I arose before first light. ‘Tis my favorite hour of the day. Washing done, a visit outside, and ready to break the fast.” I should have been surprised that I had slept through all of that, never hearing so much as a rustle as this elderly man got himself going in a relatively unfamiliar place.

“As I waited to hear someone stirring, I had the opportunity to play with my zipper!” he concluded, whereby both Warren and Trevor reached for cloth napkins to catch the coffee that came sputtering out of their noses and mouths, to the accompaniment of loud choking. Franklin rose in some bemusement and retrieved the pillow he’d been sitting on. He smiled at me and looked unmistakably proud at having quickly made correct use of such an unfamiliar term.

“Dr. Franklin discovered it sometime last night or this morning,” I offered my colleagues as I used rags to clean up the sprayed coffee from the table.

Both of them were familiar with the gadget’s history. We’d all taken some pretty intensive courses in the history of subjects closest to Franklin’s heart. We had planned to start taking him slowly through time, starting with all of his innovations and leading ultimately to the most state-of-the-art technology available in the present. But Ben had beaten us to it.

We should have remembered: He was usually ahead of his time.

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