The 1950’s
A BREAKTHROUGH IN EVOLUTION!
“Come on, Hester! Pee faster!”
“You can’t rush science, Mabel!” A few seconds of cautious tinkling and then a groan. “Gosh darn it, all over the jar!”
“Nah, it’s okay. I yoinked a pair of gloves from the lab.” A steadier stream, and then, “All right, now it’s the waiting game.”
Mabel took the lull as an opportunity to touch up her lipstick in the bathroom mirror. “You’re gonna throw that sample jar into the autoclave after, right?”
“I’m certainly not going to keep it as a trophy. Oh, it’s changing color!”
“Well?”
Triumph and relief: “POTATO!”
“Thank heavens,” said Mabel and dabbed at the corner of her mouth. “You know those boys in the lab wouldn’t let you within a mile of their silly little experiments if they thought you were pregnant with a baby.”
A flush and Hester emerged from the stall. “They still wouldn’t even with a potato. They know I’m not married.”
Mabel sighed. “So uptight, those boys. Scientists could use a good shock now and then. It worked for Frankenstein!” She crossed her arms and leaned against the row of sinks. “So how are you gonna cook this one? You said the last potato made some good hash browns.”
“Golly, I dunno.” Hester rinsed out the sample jar and tossed the disposable gloves into the waste bin. The strip of potato paper (the potato/baby test she and Mabel had invented, not that they’d ever tell the boys in research) she’d flushed. “Guess I’ll decide when it comes out and I see what kind it is. You know, I play bridge with a woman who’s only ever popped out Russets? I don’t know how she does it.”
“The boys oughta be studying that instead of wasting their time with their dopey time travel project. Ready to head back?”
“Just let me powder my nose first.” Hester fussed with her compact, fluffed her hair and made a kissy face in the mirror. “Ready!”
“Try to pretend you didn’t just pee into a jar,” Mabel stage whispered as they left the restroom and it made Hester snort so hard she had to go right back in.
#
“Hey, gals!” said Tony, the lead scientist. “Take a look at these printouts, they’re a hoot and a half.”
“Gary made one that looks like a horse!” said Johnny, his eyes fixed to the sine wave on his screen. He toggled a few dials and let out a whoop as the sine wave changed ever so slightly.
“Be right there, Tony,” said Mabel. “Hester, why don’t you grab the boys a couple of drinks.”
“Sure thing,” said Hester and hurried to the wet bar, conveniently located beside the autoclave.
#
After declining the offer of pre-dinner cocktails, Hester and Mabel locked the lab up for the night and walked to their cars parked in the nearby lot.
“I was wondering,” said Hester. “Do you think anyone would notice if we ran a little experiment of our own in the lab?”
“Nobody noticed us tinkering with the potato/baby test,” said Mabel. “Or the time we made lobster Thermidor. What did you have in mind?”
“Well,” said Hester. “Thirty percent of all pregnancies end up with a potato instead of a human child.”
“That are reported,” said Mabel.
“That are reported,” agreed Hester. “I was just wondering if the potato was…oh, I don’t know, the fetus of a fetus? A fetus that didn’t quite take, or was expelled too early to take?”
Mabel lit up a cigarette and offered another to Hester, who accepted. “We still get potatoes out of the ground,” she said and blew smoke. “No one’s ever found a baby in a field of potatoes.”
“That’s been reported,” said Hester pointedly.
“That’s been reported,” agreed Mabel. “So? You want to drug yourself up so you don’t get the contractions, break water and squeeze out a tater?”
“Maybe someday we’ll get to that point,” said Hester. “For now I was thinking, birth the potato and then keep it in an incubator in the lab, like hatching a chicken from an egg.”
They reached their cars and Mabel put a high-heeled foot up on the bumper of hers. “You can’t just keep it under a heat lamp like you would a chicken, though,” she said. “That’d just dry the potato out. You’d need something that mimics the specific conditions of the womb.”
“We’ve got all sorts of weird stuff at the lab,” said Hester. “Bill keeps muttering about a liquid he says will keep his fiancée’s head alive, and there’s the radiation chamber that’s supposed to bring dead people back to life…”
“Knowing Bill, he’d just remove some poor woman’s womb and stuff the potato into that,” Mabel sniffed. “We’ll figure it out on our own. If those knuckleheads can put together an interocitor, we can grow a baby from a potato. See you tomorrow, Hester.”
#
Over the next few weeks, Hester and Mabel (between fixing drinks, fetching equipment from different departments of the lab, and utilizing their woman’s touch on finicky dials) compiled a list of available resources and set about bodging up a radiation chamber out of a Dutch oven.
Hester was slipping Mabel a note asking WHERE CAN WE GET SOME MORE IONS? when Tony came in with his towheaded child, Tony Jr.
“And this is where Daddy spends his fourteen-hour days!” Tony said. “Hey everyone, get a load of this chip off the ol’ block.”
“Gee whiz, Pop, what’s with all these potatoes?” was the first thing out of Tony Jr.’s mouth.
Hester and Mabel shared an alarmed glance. In preparation for their experiment, and to allay suspicion around the lab, they had been sneaking in one potato every two days and leaving the spuds in various innocent places—on top of filing cabinets, between beakers, one pinned to the corkboard with a note stating ‘IMPORTANT’—and so far no one had been any wiser.
“Hey, yeah,” said Tony, with sudden clarity. “There are a lot of potatoes around here, aren’t there? Gary? Johnny? You know anything about this? Girls?”
Mabel pointed to the one stuck to the corkboard. “That one says it’s important.”
“Well, I’ll be.” Tony lifted Tony Jr. to ride on his hip and hefted a Red Gold. “What do you make of it, bud?”
Tony Jr. clapped his hands, giggled rudely, and sang,
“Baby, baby, potato, baby,
One is a yes and the other is maybe.
Baby, baby, potato, baby,
Oops! Mixed-up potato baby!”
“Why, Tony Jr.,” said Hester, mortified, “wherever did you learn that song?”
Tony Jr. snatched the Red Gold from his father’s hand. “The schoolyard,” he said dismissively. “All the kids know it.” Unasked, he continued,
“Baby, baby, potato, baby,
Momma is the oven and she makes her own gravy.
Baby, baby, potato, baby,
Yum! Mashed-up potato baby!”
And with that, he hurled the Red Gold to the ground. The resulting smack made Hester and Mabel wince, but the others didn’t notice.
“That’s not a nice way to treat other people’s things,” said Tony sternly. “I think you’d better have a time-out in the time travel cabinet, buster.”
“Awww, Pop!”
Tony marched Tony Jr. away and called over his shoulder, “Tidy that potato up, would you, girls? And clear out the rest of them. They must’ve clean sprung up overnight…”
Later, in the safety of the restroom, Hester said, “That was a close one!”
“Too close,” said Mabel, and lit a cigarette. “Tony Jr. better hope we don’t stick him in the autoclave.”
“You’re sounding a lot like old Bill.”
“Old Bill might be onto something. How much longer does your potato have?”
“Maybe another week. And after that…” She sighed.
Mabel passed Hester her cigarette. “You can’t rush science, Hester.”
#
Early one morning the following week, Mabel awoke to the sound of the telephone ringing. She groggily pushed up her sleep mask and stumbled to the phone in the hallway. “Hello?”
“Mabel? Mabel, it happened last night. You gotta come help me set up the lab before the boys get there.”
“What? Hester?” Mabel looked at the clock. “Hester, it’s four in the morning.”
“I gave birth to a potato at midnight, you better be grateful I let you sleep in this late.”
“All right, all right. When do you want me there?”
“Can you make it for five?”
Mabel groaned. “This better be one damn fine potato.”
“You’re a doll. See you soon!”
Mabel hung up and slunk back to the bedroom where her friend still lay abed. “Who was that?” she mumbled.
“Gotta go do some science,” said Mabel, pulling her underwear out of a drawer. “Gonna go irradiate a potato.”
Her friend yawned and rolled over. “Okay, hon. Remember to eat lunch.”
#
“It’s got your eyes,” said Mabel. She’d barely pulled into her parking space when Hester had run up to the driver’s side door, proudly displaying a Russet.
“Really?” Hester said, squinting and turning the potato this way and that. “I think it takes after its father.” Both women laughed and Mabel got out of her car.
“All right, I found Bill’s notes on his formula and I think we can whip that up no problem,” said Hester as they swiftly made their way to the lab. “I told Johnny I needed to clean his ion converter and I know he’ll forget I ever borrowed it.”
“We’ve got wires and alligator clips out the wazoo and I stole some gauges and dials from Gary,” said Mabel. They rounded a corner, both bent over their notes. “So long as we—”
“AHHH!” they shouted as they collided with Bill, who was rounding the corner from the opposite direction. Mabel dropped her clipboard. Hester dropped her potato. Bill dropped the end of a rolled-up carpet.
“What are you doing here?” they all said in unison. Recognizing it was two against one, Bill spoke first.
“Nothing,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
They looked at the suspiciously lumpy rolled-up carpet. They looked at each other. They looked at the potato. They looked at Bill.
“Also nothing,” said Hester.
Mabel picked up her clipboard. Hester picked up her potato. Bill picked up one end of the rolled-up carpet.
“Your carpet’s leaking,” said Hester.
“I’ll come back to clean it up,” said Bill.
“Good, ‘cause we’re not gonna,” said Mabel.
“Good, I don’t want you to,” said Bill.
“Good,” said Hester.
“Good,” said Bill. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” said Mabel.
“Bye,” said Hester.
They went their separate ways, Mabel and Hester avoiding the leakage.
“Bill’s weird,” said Hester. “Don’t be like Bill.”
#
“Attaching electrodes!”
“Calibrating the protein graph!”
“Inserting the probe!”
“Adjusting the barometer!”
“Ready?”
“Ready!”
Mabel and Hester high-fived. “Science!”
They turned the machine on.
#
Life in the lab continued. Mabel and Hester exchanged daily progress reports. Day 1. Still a potato. Day 12. Still a potato. Day 37. Still a potato.
Then:
Day 49.
“Swear to God, Hester, it moved,” said Mabel. “We plunked it right in the middle of the oven and it’s stayed right in the middle of the oven and unless one of the boys moved it for a prank, that potato moved by itself.”
Hester and Mabel, after declining pre-dinner cocktails like the champs they were, huddled over the Dutch oven and its potato, which was now nestled against one side.
Hester tried jiggling the oven. It remained sturdy and stolid, the liquid inside barely trembling.
“Day 49,” Hester said, writing the note. “Movement?”
#
Weeks went by. The potato would be missing from the oven in the morning, only to be discovered under a desk or behind someone’s chair. Once they found it on a table. Once, memorably, it had managed to get itself stuck in a beaker and had to be broken out.
And then, one day…
…two potatoes.
Mobile.
“Golly, gals,” said Tony. “These little guys sure are cute, aren’t they!” He was patting the back of a Kennebec, which rolled and purred under his hand.
“Sure are,” said Hester, and winked at Mabel while fingerling potatoes danced and played around their feet.
“Boy oh boy, isn’t science is a fine way to spend your days!” Tony said. “Say, has anyone seen Tony Jr.?”
EVOLUTION…
YESTERDAY, TOMORROW AND TODAY!
#
The video ended.
The teacher, Mr. Head, dismissed the class for their morning recess. Best friends Yukon Gold and Purple Majesty went to Yukon’s cubby-hole to grab a snack.
“History lessons are so boring,” said Purple.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if the actors didn’t treat it like a big joke,” said Yukon. It offered the snack bag to Purple. “Human chip?”