Julia Child was six
foot two and gangly. Red Adair was short and stocky. But they both
captured the public imagination because they were larger than life.
It may seem strange today, but there weren't any television cooking
shows before Julia Child's first show began airing on WGBH in
Boston in 1963. In fact, it looked as if cooking itself might
even windup in the dustbin of history.
The fifties had been the era of TV dinners and prepared foods.
They were efficient and nutritious, we were told. Cooking, by
contrast, was supposed to be drudgery.
Well, no one who ever saw Julia Child on television could think
that she thought cooking was drudgery. She obviously thought it
was a creative endeavor and great fun. She'd slap her hip to show
us what a flank was, laugh at her own jokes and generally share
her joy with us while she shared her recipes.
When she was done we thought differently about food. She helped
many of us discover the joy of a good meal, well-prepared with
good ingredients. She paved the way for all the celebrity chefs,
and restaurants and specialty food stores and catalogs. And she
probably did more for the wine industry than any other human being.
The first time most of us heard of Red Adair was 1962 when he
put out a fire called "The Devil's Cigarette Lighter." That fire
was so big that John Glenn could see it from space.
For over fifty years, Red Adair and his crew fought the biggest
and most dangerous oil well fires without a single fatal accident.
Adiar also invented new equipment and techniques to do the job
safely and more effectively.
In 1991 he went to Kuwait to help put out the oil well fires
that retreating Iraqi soldiers had set. The experts figured the
wells would burn for up to five years. Red's team put them out
in nine months.
He was a colorful cuss. If there was ever a person who personified
Texas swagger, it was Red Adair. He was thrilled when John Wayne
signed to play him in the movie "Hellfighters" and Red Adair,
the blacksmith's boy, got to give technical advice to the Duke.
You always knew when Red Adair's team showed up at a fire. Coveralls
and boots were red. So were cranes, and pumps and anything else
that would take a color.
For Julia Child, colorful was mostly a matter of style and language.
She closed every show with a toast and "Bon Apetit" in a voice
that invited parody.
On one hand she was always more of a cook than a chef. The show
was set in her kitchen at home, not in some fancy restaurant and
there were no chef's hats or impressive napery. You felt like,
after the show was over, Julia would sit down with some friends
around that very table and eat what she had just prepared.
She brooked no nonsense and was firm in her opinions. She had
no use for margarine, referring to it as "the M word" or "that
other spread." She wasn't a big fan of health food, either. "Food
labels that say 'no fat' or 'no cholesterol' might as well say,
'no taste, no fun,'" was her opinion.
The funny thing is that neither Julia Child nor Red Adair set
out to do the things we remember them for. They didn't have a
career plan, carefully drawn up and scrupulously followed.
Julia Child was a well-to-do girl from Pasadena who graduated
from Smith College and wound up in Southeast Asia doing clerical
work for the OSS during the Second World War. That's where she
met Paul Child
Paul was older than Julia and half a foot shorter. He knew and
cared about good food and wine. After they married, Paul moved
over to the diplomatic service and the couple was posted to Paris.
The way she put it in one interview, she had fallen in love with
a man worth cooking for. And so she went to the Cordon Bleu cooking
school to learn how to do it well. It was a labor for love that
resulted in discovering a labor of love.
Red Adair dropped out of high school and worked at just about
everything that paid. In 1938 he was hauling equipment to a field
in Alice, Texas when a well blew. The firefighting crew needed
help.
It was run by Myron Kinley, the original pioneer of oil well
fire fighting. He walked up to Adair, who didn't seem fazed much
by the fire. "Boy," Kinley asked, "do you want to work and make
some money."
In the end, how they found their passion doesn't matter as much
as the simple fact that they found it and lived it. As different
as they were, both Julia Child and Red Adair took the passion
they discovered and used it to change the world they left us.
Top of page
JULIA CHILD
Julia Child's classic cookbook "Mastering
the Art of French Cooking" was written with Louisette Bertholle
and Simone Beck. It's still in print after 43 years.
She also wrote a cookbook for her original television show, "The
French Chef."
"The
Way to Cook" is for folks who really don't know how.
It includes instructions for things like boiling an egg.
COPIA: The American Center for
Wine, Food & the Arts is a cultural museum and educational
center dedicated to exploring the distinctively American contribution
to the character of wine and food in close association with the
arts and humanities, and to celebrating these as a unique expression
of the vitality of American life, culture and heritage. Julia
Child was an early and energetic supporter.
Julia Child's kitchen is now on display at the
Smithsonian and this special Web site.
RED ADAIR
The official Web site for the Red
Adair Company
Oil
Drilling Rig Industry Pioneers
Famous
Texans
There is an authorized biography of Adair called "Red
Adair: An American Hero." You'll find this listed under "Red
Adair" and "An American Hero" but it's the same book by Philip
Singerman. Right now this is pretty pricey unless you really want
to read what Red thought you should know about him.
The
movie "Hellfighters" came out in 1968 and starred John Wayne
as Chance Buckman, a character based on Red Adair in some ways.
If you get this, remember that the Buckman character is based
on Adair's firefighting exploits and not necessarily on his actual
history. I don't know about Adair's relations with his children,
but unlike the main character is this film, Red Adair was married
to the same woman for 64 years.
17 August 2004
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