Mondays & Memories of My Mom – The Newspaper Effect

Thank God it’s Monday, again. I always look forward to every Monday. They’re my 52 Chances a year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with you. Therefore, have a happy Monday.

#TheRecipeDetective

#NationalNewspaperWeek

Among other things, this week celebrates National Newspaper Week. Regularly printed newspapers supposedly began in Germany in the early 17^th century. It was a weekly published paper, resulting from the invention of the printing press.

With all of these special observances in mind, it’s the perfect time to tell you about how my mom started her professional writing career in the 1960s by, first, working for some local newspapers. She even syndicated her columns nationally for a short time.

Mom learned many skills during her time in the newspaper business, regarding layout and other abilities. These talents eventually came to benefit her, as a “cottage industry” small business owner, when she started her copycat recipes venture – writing, self-publishing, and self-promoting her recipe cards, newsletters, and cookbooks.

#WomensSmallBusinessMonth

#NationalCookbookMonth

“The experiences we have encountered in building this family enterprise of ours, this cottage industry… has occurred while distributing recipe secrets through radio [and television] broadcasting and newspaper exposure… I have met some of the nicest people in the world, some of the most generous people who want to share their good ideas with me as much as I want to share mine with them. Of these good people, I will speak often and lovingly.” – Gloria Pitzer, My Cup Runneth Over and I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, p. 2).

FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…

As seen in…

My Cup Runneth Over and I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, pp. 21-22)

EXPERIENCES ARE PREPARATION

THE EXACT CHRONOLOGICAL order, in which each of my writing experiences have occurred, are not clear in my memory now. However, each step [and] each experience was, on second thought, [neither] a delay nor a setback, as I used to believe. It was, instead, only preparation and the gathering of experience…

[Other than I, myself,] there has been no ‘real’ publisher, no public relations agent or the expensive efforts of professional promoters. [Their] ideas of how to publicize what I have to offer would only conflict with what I felt should be done.

My cup runneth over because I have been blessed with an enthusiasm for promoting my own work and have been twice blessed with the support and partnership of, probably, the most honest man in the world; who knows, from his own valuable working experiences, exactly how to manage and protect this enterprise.

All of the blessings I derived from having stumbled my way through the [not so] meaningless jobs of the many newspapers for which I once worked, eventually paid tremendous dividends, as I was able to put those learned skills into practice with this family enterprise of ours.

Each bit of experience contributed to what I would, later, be able to do without the help of professionals.

JOURNALISM

JOURNALISM IS a peculiar profession to follow. I’ve been a serious journalist [since 1954]. I’ve worked among writers who wrote to live, while the rest of us lived to write. We had to communicate to reach out to someone with ideas, with thoughts, with reasonings and [remembrances].

Somehow, we had to make a difference, touching others with some good – like the single stone tossed into the still waters of a shimmering pond, the ripples begin, as they always do, where the stone touched the water’s surface and responded around and around, until the widest circle touched the grassy edge, again and again.

While I live to write, I must consider that others do not. Writers never retire – not if they are truly writers. Editors retire. [Even] reporters retire from their work at some given point. But old writers never die, they just run out of words. [Unfortunately, Mom ran out of words on January 21, 2018 – RIP.]

THERE IS GREAT JOY in an exchange of ideas; specifically when you have something of value to share. When that exchange of ideas flows from a mutual appreciation of the good in human life, there is no doubt that the abundance of good continues to unfold around us from only one Unlimited Source.

We don’t think too much about that Source until we’re in real trouble. Then, we’re willing to reach out because, after all, what have we got to lose? Too bad we don’t tap that Source when everything is going well and exercise our ability to think [and be grateful], which is something very few people take the time to do.

#NationalBookMonth

Mom’s dream of writing “a great American novel” never came to fruition, as “Life” took her in a slightly different direction. Every successful accomplishment that Mom had with her writing efforts in and after high school and college involved cooking and recipes in some manner.

In the 1950s and 1960s, she won multiple contests on radio shows and in magazines for her recipes, as well as for her food-related stories, articles, and essays that she entered. With the prize money from one contest in 1963, she bought her first typewriter, as she always had to borrow one before then.

Being a wife and mother of five, Mom found her “family life” to be the best subject about which to write. She was very creative and funny. She designed a few different columns for weekly papers on that new typewriter, mailing out samples to over 300 newspapers, in hopes of getting picked up as a regular columnist.

It worked. Within a year, she was writing two different columns (“No Laughing Matter” and “Minding the Hearth”) for 60 regular newspapers. She even created her own cartoon panels (similar to “Family Circle”) that matched her columns. These she called “Full House – as Kept by Gloria Pitzer”.

The carton panels depicted her life as a homemaker, wife, and mother of 5 in the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, in the throes of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Yet, Mom still did not think that writing recipes was her “calling”. To her, recipes and homemaking were merely interests that kept her writing and producing a living from it.

In the early 1970s, when she was writing a regular food column, called “Cookbook Corner”, she inadvertently created a new niche in the food industry – copycat cookery. No cookbooks on the market covered such a thing back then. There wasn’t even a single recipe in the newspaper’s food section that didn’t come off to her as “down-home dullness”.

She approached her editors with a new idea to change things up from the usual meatloaf and chocolate brownies recipes. They told her to write the recipes that she thought would excite the readers – thus, she did and her readers loved it.

However, the food industry’s advertisers of the paper were not so happy with her inventive ways for imitating their products at home. They didn’t want people to “copycat” meals like they were “eating out – at home” (but at a fraction of the cost).

#PositiveAttitudeMonth

#SelfPromotionMonth

If it saved her household money, Mom wanted to share it with her readers, to help them save money, too; but the editors told her to go back to the monotonous meatloaf and chocolate brownies recipes or “pick up her check.”

Nevertheless, it was too late… the bug had bitten her… and she realized this really was her “calling”. She told them to mail her the check, and she went home to start her own paper. Incidentally, Free Speech Week is coming soon.

She knew someone needed to give homemakers, like herself, something more. The food industry was so much bigger than what was being offered in the colored, glossy magazines and the cookbooks of those days.

Fast food recipes weren’t found in any cookbooks back then – and these were the types of restaurants that struggling, middle class families would frequent when they wanted an affordable meal out.

What were they to do when they couldn’t afford to take their family out for such a treat? Mom knew! Make it at home! And she couldn’t wait to investigate all the possibilities that there were to offer from this new platform. She loved every minute of it for the rest of her life.

Mom believed that life’s best experiences came from its biggest disappointments, by turning “a let-down into a set-up” for something better. She also believed that every new day was a turning point and that each experience (good and bad, alike) eventually contributed in some way to our growth and happiness.

For that she was always grateful. Since life’s lessons continue to confront us on a daily basis, we should be learning something new every day. After all, as humans, we’re always growing and evolving – mind, body and soul.

LAST THOUGHTS…

Thanks for visiting! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my memories of my mom, her memories, and other related things. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at therecipedetective@outlook.com. You can also find me on Facebook: @TheRecipeDetective.

IN CLOSING…

In honor of October, being National Apple Month, here’s Mom’s secret recipes for “Apple Butter & Apple Sauce”, from her “Apple Drying At Home” craft (posted last week), as seen in… My Cup Runneth Over and I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, p. 35). As always, asking only for proper credit if you care to re-share them.

#NationalAppleMonth