Mondays & Memories of My Mom – Family Stories Of Women’s Small Business

Happy Monday, once again. I LOVE Mondays! They’re my 52 Chances a year, in which I get to share Memories of My Mom with you.

October is winding down, as November begins this Saturday. Thus, this blog post celebrates both, with National Women’s Small Business Month and Family Stories Month. Incidentally, Saturday is also National Authors’ Day. At least 4 generations of women in my family have owned their own businesses, plus Mom was an author, too.

Generations ago, very few women worked outside of their homes and even less were business owners. In many of her newsletters, as well as several of her books, Mom wrote some wonderfully inspiring family fables about Dad’s Grandma and her “Back Door Bakery”, in West Virginia, as well as “Cousin Nell’s” hotel.

I’d love to put all of her excerpts together into one “Family Stories” book but I don’t have all of Mom’s newsletter issues – so I’m probably missing some of her stories. Below are a few excerpts of those family stories of women’s small businesses, from some of her newsletter issues that I do have.

Gloria Pitzer’s Secret Recipe Report (Secret Recipe Report, St. Clair, MI; Issue 86, February 1981; p. 6)

LIVING AT HOME

CROOKED PATH WAS A midwestern, sagebrush hamlet settled shortly before the Civil War by pioneers and covered wagons. Grandma was born there a few years after the war – the oldest daughter of her father’s second marriage.

Fortunately, for Grandma, her father dabbled in a little of this, a little of that; owning the saloon in town, a boarding house, and the town’s mercantile. Her diary tells how she learned to cook at the boarding house, where she met Grandpa who was renting a room there.

He married her in the parlor – much against her parents’ better judgment – on her 16^th birthday and on her 17^th birthday they were blessed with the birth of their first of 11 children – six boys and five girls [in all].

We were never quite certain what work Grandpa was in, but it took them from the plains of Nebraska to Ohio, to West Virginia, and eventually to Michigan, with abbreviated residencies in Pennsylvania and Indiana.

From her recipe journal notes it seemed clear that Grandma’s “Back Door Bakery” supported the family’s income rather substantially for many years. Grandpa was probably a professional handyman from what we’ve been able to piece together from Grandma’s recipe journal. She made meticulous notes on recipes to the effect:

- ‘This is the pie I baked from the California lemons that Gus Maxwell gave Pa for fixing his plow.’
- ‘The hens Pa got in payment for the bookcases he made for Judge Burns made a fine stew, good soup, and six loaves of chicken sausage.’
- ‘The sack of brown sugar Yostman gave Pa for mortaring up his stove pipes made a good caramel pie – sent to ailing Bessie Forbes down the road.’

From studying the quilled pen entries, I gather that work was the most essential part of life… [at the turn of the 20^th century]. By contrast, today’s workmanship is inferior to anything produced by the craftsmen of yesterday…

Grandma’s cookery appears to let nothing go to waste. The broth from Judge Burns’ hens also made the gravy for the stew, the meat portion made the sausage and the bones, or the carcass, were ground fine and buried in the vegetable plot in back of the firewood shed.

Apparently, Grandma and Grandpa were considered among the prosperous of their community because they were productive, although never wealthy. At least we do know that they were, indeed, happy.

But the definition of ‘happiness’ in Grandma’s own handwriting was: ‘happiness sometimes comes from ignorance – from not knowing how much better our life might be.’

One of the aunts confided that Grandma placed great importance upon the strength of her family and the respect they gave their father because her own life with her parents was less then memorable. Her life centered around her family – the heart of which seem to be the kitchen. Their nourishment, however, was not food but love…

Gloria Pitzer’s Secret Recipe Report (Secret Recipes, St. Clair, MI; Volume 8 – Number 3, Issue 87; March 1981, p. 3)

GRANDMA’S STORY – THE BACK DOOR BAKERY

GRANDMA NEVER INTENDED to bake for profit. She did it because Grandpa couldn’t keep a job. He was a talented man but restless and easily bored with the same job for very long. When the oldest daughter, Vivian, went to work in the city, at the hospital, she always had something good in her lunch that Grandma had baked.

And after a number of the doctors and nurses in the employees’ lunch room had sampled the baked goods, Vivian was taking home requests to bake special orders for a fair price. Word spread very soon about Grandma’s baking talents.

If somebody wanted a wedding cake or special coffee cakes for holidays or other celebrations, Grandma took the order and filled it promptly. They finally had to turn the back “wash room”, next to the kitchen, into a storage and working area to accommodate another stove and more counters and cupboards.

If someone came to the house, usually up the front walkway to the porch, and rang the pull-cord attached to the clapper on the milk-wagon-bell, somebody would answer the door and direct the perspective “customer” down the walk, around the flower beds, and along the gravel driveway “to the back door”.

Of course, at the back of the house, there were two doors. One went to the cellar and the other into the new kitchen room. So Grandpa hammered up a sign in the appropriate place, reading: “This is the back door”… with an arrow pointing to it.

Soon afterward, Noles (or “Butch”, as we all called him), one of the older boys, added a hand-carved sign that said: “Bakery”. From then on it was always called “The Back Door Bakery”.

And when they moved into a building in the business district of town, years later, Grandma picked one with a nice back entrance to a little traveled side street so that the sign would be easily transferred to it.

Gloria Pitzer’s Secret Recipe Report (Secret Recipe Report, St. Clair, MI; Volume 8, Number 6; Issue 90, June 1981; p. 7)

OUR FAMILY RESTAURANT

THE BACK DOOR BAKERY was never considered a “restaurant” by any standards, of the years during which Grandma ran it with some success. But she probably, without knowing it, was the first “take-out” counter of the times.

In 1910, when the business had grown to the point that they had to move it into town, there was only Cousin Nell’s “Homestead Hotel” down the street and the saloon around the corner from the “Fish House”, where only fish and compatible dishes were served.

Grandma specialized in baked goods, with sandwiches prepared to order, and the enamel pot of hot lemonade during the chilly weather or in a pitcher kept in a tub of crushed ice and water during the warm weather.

Sometimes she charged for the lemonade and sometimes she purposely forgot to add it to the customer’s bill, depending how their finances might be. For instance, when Jeb Parker was “laid-up” with an injury, from falling off his hay wagon, and his wife was about to have their 8^th child.

Grandma would not only forget to charge them for a cup of lemonade at the bakery but she also managed to tuck in a few extra rolls or cookies for the Parker kids. One time, Bess Parker made a special trip back to the [bakery] with the extra rolls, claiming Grandma had made a mistake, by giving them to her.

Grandma couldn’t accept them, as she told Bess, because the new Health Department wouldn’t let perishable foods be re-sold after someone else handled them. She claimed, since it was her own mistake, she’d just let it go.

Grandpa, on the other hand, probably did his own share of good Samaritan-ing by keeping the upper-class matrons coming back with big orders. Grandma tried to busy herself when these fair-weather friends showed up because they had a way of putting her down for supporting her family.

Women did not work in those days – except in “respected” professions, such as teaching, nursing, and clerking. Grandpa, though, with his inevitable charm, would funnel his “home brew” into medicine bottles, mixing it with a little honey or brown sugar, and convince the ladies it was the latest cure-all, for whatever was ailing them.

He would eavesdrop to be a step ahead of them, when he saw them in town or at the meeting hall so he could slip one of them the little bottle, containing his special formula, in a brown bag, and tell them it was “just between friends” – not to let Grandma know.

But if it kept a woman of 60 looking like 40, who was to argue? Actually, Grandma was nowhere near 60 but Grandpa had the ladies believing it – and gave the so-called “elixir” credit. What a rascal! But a loveable one, everyone said.

Of course, the catch came with him whispering hints to the ladies that the elixir had a curious stimulation – only if it was taken with Grandma’s “Cornstarch Cookies”, which weren’t selling well.

Grandma could never understand what prompted a run on those cookies that week. Had she known, Grandpa would’ve been relegated to the cellar, again. But the secret was well kept! Grandpa’s elixir proved to be a good vanilla extender, which he prescribed be taken with hot tea by the ladies of the Temperance Society.

Nell wasted no time in securing the building next to her “Homestead Hotel”, once she would realize a profit and Grandma kept her supplied in the breads and baked goods on the menu…

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.

https://www.balboapress.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-001062253

IN CLOSING…

In honor of TODAY, being National American Beer Day, here’s Mom’s copycat recipe for “Pepper-Itch Arms Seasoned Stuffing Bread”, which utilizes beer in the ingredients. This is from her last book, Gloria Pitzer’s Cookbook – The Best of the Recipe Detective (Balboa Press; Jan. 2018, p. 99). [A revised reprint of Gloria Pitzer’s Better Cookery Cookbook (Secret Recipes^TM, St. Clair, MI; May 1983, 3^rd Edition)]. As always, I’m asking only for proper credit if you care to re-share it.

#AmericanBeerDay