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, I hope this brings you a happy Monday.
#NationalGratitudeMonth, #FamilyStoriesMonth, #NationalLifeWritingMonth
November is National Gratitude Month, Family Stories Month, and National Life Writing Month. Each day during this past week, I have been grateful for all of my family. The holiday season has begun and I’ve been reminiscing about our big family gatherings before Mom and Dad passed away, as well as before each of their parents passed away.
Family roots grow deep. Dad’s side of the family kept extensive records of their ancestors, going back at least a couple hundred years. I wish I could find more ancestors on Mom’s side of the family, pass her grandparents. If I could go back in time, it would be to those holiday family gatherings, in the 1970s, so I could record everyone’s family stories.
I am grateful to have many of Mom’s books and newsletters, with her stories about our family. One short story, about her paternal grandparents, is pictured below. I also have her and my grandmas’ scrap books, including cards and letters about various family happenings.
I’m grateful for my husband and his big, patient, and loving heart that has been tested more than several times by my menopausal state, as I get older. He is my best friend and my rock – just as Dad was with Mom.
Speaking of which, I’m also grateful for my dad, who I miss every day. He taught me about honesty and integrity and working hard (no matter what kind of work), as well as always giving my best effort in everything I attempt to do.
Likewise, I’m grateful for my mom, who I also miss daily. She inspired and encouraged me to be a great mother and homemaker, as well as an artist and writer. Equally, I’m grateful for my children. They’re each a blessing to me. I’m proud of the adults they’ve become (also influenced greatly by my parents) and all their accomplishments, big and small.
I’m also grateful for my friends, past and present. All have taught me some kind of life lesson – trust, loyalty, and reliability, just to name a few. Similarly, I’m grateful for my siblings, for the same reasons. Positive or negative, lessons are lessons and all are learning opportunities. As Mom often advised me: “Learn something new every day.”
Mom wrote a series of family stories, in her books and newsletter issues, about Dad’s grandma’s “Backdoor Bakery”, in West Virginia, based loosely on decades old kin-folklore. Grandma operated the small bakery business out of her own home to help make ends meet, while raising many children and helping Grandpa run their farm, as well.
The stories may have begun in Mom’s 1981 newsletters. She also wrote extensively about the family saga in her self-published cookbook, Mixed Blessings (March 1984), weaving the family stories in and around food and recipes, including some that supposedly came from Dad’s grandma’s kitchen journal.
FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…
As seen in…
Gloria Pitzer’s Secret Recipe Report (Secret Recipe Report, St. Clair, MI; Volume 8, Number 5; Issue 89, May 1981; p. 8)
OLD FASHIONED TASTE – CLASSIC HONEY DESSERTS
AT “THE BACKDOOR BAKERY”, Grandma tried to keep the chores divided among the 11 children and Grandpa, to the point that life ran smoothly.
But with the bakery attached to the back of the house, when all of the children were young and still living at home, confusion sometimes interfered and plans went awry! Of course, Grandma blamed Grandpa.
He wasn’t really a shiftless soul, as so many of Grandma’s sympathizing lady-friends thought. It was just that Grandpa made bad investments. She referred to him often as her “Jack-in the-bean-stalk” man.
She would send him off to town with a carriage full of her baked goods to sell and he would return with a handful of “magic beans” – just like Jack did in the fairy tale we all remember.
Well, family talk claims that once Grandpa returned with a dozen beehives in exchange for a carriage full of fresh bakery products. Grandma… made Grandpa sleep in the cellar…
[GRANDPA’S ELIXIR]
KNOWING GRANDPA’S FONDNESS for “the grape”, imagine how he doctored up some of Grandma’s recipes in the bakery! Aunt Vivian tells of a time Grandma had the older girls glazing the tops of hot loaves of plain “Batter Bread” with a spiced honey and butter icing, to which Grandpa had added a generous “slug” of his private flask!
The ladies of the Temperance Society were standing in line to get that marvelous “elixir” with the tranquilizing mysterious herbs that Grandpa whispered would restore their youth, erase old-age wrinkles, and put a man under their bed! Had Grandma known about that, Grandpa would’ve been assigned to the cellar for a whole year!
“WHAT’S VALUABLE – THE FAMILY… That for which I am most grateful, however, as I see how our family has worked together in helping us to build this dining room table enterprise into a substantial and professional operation, is the friendship that has grown over the years between [Paul, me and] the five children… My cup runneth over!” – Gloria Pitzer, My Cup Runneth Over and I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret RecipesTM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, p. 12)
The following is another family story Mom wrote about her maternal grandparents.
MORE FROM MOM’S MEMORIES…
As seen in…
My Cup Runneth Over and I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret RecipesTM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, pp. 83-84)
[AN ANCESTRY STORY]
[Circa 1970s…] THE PRINCIPAL WAS NOT sorry he hired me, for the job required filling in for a teacher who would be out about six weeks due to an auto accident, in which she was injured. I took over her class and initiated a school newspaper while I was there…
That class was a difficult challenge to say the least. Perhaps, I took still another risk though, when I told the class that whatever their ancestors were, whatever their ethnic or religious persuasion was, they could not use such conditions as excuses for not at least trying to develop their individual talents and skills.
It sounded good. The tough kid in the class…[was] amused and decidedly un-interested in anything I could say. He seemed to be in charge and the rest of the students appeared to yield to his lead, so I talked directly to him, but so that the rest of the class could hear.
I told him that calling me a ‘WASP’ was not a description of what I really was. Of course, WASP meant ‘white Anglo-Saxon Protestant’ and it surprised me that he even knew enough to use that term.
He finally shut up and found himself listening to me as I then moved around the classroom telling everybody that it was okay to be sore about not getting a fair break, as long as you didn’t take it out on somebody else.
Since I had their attention, finally, I launched right into a story about my own background and how my mother’s parents were originally German, but they were also Jews, and living in Russia at the turn-of-the-century.
It was dangerous for any Jew in Russia at that time, so much like the story of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’, my grandparents with two small children and my grandmother then expecting a third child, took a crowded freighter to America. They couldn’t speak a word of English and had nothing with them but what they could carry by hand.
On the way over, unfortunately, they came down with what [was] suspected to be TB. A few years following the birth of their seventh child, TB finally took my grandmother.
Having settled in Pittsburgh, my grandfather moved on to Cleveland where he hoped to find relatives who would help him with a job and a place to raise the motherless children.
It didn’t work out as he expected, however. The relatives were not where he had last contacted them. The orphanage was overcrowded that he had been directed to, in order to leave the children and seek treatment for the TB that seem to be getting worse for him.
Having been turned away by the orphanage, he was about to leave the children all on a street corner, telling them somebody would come along to help them, but that he had to get his train to the sanatorium that the government was sending him to for help. At that point the nuns were passing by on their usual afternoon walk.
What happened that particular day was rather sketchy in details, since all of the children were then too young to clearly recall it; but apparently, as he left the orphanage and was expressing his despair in tears on the street in front of the school, two nuns were passing by on their way back to the Catholic orphanage down the street.
They stopped long enough to ask if they could be of help, and upon hearing the story from the older children who spoke English and grandpas broken English, they concluded that the children needed to be cared for.
They took the children to the Catholic orphanage, assuring my grandfather that they would see to it that they went to Temple every Saturday, even though they would be in the Catholic schools and living in the dormitories with the other children.
When there was room for them at the Jewish orphanage, they would then be transferred, and the promise was kept. There they all remained until each one turned 16 years of age, only to be dismissed into the world, like a prisoner, with nothing more than a change of clothing and bus fair to the city.
The compassion of those Catholic nuns in the care they gave the children of that Jewish immigrant, when Jews were hated as much as they ever were in this country, kept me from ever harboring feelings of prejudice toward other people due to the religious or racial background.
But there was more in the lessons I derived from my roots, since every one of those seven brothers and sisters became prosperous and famous in their own right.
One became an attorney, another a famous artist, and another manager of an apartment complex, while still another became a fine professional carpenter, and an aunt who danced as a ballerina with a New York ballet company, as well as an uncle who had his own advertising agency.
My mother met my father when she applied for a job as a typist and secretary at his real estate office. My dad was a devout Christian, so when they were married, she easily embraced his faith and was able to pass on to me.
[It was] the best of three worlds, reflecting the Catholic upbringing with Temple under Jewish Sabbath and then the Christian church where the precepts were strictly followed in my parents’ home during my own childhood. The story held the attention of the class just long enough…
By the time I had completed the story, I led directly into an assignment of bringing in an account of each students own background and heritage or family roots with much discussion on their various religious practices and ethnic customs.
It was a successful experience… Until now, I never wrote about this. Perhaps somebody will benefit from knowing about it, however.
#NationalInspirationalRoleModelsMonth
The “tough kid in the class”, as Mom described above, went on to be a writer, himself. He spoke at Mom’s memorial service, telling all of us about the positive impact that she had on his life, during his promiscuous teen years and beyond.
He accredited Mom for having inspired him to be a writer because, as he recalled, he might otherwise had chosen a very different path – and not a constructive one. He said he was grateful for the quality time that she spent with him – voluntarily coaching, counseling, guiding, and encouraging him and his passion for writing.
LAST THOUGHTS…
#Brassheart, #MichiganOverFifty
“Friends are a treasure and when we count our blessings we count our friends twice! It’s not possible to have a full and happy life without others to share with, to help when help is needed, to be helped when help is offered.” – Gloria Pitzer, My Cup Runneth Over and I Can’t Find My Mop (Secret RecipesTM, St. Clair, MI; Dec. 1989, p. 100)
I’m grateful to have such a friend, myself. Rock Allen is as kindhearted as they come. He built a beautiful uplifting website, called Brassheart.Studio. His mantra is “Dig deep. Build hope.” He even wrote a wonderfully imaginative story about me and my husband, as citizens in the Brassheart community.
Rock built another website, where Michiganders over 50 can gather. It has great Michigan based stories, one of which he wrote about me and Mom; plus, games, events and much more. Rock gave me a platform there, on which to contribute more of Mom’s stories and recipes. Check it out: MichiganOverFifty.com.
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. I look forward to hearing from you!
IN CLOSING…
In honor of November, being National Raisin Bread Month, here’s Mom’s secret recipe for “Oatmeal Raisin Bread”; as seen in… 3 In 1 Book of Less Fat and Sugar & Best Bread Recipes (Secret RecipesTM, Marysville, MI; Jan. 1997, p. 57). As always, I’m asking only for proper credit if you care to re-share it.
P.S. Food-for-thought until next Monday…
November observes… Banana Pudding Lovers Month, National Diabetes Month, National Fun with Fondue Month, National Native American Heritage Month, National Novel Writing Month, National Peanut Butter Lovers Month, National Pepper Month, National Pomegranate Month, National Roasting Month, Spinach and Squash Month, Sweet Potato Awareness Month (also in February), National Vegan Month, and more.
Today is also… National Scrapple Day and National Louisiana Day.
Tomorrow is… National Vanilla Cupcake Day.
Wednesday, November 11th, is… National Sundae Day and Veterans Day.
Thursday, November 12th, is… National French Dip Day, National Pizza with the Works Except Anchovies Day, and National Chicken Soup for the Soul Day.
Friday, November 13th, is… National Indian Pudding Day and World Kindness Day.
Saturday, November 14th, is… National Pickle Day and National Spicy Guacamole Day. [NOTE: Nov. 14, 1974, is also my birthday and the anniversary of Mom’s first TV interview, as the Recipe DetectiveTM. It aired on “AM Detroit”, with host, Dennis Wholley, at WXYZ-TV (Channel 7, Detroit).]
Sunday, November 15th, is… National Bundt (Pan) Day, National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day, National Spicy Hermit Cookie Day, National Raisin Bran Cereal Day, and America Recycles Day.
Have a great week!
…45 down and 7 to go.
