We grew up in the 1940s and 1950s on a small dairy and poultry farm in Belfast, Maine. ‘We’ being my two brothers and three cousins. Times there were tough. Farming in those days, as I suspect it is now, was an austere life. Lots of hard work with little compensation. I think the people who bought our milk and chickens made the money. The small farmer rarely benefited then and I doubt they are doing much better today.
There was not a lot of money for extras or shops: I bought things, especially sweets like cookies, cakes or pies. Things that children love. It is not to worry. We were lucky enough to have as an aunt one of the best, maybe THE best, bakers of this kind of thing in the “kind old state” of Maine, if not the entire New England area.
Aunt Ruth baked all of our cakes. She worked in a hot kitchen with an old-fashioned stove year-round. She baked a variety of treats, but cookies were her specialty, though her cakes weren’t to be ruled out. She baked cakes for all occasions, including every birthday for every child. We chose the cake we wanted and Aunt Ruth made it for us with our name, decorated by hand. My favorite was her chocolate cake with vanilla frosting.
She baked a variety of cookies, including a molasses cookie, a delicious oatmeal raisin cookie, and of course, everyone’s favorite, her chocolate chip cookie filled with big, tasty chocolate chips. (There were no ‘Famous Amos’ cookies in those days!)
As good as they were, and they quickly disappeared with six kids in the house, I think their favorite was their gingerbread cookies. My reasoning is that she baked them more often.
Now, I mentioned that the state of the kitchen I had to work in was not the most suitable for baking. How he did what he did still baffles me. (I’ve tried baking from scratch. Not an easy task.) Taking that into account, she had a tendency to bake those gingerbread cookies until they were fairly well done. Maybe she liked them that way. Man, you really had to bite down hard on those babies for a piece to break off in your mouth. Chewing them was another challenge. We learned that it was best to let them sit in your mouth for a while while they softened up before starting to chew on them. I say this because we hate going to the dentist and those gingerbread cookies were the fastest way to win a trip there that I know of.
One winter afternoon she had labored lovingly and produced a large batch of those gingerbread sandwiches, dozens of them, if I remember correctly. Now, I have told you that dear Aunt Ruth had a predilection for baking these kind of cookies that are quite firm to say the least. I don’t know what happened that day, but this particular batch had to be the firmest yet! They were hard as rocks.
That night the whole family gathered around six for dinner as usual. (Do they do that anymore?) The seats had their hierarchical order. The adults, mostly men, sat in the breakfast nook, the children in the kitchen at a small table. That’s how it always was, for years. There was a further refinement of this hierarchical order in that each adult also had her own particular place at the table. Of greater importance to this story was the seat of my grandfather, Fred. He sat at the other end of the table by the window. As long as he lived, that was his place and it was better that no one tried to sit there. It just didn’t happen. He was the alpha male!
That evening, after dinner was served and eaten, hot tea and dessert were offered. Aunt Ruth proudly introduced her gingerbread cookies as the evening meal. A round plate of them was delivered to the adult table; more than enough for everyone.
Now, one thing about my grandfather that you would notice was that he only had several teeth left to chew on. There was no way he was going to bite into any amount of gingerbread cookie, not these particular gingerbread cookies, no matter how long he steeped them in his hot tea. I think that frustrated him a bit because he could do pretty well with most foods, even without a lot of teeth. He had to say something about this situation; that was his way. He and Aunt Ruth had had shootouts in mockery ways.
I, sitting at the children’s table in the kitchen, saw him looking in my direction with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.
“Berthie,” he said, “could you pass me my hammer?”
My grandmother Bertha, standing in the kitchen with my Aunt Ruth, was puzzled.
“Fred,” he asked, “why the hell would you need your hammer on the table?”
“To break this damn cookie, that’s why!” Fred announced in a voice that could be heard throughout the living room.
There was a moment of deafening silence in the house. Something was going to come out of this insult. It was not to go unnoticed by my Aunt Ruth, so as not to go unpunished. Action was required.
(Now, Aunt Ruth was the nicest person you’ve ever met. She wasn’t the type to get irritated easily. However….NEVER underestimate her baking! Or any of the products from her hand.)
She reacted as fast as lightning. It couldn’t have been faster. With a sweep of her arm, she tossed one of those gingerbread cookies out of the kitchen and into the breakfast nook. Roger Clemens, with or without performance enhancers, had nothing to compare to the speed of that cookie that runs the eight meters or so to his mark.
That cookie, now a deadly missile, flew out of the kitchen and into the breakfast nook like a Frisbee, no, more like a puck because of its texture, and hit my grandfather right between the eyes. The surprise on his face cannot be described when a small trickle of blood soon appeared on the bridge of his nose.
There were about sixteen people dining that night, including contract workers and uncles, as well as six children. There were sixteen gasps when this happened. Our grandfather was the patriarch. He ruled the root. He just didn’t throw gingerbread cookies at her; we all knew that for sure.
Then, as soon as the panting stopped, an enthusiastic round of laughter began. We all laughed until tears came, though no one with more joy and enthusiasm than Aunt Ruth.
However, I think my grandfather laughed the loudest of all. He loved a good joke, even if it was about him! He was given a Band-Aid and all was forgiven. But never again, not once, did he make a disparaging comment about Aunt Ruth’s gingerbread cookies, no matter how hard they were.
(Aunt Ruth recently passed away, but before she did, we laughed about this particular incident. I will miss her dearly.)