Like most kids, when I was very young, I believed that all the wonderful things that made Christmas…CHRISTMAS, originated in Santa’s North Pole workshop. By the time, I hit the fifth grade, I knew better…Christmas actually came from two other magical places…Sears Roebucks and my mother’s kitchen. Every toy my avaricious 11-year-old heart ever desired, could be found in the glorious pages of the Sears “Wishbook.” Every day after school I studied the red covered catalog with an intensity I never devoted to my school books. Skipping over the boring clothes and yucky “girl stuff,” I directed my attention to the toys designed to tempt an all-American boy like me. I would lie on my stomach staring at the grainy black and white illustrations until my mother began to fear for my eyesight. I read with interest the detailed descriptions of these wonders, “Blast off into space with the Marx Atomic Cape Canaveral Missile base! This 87-piece set includes a lithographed launch command center, detailed astronaut figures, X-15 rocket plane and real firing ICBM missile launcher.” I had no idea what “Lithographed” meant but I was sure it was wonderful. I turned down the page corner so that my parents wouldn’t miss the large red crayon circle around this item when I “forgot” my treasured catalog on the kitchen counter, next to my parent’s coffee pot. The Napoleon Solo Man from Uncle Pistol Carbine set, the Lionel Military Commando Assault Train with Exploding Box car and an A.C. Gilbert No. 6 ½ All Electric Erector Set all got the same treatment. Foreshadowing my future sales career, I used my Wishbook research to lobby for the items I wanted them to buy. Echoing the catalog copy, I described how the Erector set was like getting, “100 toys in one,” and that I was really trying to save them money. To my parent’s credit, when Christmas morning finally arrived, I would always find one or two of my circled items under the tree.
While the Sear’s Wishbook was a feast for the eyes, my mother’s kitchen produced a feast worthy of a Dicken’s novel. Like many women of her generation, my mom was suitably proud of her domestic skills. She was an excellent seamstress and cook, but she was especially proud of her baked goods. Throughout the year, she produced all manner of homemade pies, rolls and scratch cakes. I believe that Nikita Khrushchev would have been more welcome in her kitchen than Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines…only amateurs needed a mix. At Christmas time, she pulled out all the stops. We kids enjoyed an endless array of cookies; peanut butter blossoms, chocolate chips, and sugar cookies cut out in festive shapes.
No one under 18 was allowed to taste my mother’s crowning holiday baking achievement. Her legendary Christmas fruitcake was strictly reserved for adults only. Fruitcake gets a bad rap these days. They are the butt of holiday jokes and regifting them is a staple gag for sitcom writers, but my mother’s fruitcake was serious business. People truly welcomed them and were grateful to be on her gift list. The popularity of her fruitcakes was a result of the love, the time and the large amount of alcohol that she put into them.
My mother invested more time in making her fruitcakes than many women today spend in the kitchen during an entire year. Technically they required about 40 years to prepare. I say this because her recipe relied on the butternuts and walnuts which fell from the trees on our property. These huge trees had been planted by my grandfather decades before; perhaps in hopes of getting a slice of fruitcake in the distant future. I would gather the nuts in the fall, spreading them on racks in our basement to dry. My grandfather would crack them, filling 3-pound Maxwell House coffee cans with the rich buttery kernels used in much of my mother’s baking. Preparations began in earnest during Thanksgiving week with a trip to Balsamo’s market in McKeesport. Balsamo’s had everything my mother needed for her cakes. Her shopping list included fresh oranges, bright yellow lemons, prickly pineapples and a variety of dried and candied fruits. After the Thanksgiving dishes were put away and the men of the family were napping, my mother began to chop the fruit. She covered the dining room table with an oil cloth and it was soon filled with bowls of fruit soaking in apricot brandy.
The next morning my mother would take her special fruitcake bowl down from a high shelf in the pantry. This bowl was the size of a wash tub and must have weighed 25 pounds. It had thick ceramic sides the color of creamy peanut butter with an ivory colored rim. It bore no decoration, a simple utilitarian object. Though it was a perfect example of form following function, it was sublimely beautiful. Tragedy struck one year when my mother stumbled over Bobo, her poodle sending the bowl flying, shattering it into a dozen pieces. In that era of space age plastic melamine kitchenware, the heirloom bowl was hard to replace. One Saturday my dad loaded my grandfather and me into the Pontiac and we drove to a pottery in Zanesville, Ohio to purchase a stoneware bowl virtually identical to its predecessor.
Without measuring, my mother’s practiced hands folded all the ingredients into the huge bowl. The brandy soaked fruit was thoroughly mixed with butter, eggs, brown sugar and flour. To this she added the black walnuts and butternuts along with store bought English walnuts and pecans. Pure vanilla extract and my mother’s special mixture of spices were added to the big bowl for flavor. Rather than thin the batter with water or milk, my mother mixed in 100 proof Southern Comfort. I am fairly certain that her affinity for Southern Comfort was the only thing my mother ever had in common with Janis Joplin! Once mixed, the batter was dolloped into well-greased loaf pans and placed in the oven. Given the alcohol content of the fruitcakes, I am surprised the Hotpoint range didn’t explode like a Texas oil well fire.
Once baked, the fruitcakes were turned out of the pans on to a rack to cool. Like a drunk on a bender, they wanted just a little more to drink before being put to bed. My mother wrapped each individual loaf in cheesecloth soaked in rum. She then ensconced them in Reynolds wrap and called for me. My job was to carry them from the kitchen, up two long flights of stairs to our unheated attic. I stacked them like bricks in a small cupboard built into the landing of the attic stairs. They would remain there for three weeks until they were ready for delivery.
The week before Christmas, I would reverse the process and carry the fruitcakes back to the kitchen. My mother would remove the foil and rewrap them in colored cellophane adding a bit of ribbon and a gift tag to each. Sometimes the cakes seemed a bit dry and she would “refresh” them with an additional shot of rum or Southern Comfort. If there were children in the household, she would send them a cellophane wrapped plate of cookies along with the fruitcake.
My dad was the fruitcake delivery man and I was his navigator. I felt like one of Santa’s elves checking off the names from the hand-written list my mother had given him. The coveted fruitcakes all went to relatives and close friends of my parents, many of whom they had known since high school. Fortunately, they all lived nearby as I’m sure given the batter alcohol level of my mother’s cakes, it was illegal to transport them across state lines. Each delivery became a social event with my dad being offered a shot or a glass of wine, while I enjoyed a cookie or a bottle of Mission Orange pop. Some of the recipients immediately ripped through the cellophane and greedily devoured a piece of their gift. With the popularity of smoking in those days, it was a genuine Christmas miracle that none of the booze soaked loaves ever burst into flames. I always thought it strange that my mother never wanted to personally deliver her fruitcakes. She missed out on the appreciative smiles and the happiness she brought to the people she cared about. She preferred to stay home in her kitchen with her big bowl, her oven and a glass of Southern Comfort. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that she made a spectacular fruitcake—she knew.