Memory Monday: Sweets

I wish I could pretend that I was one of those strong, disciplined, superior people who can take or leave sweets - mostly leave - but I am not. I am a craven, undisciplined, weak slave of sweets. In fact, a humiliating number of my “memory” posts here have centered around or at least prominently featured sweets. Heck, even some of my genealogy foray posts involve “fortuitous” trips to candy establishments (“Knoxville Sights”). Some of the “sweets and candy” posts are:

"Family Food"
“Memory Monday: Sopping the Bowl” (wherein you learn that my family’s taste for sweets was so voracious that we sometimes ate them “raw”)
“Advent Calendar Day 14: Fruitcake”
“Memory Monday: I’ll Have Mine with Sugar”

This last post reveals how truly absolute my family’s addiction to sugar was. I mean, a family where major breakfast selections are cinnamon toast and peanut butter with syrup - that’s ... extreme.

There is even a post dedicate to a sweet drink: “Memory Monday: Iced Tea.” My entry for the GeneaBloggers Cookbook is a supercharged combo of fudge and oatmeal cookies called simply “Snack Bars.” Maybe I should just call this blog “Greta’s Genealogy and Sweets Bog.”

The sweet tooth was inherited from my father, and his was ferocious. Or, come to think of it, part of it might have come from my mother’s mother (“Grandma Moore, Banana Pudding, and the Telephone: An Evening of Terror”). Even my brother had a weakness for sugar cookies that landed him in the humiliating situation of having to ingratiate himself with his little sister (me - see "I'll Have Mine with Sugar" above).

As I have gotten older, the need for a high sugar content has leveled off somewhat, and my tastes have shifted toward subtle/subdued rather than rich. Even so, there are a few sinful, luscious, and adipose-adding items that are still irresistible: my Aunt Rene’s Candy Balls, my mother’s Easy No-Cook Divinity, and my Ho Ho Cake (adapted from a recipe given to me by a friend at church). Here are the recipes:

Candy Balls

Mix together 1 stick oleo, 1 can Eagle milk, 2 boxes powdered sugar, 2 cans coconut, 4 c. pecans; chill 2 hrs. Take out & roll into balls. Rechill. Melt in double boiler 2 packages chocolate chips, ¼ lb. paraffin. Stick toothpicks into balls & dip them into hot chocolate. Rechill. Dip them over as long as there is any chocolate left. For variety, dip balls into cherry juice before dipping in chocolate.

Easy No-Cook Divinity

In small mixer bowl, combine frosting mix (Fluffy white Betty Crocker dry mix), 1/3 cup corn syrup, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and 1/2 cup boiling water. Beat on highest speed until stiff peaks form, about 5 minutes. Transfer to large mixer bowl; on low speed, blend in 1 lb. confectioner’s sugar gradually. Stir in 1 cup nuts. Drop mixture by teaspoonsful onto waxed paper. When outside of candies seem firm, turn over. Allow to dry 12 hours or overnight. Store candies in airtight container. Makes 5 to 6 dozen candies.

Ho Ho Cake

Cake:

1 box German Chocolate Cake mix (pudding in the mix)
1 bar Baker’s German Chocolate, melted and slightly cooled
8 oz. sour cream
1/3 C. oil
1 C. water
6 oz. chocolate chips

Mix cake mix, chocolate, sour cream, oil, and water together. Mix well. Stir in chocolate chips. Pour into greased and floured pan (I use a 13x8 glass pan). Bake for 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees. (I leave it in the pan.) Cool completely.

Filling:

5 Talespoons flour
1 8-oz. stick butter, softened
1/2 C. Crisco shortening
1-1/4 C. milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 C. granulated sugar

Cook flour and milk in pan until thick. Let cool. Place in mixer bowl with softened butter, vanilla, Crisco, and sugar. Beat on high until light and fluffy, about 8 to 10 minutes. Spread evenly over cooled cake to about 1/4 inch from edge of pan. Chill.

Frosting:

4-1/2 squares (1 ounce each) unsweetened chocolate
1-1/2 sticks (12 ounces) butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
2-1/4 cups powdered sugar
6 Tablespoons light cream
1/8 teaspoon salt

Melt 1-1/2 sticks butter and chocolate. Let cool. Add vanilla and salt to it in mixer bowl. Heat cream slightly, add, and beat. Add powdered sugar gradually. Beat until smooth; don’t let it get lumpy. Spread evenly over filling.

Keep cake refrigerated.


This Memory Monday was written in response to a prompt from Amy Coffin’s 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History:

Week 13: Sweets. What was your favorite childhood candy or dessert? Have your tastes changed since then? What satisfies your sweet tooth today?

Week 8 of 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History: Technology

Week 8 of 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History: Technology.  What are some of the technological advances that happened during your childhood? What types of technology to you enjoy using today, and which do you avoid?

Well, ah, um ... color TV.

Ah, but I see that Linda McCauley at Documenting the Details has recorded her early memories of color TV - and they are the same as mine! Going over to a neighbor’s house to watch Bonanza. One thing I miss is the NBC peacock and the original music that was played when the peacock was shown.

I thought of several things that I believed might have been invented in the 1950s - Melmac, Tupperware, baggies/Ziploc bags - and it turns out that they were actually invented earlier. Ziploc bags may actually date to the 50s/60s; there is some dispute about that, depending on what you call a baggie or Ziploc bag. I just remember seeing the commercials for them, which claimed that they were something really new, appearing on TV in the 50s and 60s.

OK, so there was Teflon. My mother loved that. Saran wrap (1953) was another thing she loved. For me, it was always a love-hate relationship. Saran wrap had that Scotch tape thing - it just had to stick to itself. So that’s why I loved baggies and Ziploc bags. Well, if you count baggies as those things that had the fold-over flap, they weren’t good for too much - the sandwich would dry out. But Ziploc bags - now there is a truly great invention. But, as I said, they were not actually invented when I was a child.

I know that my contemporaries will be able to come up with much more than this. The thing was, most high-tech inventions did not trickle down to families at our end of the income curve for quite a while. I remember hand-held calculators (1967) coming out in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When I went to a National Science Foundation summer program at Hardin-Simmons in the summer of 1971, I remember that my instructors had those. They were clunky and expensive and they didn’t do a whole lot.

If it didn’t have to do with the kitchen or entertainment, my family was not greatly affected by advances in technology. The computer, of course, has changed my life, but I did not really get into using it to its full potential until I started genealogy. Something about little children having to have my complete attention during every minute of the day....

I am not an early adopter of much of anything, since I like to let the developers get the bugs out first and I have to save my money until I can afford these items. This year I was given a wand scanner and a MacBook Pro. Next year - a FlipPal scanner. The year after that - an iPad, for which I’ll get a Kindle app. Fancy phone - not so much. Phones are tyrants. Perhaps when I am out shopping or traveling or visiting without my phone, I am missing things. But I also enjoy a great feeling of freedom.

So, to answer the prompt, color TV it is.

Week 7 of 52: Toys

Week 7: Toys:  What was your favorite childhood toy? Is it still being made in some form today?

This subject has been covered in some previous Memory Monday posts:

Memory Monday: Favorite Toys

Memory Monday: My Playhouse

Memory Monday: Lost Things


But of all these things, what was my favorite toy?

I think the answer can be found in my earliest memory (from “Memory Monday: Running Away”):

“I remember when we lived in our house in Cabazon, California (talk about desolate…) that I crawled out of my crib one day. I must have managed to do it without cracking my skull open. If my memory does not deceive me, the incentive was to get to my fluffy new robe, which was white and had a pocket into which I could slip the first present I ever remember getting – a box of eight Crayola crayons. New, pointy crayons with that new crayon smell.”

I think a new box of Crayola crayons probably tops all of the dolls and gadgets. They smell good, they look good, and there is no limit to the possibilities of what you can create with them.

Memory Monday: TV and Radio

The prompt for Week 6 of “52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History” is: What was your favorite radio or television show from your childhood? What was the program about and who was in it?

Television shows are a subject that I have covered before, mostly in the two posts below:

Memory Monday: Television

Memory Monday: Scary Movies

This only scratches the surface of the TV watching we did, however. I could go on and list many other shows we watched and what they meant to me - in my pre-reading days in particular, these shows were the main fodder for my imaginative life. They most likely shaped many of my tastes in music, literature, and other arts. It was a good thing, then, that lots of cartoons had classical music, that there were lots of old British shows based on books (Scarlet Pimpernel, anyone?), and there was a lot of good old-fashioned adventure - the past (mainly the old West) and the future were my mental playgrounds. I never did buy into that “Vast Wasteland” stuff.

However, the prompt for this week’s 52 Weeks theme also mentions radio. And radio has also played something of a role in my life.

I remember two radio stations from our days in San Bernardino, California: KFXM and KMEN. These radio stations were, of course, my brother’s choice in listening (see “Memory Monday: My Brother’s Music”), but I was quite happy to listen along. They are the stations where we first heard the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones (and all the rest of the British Invasion). I remember KFXM as being the older, established popular music station, and the DJs had that funny, nasal sing-song delivery that was supposed to sound smooth. The KMEN were the new guys in town, and they brought goofiness and promotions such as treasure hunts into the mix.

During my junior high-school days, when my family was moving around a lot, one of the cities we lived in was Palo Alto, California, which happened to be in range of some interesting radio stations. I had a small portable AM radio (it was 1960s avocado green, as I recall), and at night when I could not sleep, I would see what programs I could tune into. One of my unexpected favorites was a show that featured old radio comedy programs from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. One that I remember in particular was the "Battling Bickersons" with Don Ameche and Frances Langford. These shows were a revelation to me. I was familiar with all kinds of TV comedy, but on radio you couldn’t really do physical schtick. Everything was in the dialog and the voices of the performers, though sound effects did sometimes also play an important part. This was part of the beginning of my education in the fact that not everything that was intelligent, sophisticated, and witty began with my own generation. We did not invent everything; in fact, we did some pretty heavy borrowing from previous generations, up to and including our parents’ generation.

The next phase in my radio education took place in Boston, Massachusetts - the “Hub of the Universe.” As in, “Live from Boston, Massachusetts, THE HUB OF THE UNIVERSE: It’s WCRB Saturday Night!” - followed by the opening peals of Fucik’s Entry of the Gladiators. This would be followed by Richard L. Kaye’s voice, outlining the lineup for the night, which might include any or all of the following: Tom Lehrer, Victor Borge, Spike Milligan, Allan Sherman, Beyond the Fringe, and many more delectable specialty acts and classic routines. I think I remember music piped in from Pipe Organ Pizza as well. Richard L. Kaye has been called a “connoisseur of music-based humor” (see John Bishop’s article in the Diapason) and truer words were never spoken. WCRB Saturday Night was every bit as much of an education as graduate school was for me. It introduced me to a world that I had actually glimpsed before - my college friends had been big Lehrer fans, for instance, and I was already well on my way to becoming the rabid Danny Kaye fan that I am today. But to listen to this show was to join a veritable banquet of wit and culture - nothing snobby, snooty, or smarty-pants about it. It was a combination of silliness and keen observation, all packed into the late night hours.





I love TV and movies, and radio has not occupied nearly as much time in my life, but I have to say - it has provided some of the best hours of pure fun and stimulation for the imagination I have ever experienced.

Memory Monday: Emergency Bacon

In the meat drawer of our main refrigerator in the kitchen/family room, there is a slab of bacon. It is made by Valentine’s, a business run by a Mennonite family, and sold at our local farmers’ market. In the meat drawer of our second refrigerator (which came with the house in 1983; we only bought the other refrigerator because we thought this one was not long for this world, but it never died, so it is our second refrigerator) in the little pantry off of the butler’s pantry that used to be the galley-style kitchen of the main house, there is a second, newer, slab of bacon.

This is my Emergency Bacon. Bacon is not the first comestible in our family to have the adjective “emergency” appended to it. Coffee was - “Mom’s Emergency Coffee.” That is the second jar of instant coffee that is always kept on hand so that if Mom (me) wakes up, goes to make her breakfast coffee, and finds only an empty jar, there will always be a second jar on the shelf. (Gourmet coffees and coffee made from freshly ground beans in the coffee pot are all great things, but I’m the only coffee-drinker in the family, so I have become used to drinking the instant stuff. I even like it.)

My husband started making sure that we always have that second jar of coffee both because he is a kind person and because it is better for my family if they do not have to deal with a Mom who has not had her morning coffee. And bacon followed that pattern, though kindness, not fear, was the only reason behind it. I don’t eat lots of it, but occasionally like it for “breakfast for dinner” or on my grilled cheese sandwich.

But even these items are not my first experience with “emergency food.” It was probably when I was in my preteens that I began to see the usefulness of setting aside a small supply of extra food. Sometimes it might just be a couple of small sweets for snacks; my skinny Dad had a wicked sweet tooth and dessert and snack foods often disappeared alarmingly fast in our house.

But there were also times when the shelves were pretty bare of food in general and even a few times when I was on my own for a while. So it was useful to have a little extra that would tide me over for a day or two - preferably something that would not get moldy or stale quickly. A box of crackers usually did the job. I kept it next to my jar of ironing money and old silver dollars (which over the years gradually disappeared).

In my high school years the emergency food supply was helped by the fact that we always had a long slab of welfare cheese in the refrigerator. In my opinion, welfare cheese was the best-tasting American cheese ever - great for grilled cheese sandwiches and tuna and cheese sandwiches (my favorite at that time). Sometimes the stash also included a package of vanilla cream cookies bought from a nearby family-owned convenience store. They were not my favorite cookies, but it did not cost much to buy a largish package (four rows of 10-12 cookies each), so they made a good emergency staple.

These not-quite-hoarding instincts have been retained to the present day. But the worry behind them is of a different type, inspired not by fear of running out of food; my husband and I are both employed and we live near a 7-11, which is great for times when there are blizzards or hurricanes. Whatever the circumstances and reasoning behind it, our pantry is filled with large quantities of certain staples and luxury items: next to piles of pasta boxes and precarious soup can towers (stocked up by my husband, who was a Boy Scout for many years and grew up in a family where “Be Prepared” was a sternly enforced rule of life) are five boxes of Farina and multiple jars of my favorite pesto sauce and HP sauce, which are too often hit-or-miss items at the local stores. From need to indulgence; from resourceful to pampered.

This post was written as part of Amy (We Tree) Coffin’s series of 52 weekly blogging prompts (featured on Genea-Bloggers) for writing our personal genealogy and history. The original prompt was: What was your favorite food from childhood? If it was homemade, who made it? What was in this dish, and why was it your favorite? What is your favorite dish now?

As usual, my post has strayed somewhat from the original questions. To return a bit to the original intent, I’ll say that my favorite lunch was a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup. And my favorite lunch now? The same thing, only white bread and American cheese have been replaced with Indian nan bread and curd cheese, and the tomato soup is not Campbell’s but Toigo Farms. And sometimes, for a treat, that sandwich includes two strips of last week’s Emergency Bacon, which is this week’s Regular Bacon.

Memory Monday: Home

The challenge for Week No. 4 is to “Write about your home.” For me that would be “homes,” plural. As you might gather from many of my “Memory” posts, I have lived in a lot of places. Some of them I don’t even remember. Either I was too young, or they went by so fast in a succession of moves that they are little more than a blur in my memory.

From my childhood, three places stand out for length of residence and for bringing the word “home” to mind for me: our house on Pico Street in San Bernardino (from about age 4 to age 8), Lankershim Street in Highland, California (first time, from about age 2 to 4, second time age 8 to 13), and the Housing Project on Pecan Street in Seymour, Texas (age 15 to 18). In addition to these there were all the places my father was posted in Pennsylvania, Texas, and California when he was in the Air Force (up to age 2 for me) and the four houses we lived in when I was in eighth and ninth grades.

Me, my mother, and Buster the dog 

in front of our house on Lankershim Street (first residence, pre-addition)

The main quality that characterized our early houses is something I can only describe as “the potential exceeded the reality.” As in, “We can fix this up.” I’ve written several posts that describe the house on Lankershim Street:

Memory Monday: My Playhouse

Memory Monday: Construction

Memory Monday: Junk in Our Yard

Memory Monday: Fire

Memory Monday: The Mulberry Tree

I suppose I haven’t really written much about the house on Pico Street. It had three bedrooms and one bath. It had one of those rambler designs: you entered the living room, the kitchen/dining room was on the right, and the bedrooms and bathroom were on the left. There was a carport in front and a patio in the back. Pretty bare bones, but it seem nice and comfortable to us. I remember the pyracantha bushes and the lady ferns. We knew and were friends with many of our neighbors.

I “visit” the Pico Street house and the Lankershim Street house occasionally on Google Maps; they’re both still there. The neighborhoods look a bit more threadbare now than they did then.

We now live in the same house we’ve lived in since 1983. It’s more modest and decrepit than the homes of most of our friends and acquaintances.  But still, I do not want to move.

Many of our friends and associates are starting to talk about retiring and “getting out of the Washington, D.C. area” - with good reason. As in many “metro areas,” especially those that are not dying off from blight, traffic and congestion have been getting worse and worse and civility is often a casualty of those developments. These friends would like to move to warmer - in terms of both weather and local attitude - climes. Towns and small cities where you can walk to many of the places you need and want to visit regularly. Or even, for a while, cozy little urban enclaves in the cities of their youth, where both sophisticated entertainment and convenience stores are close at hand.

Still, I do not want to move. This is home. We have five cats and a lizard buried here. We have half a lifetime of memories, and I do not want to be physically separated from those memories. There are so many things that need to be repaired and the walls almost bulge with our collections of books and music that verge on hoarder status. But I grew up with “ramshackle,” “needs fixin’,” and “runnin’ outa room,” and I am used to it. So I ain’t moving.

Locations of Residence of William Spencer Moore on Google Maps

View William Spencer Moore in a larger map

You can also access the map by clicking on this link.

The Google Maps task combines two series of events, the GeneaBloggers Games and Week 7 of the 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy.

This was a difficult task for me, with a great deal of trial and error. I did finally end up with a map of the two known residences of William Spencer Moore in South Carolina in the My Maps application of Google Maps. It has map pins on the approximate locations and a brief description for each location, as well as title and description of the map. It's fairly basic, but I hope to be able to do more later.

One problem I had was making the locations as precise as I wanted them to be. I have some paper maps showing the location of each of these two farms within particular townships (Hopewell for the Anderson County one and Fairview for the Greenville County one), and even though I knew some of the local landmarks/orientation points (Twenty-Six Mile Creek for Anderson and Stony Creek for Greenville), I was not able to get good results for Google Maps searches for these locations. Instead, I used the nearest towns: Simpsonville for Greenville and Williamston for Anderson. I'm definitely going to have to do some more tinkering and playing around with this application.

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy – Challenge 6, Online Databases at the Public Library

On to the latest of 52 challenges for improving our research skills posed by Amy of We Tree. This one I have known about for quite a while. The closest library to me is the Falls Church City Public Library. I have been accessing Heritage Quest using my library card there for almost as long as I have been doing genealogy and had already been using it for several months before I signed up for Ancestry. I still go back to the census images on Heritage Quest when the image is poor on Ancestry; sometimes it is better and sometimes not. Even when the image is not much better, an image may appear very dark on one of the services and very light on the other, and between the two you may be able to figure out what is written. PERSI is also available through Heritage Quest and I sometimes use it for that.