MY HOMETOWN – CINCINNATI THE QUEEN CITY

FORTUNE magazine called Cincinnati the best run big city in the United States. LIFE magazine said “Cincinnati has one of the best police forces in the country”. TIME Magazine, on the other hand, once labeled Cincinnati “dowdy”!! Dowdy? Cincinnati? I knew there was a good reason why I don’t subscribe to TIME.

To Indians, Cincinnati was a calamity; to slaves, it was a promised land and to the REDS Baseball Team, it’s a place to play ball. To children on skates, it’s a seven-hilled impossibility, while to Proctor Gamble it was a place to make soap. To beer-makers it represented memories of “over the Rhine”. Which Cincinnati you know depends on your point of view…” from “Vas You Ever in Zinzinnati” by Dick Perry, published by Doubleday in 1966.

You may have heard of my hometown, Cincinnati—which I have written about several times on this blog. I was born and raised in Cincinnati; as were both of my parents. My paternal grandparents were German and Hungarian and came through Ellis Island by way of Rumania. From there they went to Cincinnati. Quite possibly, they had friends or other connections which led them to Cincinnati, which already had a huge German population by the time they got there.

My mother’s parents were definitely German as well but we know so little about their roots. My father’s parents immigrated to the United States when they were in their early twenties and we all grew up strongly influenced by our surroundings. North Fairmount was heavily populated by German Americans and Italians. South Fairmount was more heavily populated with Italians. My grandparents bought a house on Baltimore Street when their daughter, my Aunt Annie, was a toddler. (The story was that they bought this house “in the country” because my Uncle Hans was asthmatic. I guess North Fairmount was country to them, back then.)  The three storied big brick house was large enough to raise their children in, and when those children got married, they lived in separate apartments in the same house—until they could afford to buy a house on their own. My parents lived in the house on Baltimore until I was five years old. That meant they lived in my grandmother’s house for nine years. Some of those years were a part of the great depression and some were a part of World War II.

I have no real memories of living in the house on Baltimore Street although when I reflect on scattered early memories, I think some of those must have occurred when we were still living in my grandmother’s house.

Down the street from my grandmother’s house was St. Leo’s church and school. My father, his younger brother and their younger sister all went to St. Leo’s—not only that, but all three had Sister Tarcisius in the first grade—as did my older sister, older brother and me—along with two of our cousins. Sister Tarcisius taught first grade at St Leo’s for over fifty years before celebrating her Golden Jubilee as a nun and retiring to the convent in Oldenburg, Indiana.  There was a continuity to our lives back then—often when I became girlfriends with someone in my class and went to her home, a parent was sure to say “Oh, yes! Schmidts! I went to school with your father”. (Many years later, my youngest brother Scott would buy and remodel the house that had belonged to his first wife’s grandmother. When I first saw the house, I realized it had once belonged to my classmate Joan—whose younger sister, Val, became the grandmother from whom Scott bought the house.

Our neighborhood was all of North Fairmount and extended into South Fairmount in one direction and English Woods in another. Now, if you drive through these neighborhoods they are almost all downtrodden and ramshackle—a far cry from the neat and tidy brick houses that lined all the streets with geraniums in the front windows that were a part of our lives. I think we could have approached any house in an emergency for blocks around—not that anything serious ever happened. It wasn’t anything any of us ever thought about—we rode bicycles and skates and/or walked from one place to another without ever stopping to consider our safety or security.

There was a state of stability and absence of disruption throughout our lives, throughout the lives of our parents (despite the great depression and WW2) that can’t be found in Southern California where I have spent most of my adult life but I think still exists in most of Cincinnati, where girlfriends of mine who grew up in North College Hill married and bought houses near their parents’ homes, to raise their children in close proximity to their parents.

We took good cooking for granted, I’m ashamed to admit. I don’t think any of us ever stopped to think twice about my grandma’s exquisite Palascinta (Hungarian pancakes—like crepes); grandma’s strudels with dough made from scratch—we each had a favorite filling – mine was spicy pumpkin—but any of them, apple, cherry, or cheese, were to die for—or homemade noodles drying on the backs of kitchen chairs—or the German wurst sausages, delicious with a chunk of fresh-baked salt bread.

My grandmother made Dobos tortes with up to fourteen layers of sponge cake, spread with bittersweet chocolate frosting; she made dozens and dozens of cookies at Christmas-time—I only remember the diamond shaped cookies dipped in egg white and spread with finely chopped walnuts and sugar although my older sister swore there were many other kinds of cookies.

We went to grandma’s house for lunch most days of the week during the school year—her house was just a short walk up the street from St. Leo’s—and feasted on Hungarian goulash and salt bread, or a bowl of chicken broth which contained something WE called “rivillies” but which, I discovered in one of William Woys Weaver’s books—was a tiny Pennsylvania Dutch dumpling called Rivels or Riwweles which is probably much the same as my grandmother’s Rivellies. We also grew up on Spatzle and homemade noodles, dumplings, sauerkraut, scrapple, and hasenpfeffer. Scrapple is traditionally a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour, which is baked in a loaf pan and then kept refrigerated. You sliced some of it and fried it in a skillet for a breakfast side dish. (I could live without the hasenpfeffer but loved everything else).

Or grandma might make a huge chicken sandwich for you (if you were the only child who happened to be around) with leaves of lettuce fresh from her garden, and mayonnaise spread thick on homemade bread. We often had Palascinta for lunch, with jelly spread over it and then rolled up; we called the crepes “German pancakes” not knowing their true origin was Hungarian. If nothing else, we might have a snack of a slice of rye bread spread with sour cream.

My grandmother taught her cooking skills to her daughter and daughters-in-law. Many years would pass before I realized that my two aunts, Aunt Annie and Aunt Dolly, knew how to make many of Grandma’s desserts and savory dishes. My mother learned how to make bread; my mother made two huge loaves of bread twice a week most of my adolescent years. Aside from the recipes my aunts remembered, most of grandma’s recipes—all learned from watching, none written down—are now lost. A few were written down but most are gone, along with my mother and aunts and grandmother.

For one thing, my grandmother never wrote much in English except for her name; some times she would instruct me to write something down for her. But German was her native language and she and my grandfather had many Immigrant friends in Cincinnati who spoke their language. My grandfather was a tailor of men’s suits and spoke seven languages fluently. The shopkeepers with whom grandma did business all spoke German, too.

My grandparents belonged to a lodge that was downtown near Findlay Market; it was a place where the men played cards and smoked pipes in one room while the women cooked or talked in another room. (Only recently I discovered there were many such lodges).  Sometimes there was a wedding in a nearby Catholic church and the reception might be held at this lodge; I remember the dancing and the music. We went to and from the lodge on the streetcars—later buses took over. When we transferred buses at Colerain and Hopple Street, my grandfather would hurry into Camp Washington Chili Parlor to get Coney Islands for us to eat when we got home. (I remember there being a coupon in the Sunday Paper – five or six Coney islands for 25 cents).

Findlay Market was an open market with stalls of fruit-and-vegetables—around the perimeter of the open stalls there were grocery stores—I particularly remember a meat market where grandma sometimes bought a chicken.  Grandma was ahead of her time carrying tote bags made out of oil cloth and often taking a grandchild along to help carry the bags. In recent years I visited Findlay Market with one of my nephews; it is over a hundred years old and has been vastly renovated—almost all the stores and shops are now indoors and the meat market always had us drooling over the many kinds of sausages.

I grew up in Cincinnati, learning my way around the city at a very tender age—by the time I was ten years old I was making trips downtown by myself—first to make payments on a coat my mother had in layaway at Lerner’s for which she paid $1.00 a week and I’d have two nickels for bus fare each way. Later, I took my two younger brothers with me downtown to do our Christmas shopping. There were no malls at this time—all the shops and stores were located downtown, near Fountain Square and ladies would go downtown to shop wearing dresses and high heels. Can you imagine?

At an early age—maybe ten or eleven—I began to discover the used book stores (as well as small out-of-the-way dusty antique stores that often had a tray of books outside the door; The kind of books I bought then, for 25 cents each, were often light romance, I think—cookbooks were far from my radar!

We shopped primarily at the five and ten cent stores – there were three or four of these—one was a Newberry’s and another was a Kresge’s, but the chief attraction was    the Woolworth store that had a lunch counter where we—my two younger brothers and I—could buy a grilled cheese and coke to share—and sometimes have enough for a bag of caramel corn which I have been addicted to all my life. We somehow managed to buy Christmas presents for our parents, grandparents and siblings—which amazes to me this very day. It must have been like the loaves and fishes—because somehow, doling out pennies for purchases, we always managed to get something for everybody.  I was equally addicted to “downtown” – to me, downtown has been and always will be “downtown Cincinnati” During the holidays my brothers and I visited all the major department stores to stand in line to see Santa Claus but primarily to get a free candy cane. The store window displays alone were worth a trip downtown.

One of my favorite stores – not a 5&10 cent store – was Shillito’s—Cincinnati’s first department store which opened in 1832. One of the exits, close to my bus stop,was in the book section, where Nancy Drew books were on display.  One year my brother Jim gave me five new Nancy Drew books for Christmas. I was hooked on Nancy Drew. I think the books were about a dollar each—and just GETTING a dollar and hanging onto it long enough to go downtown to buy the next book was a task unto itself. Eventually I discovered that the Nancy Drew books at used book stores were generally a lot cheaper—and I fell in love with the old illustrations in these books.

Another beloved place when I was a child – not only to me but to my siblings as well – was the Windmill Restaurant. It was a cafeteria style restaurant, unfamiliar to all of us—where you could pick and choose whatever you wanted to eat. It was a special treat to do downtown to the Windmill Restaurant with Grandma and be able to eat anything you wanted.  (a foreign concept to children of the 1940s, I assure you.)

Restaurant food with my parents sometimes had strings attached. I remember once being in a restaurant with my parents; we all ordered hamburgers – but I stipulated no mustard on mine. The hamburger arrived with – guess what? Mustard. I refused to eat it and my parents refused to send it back. That hamburger traveled home with us in the glove compartment and I don’t remember eating anything else on the way home.(many, many years later I began eating mustard—it’s almost a “must” on a corned beef sandwich but I remember, nevertheless, a battle of wits between me and my parents.

The Windmill Restaurant and Grandma are irrevocably tied together. I never went there without her.

There were other downtown attractions; during the holidays, Lytle Park had a “live” nativity scene that was a “must” if you were downtown. Lytle Park, as I remember it, no longer exists*. When the Freeway, Interstate I-71, was built in the mid 1960s. significant changes were made to the area. A tunnel was built under the park; the original Lytle Park had to be dismantled/demolished. After I-71 construction, the park was reconstructed, and “One Lytle Place” (a luxury nigh-rise apartment building) was constructed.

Another favorite event during my childhood was the circus. The only circus I know anything about was one that came to town, to the downtown area. This was the Shrine  Circus and our Uncle George gave us free tickets to go. I went there with my two younger brothers. We didn’t have any money for caramel corn or soft drinks, but it was enough just being there.

We went to the Policemen’s Picnic once a year and it was not uncommon for families to pack up a supper and go to one of the parks located in Cincinnati’s many forest areas—there was Winton Woods and Mt. Airy Forest, just to name two.

Cincinnati has a fine zoo and sometimes you might go with Grandma to the zoo, just to walk around. There are many other fine places to visit in Cincinnati, such as the museums.  What I have described to you, however, are the places I was familiar with as a child

Cincinnati  has, for many decades, been a city of great activity and prosperity. By 1830 it was the 6^th largest city in the United States. In a book titled “CINCINNATI, A PICTORIAL HISTORY” by Marilyn Green and Michael Bennett, the authors tell us that “increasing numbers of steamboats were built here, and the huge pork-packing industry gave the city the name of “Porkupolis”, one result of this highly successful business being the common sight of herds of pigs being driven through the streets a long time ago. Many of today’s great businesses were founded, such as Procter & Gamble; showboats docked at public landings and theatres opened their doors to increasingly elegant crowds who were entertained by everything from Shakespeare to grand opera…”

It was during this period (1820-1865) that many illustrious visitors and residents arrived  at the Queen City. Harriet Beecher Stowe came with her amazing father, the head of Lane Seminary; Lafayette came and was nearly killed with hospitality; Charles Dickens praised Cincinnati warmly, and Horace Greeley compared it favorably with California. Jenny Lind produced the hysterical enthusiasm that marked her American tour and Stephen Foster worked and composed in the city. A runaway boy who would become famous as Mark Twain boarded a steamboat for New Orleans from the Cincinnati public landing. Thomas Edison was here, and it was he who received the telegraphed news of Lincoln’s assassination. I was bemused to think that Mark Twain boarding a steamboat at the public landing. I remember the public landing and boarding a steamboat to ride up the river to Coney Island (Cincinnati’s version of the famed amusement park).

But mostly, when I think about Cincinnati, I think about good food and recipes and cookbooks.  I think good cooking must be pretty much taken for granted in my hometown and I was nonplussed when I began removing Cincinnati and greater Cincinnati cookbooks from my shelves, to discover just how many cookbooks I have that are devoted to just this one city.

You may recall (I’ve mentioned it a time or two) that the very first community cookbook in my collection was purchased by my father from a co-worker at Formica, in 1961. Its full title is “50^th Anniversary Cookbook Women’s Guild Matthew’s United Church of Christ”  I think my father paid a dollar each for several copies – one for me, one for my sister Becky and one for my mother. It’s always been one of my favorite cookbooks—if nothing else it amuses me to think that daddy had NO IDEA what he was starting when he bought that book for me. Until then, I had never seen any community (or church or club) cookbooks; I had no idea they even existed. A few years later I began to make a serious effort to find other Cincinnati cookbooks. When I began making trips back home with my children in the summertime, my young brother and I began making trips to Acre of Books, in downtown Cincinnati. I rarely made it beyond the cookbook section.  One of the oldest  cookbooks in my collection is a ring-bound book, sans covers, titled “TESTED RECIPES – CALVARY CHURCH, CLIFTON, OHIO.” (Clifton is a suburb of Cincinnati) It’s missing a publishing date, also, and clippings fal out of it whenever I pick the book up—oh, but I love this old cookbook with or without the covers. The former owner inserted pages of her own handwritten recipes or recipes clipped from newspapers and pasted inside.

Perhaps preceding this is a book in my collection titled “KEY TO THE CUPBOARD”  compiled by the Daughters of Veterans (as in the Civil War, 1861-1865) Like so many other old cookbooks, this one is undated; judging by the ads, I would guess it to be published in the early teens—sometime before World War I There is a full page ad titled Mrs. Abraham Lincoln Tent No. 14, and below that DAUGHTERS OF VETERANS 1861-1865, followed underneath by MEETINGS HELD AT MEMORIAL HALL. At the bottom of the page is written “Our Object To Aid and Assist the needy Veterans; to care  for their Widows, and their Orphans, and to perpetuate the memory of the heroic dead, and at the bottom CINCINNATI, OHIO. Amongst the ads is one for Rookwood Pottery. I found a recipe inside for Amber Soup, which was an interesting surprise—only recently I found a reference to Amber Soup while working on What’s Cooking in the White House Kitchen. I also found some recipes for “peach mangoes” and “Sweet Cucumber Mangoes”.  You may recall that I have written about “mangoes” before—it was a Cincinnati term for green bell peppers for many years—the transition from a pickled fruit to being called “mangoes” seems to have stayed strictly in the greater Cincinnati region.  (See “Stuff Mangoes or a Rose by Any Other Name”)

I began collecting cookbooks in 1965; it wasn’t until the early 1970s that I was able to travel home to Cincinnati with my children, to spend from a few weeks to a few months of the summer with my parents, during which time I began to seriously search for Cincinnati cookbooks. One summer we had so much “stuff” to take home that I packed it all in boxes and we took the Greyhound Bus back to California – there was no weight restriction on our boxes, mostly filled with books; it gave a Redcap pause at the downtown Los Angeles Bus Depot when my husband met us there and we enlisted the Redcap to haul all the boxes to our station wagon.

“What you got in here?” he queried. “Feels like FORT KNOX!”
“Not quite, “ I replied, “Just BOOKS!”

Over the years (and many trips to Cincinnati) other old Cincinnati community cookbooks gradually found their way onto my bookshelves. There is DEACCONESS HOSPITAL COOKBOOK published sometime in the 1930s,

THE GARDEN CLUB OF CINCINNATI COOK BOOK published a revised edition in 1937 (I never found an earlier edition),

While in 1950 THE WIEDEMANN BOOK OF UNUSUAL RECIPES was compiled by famous chefs of the day,

THE CINCINNATI COOK BOOK RECIPES COLLECTED BY THE CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY OF THE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL was published in 1967 and features drawings of famous Cincinnati landmarks, penned by artist Caroline Williams,

In 1970 the Altrusa Club of Cincinnati published ALTRUSA’S CINCINNATI CELEBRITY COOKBOOKI featuring cartoons of “The Girls” for which cartoon artist Franklin Folger became known,

CINCINNATI CELEBRATES presented by the Junior League of Cincinnati was published 1974,

Also in 1974, Cheviot PTA compiled HAPPINESS IS…CHEVIOT PTA COOKBOOK (one of my favorites—my sister Becky did the illustrations and submitted many of her favorite recipes to this cookbook

ONE POTATO TWO TOMATO, A Cookbook, was published in 1979 by the Catholic Women of Cincinnati,

CINCINNATI RECIPE TREASURY/The Queen City’s Culinary Heritage, by Mary Anna DuSablon, published in 1983 is, without question, my favorite all-time Cincinnati cookbook—it was, and still is, my favorite reference book when it comes to a Cincinnati Recipe.

There is a hardcover book called TREASURED RECIPES FROM CAMARGO TO INDIAN HILL which was compiled in 1987 by the members of the Indian Hill Historical Society,

RIVERFEAST/Still Celebrating Cincinnati by the Junior League of Cincinnati was published in 1990,

While in 1998 the Junior League of Cincinnati returned with “I’ll COOK WHEN PIGS FLY AND THEY DO IN CINCINNATI, another one of my favorite cookbooks.

When asked what my favorite cookbook is, I have to confess, it’s whatever I am reading at the moment. But one of the most outstanding collections of recipes were compiled by Fern Storer, who—for decades—was a food editor for the Cincinnati Post. Whenever my mother was putting together a box of things to send to me, she’d ask if there was anything in particular that I wanted; “Yes,” I always replied, “send me some of Fern Storer’s columns—and maybe a loaf of Rubel’s Rye Bread!” Later on the family would send me packets of Skyline Chili powder mix.

I wish I could have met Fern Storer. Well, during one of my visits to Cincinnati, my nephew took me to the Ohio Book store downtown in Cincinnati (Acres of Books went out of business some years ago). I bought about $100 worth of books including a copy of RECIPES REMEMBERED by Fern Storer.  We packed the box of books up and my nephew mailed them to my home—to save me the trouble of packing them in a suitcase.  Well, the box never made it to California. A single book I had read on the flight TO Cincinnati and had a return address label inside surfaced and was sent to me by the Post Office in Bell, California. I agonized over losing that box for months afterwards.

A year or two later I was back in Cincinnati and returned to the  Ohio Book Store; I told my tale of woe to the owner of the book store who remarked “You know, we ship orders all the time—we can mail your books to you for the cost of postage. So, when I had found a couple of armloads of cookbooks that day, I gave them to the owner to send to me. They weighed my books to determine the cost of shipping at book rate. My books were waiting for me when I got back home.

I didn’t find another copy of RECIPES REMEMBERED—but one day began searching for it online – and not only did I find a copy – I found one that is autographed!

Thank you, Fern Storer, wherever you are.

I like junior league cookbooks from different states –they are almost always better than most cookbooks—but when it comes to finding a recipe that is “local” the two books I turn to first are Fern Storer’s RECIPES REMEMBERED and Mary Anna DuSablon’s Cincinnati Recipe Treasury. Granted, my home town has a great deal more to offer than cookbooks—but the ones listed are those in my own collection.

Special Thanks to Howard Brinkdoepke for clarifying the names and locations of some of my Cincinnati memories. Howard became a penpal when I wrote Dinner in the Diner including the Twin Trolley Restaurant that used to be in South Fairmount.

–Sandra Lee Smith

 

EATING GERMAN FOOD IN GRANDMA’S KITCHEN

When I was a child, growing up in a predominately German-immigrant neighborhood, we all ate whatever my grandmother cooked and we called it all “German food”. Little did we know!

It wasn’t until many years later that I began discovering that Grandma’s cooking was really a hodgepodge of German and Hungarian cuisine with some influence from a Jewish family Grandma cooked for, before she got married and had children of her own.

One of the first indications that what we were eating wasn’t just “German” cuisine was my grandmother’s pancakes. We called them pancakes and sometimes had them for lunch at Grandma’s.  She would put jelly on a big thin pancake and roll it up for one of us to eat on our way back to school – her house was just up the street from St. Leo’s church and school.

In the mid 1960s, my husband and I, now living in Southern California,  became acquainted with a group of Hungarian political refugees from the Hungarian uprising in 1956. One of their American-wives would make a dessert called Palascinta— a stack of paper thin pancakes with a filling, such as poppyseed. When the stack was tall enough, the palascinta would be cut into thin wedges. “Hmmm!” I said, “These palascintas look and taste just like my grandmother’s German pancakes…”  (I had not yet begun to collect cookbooks).

A few years later, I became friends with a Jewish girlfriend whose youngest daughter was in the same class as one of my sons. I attended the wake and funeral of her father when he passed away.  While at the Wake, I watched her aunt making blintzes–particularly cheese blintzes!. When I tasted one of these I said “Oh, this filling tastes just like my grandmother’s German Cheese Strudel”.

I was beginning to learn that what my siblings and I loosely referred to as “Grandma’s German cooking” was far more than that. Grandpa was Hungarian, so she learned to make a lot of Hungarian recipes—especially Hungarian Goulash!

As a young single woman, Grandma had worked as a cook for a Jewish family, acquiring knowledge of many foods and recipes that are served in traditional Jewish families. And then, of course, there was Grandma’s own German heritage.

I think of all the things we ever enjoyed eating as we were growing up and having many meals at Grandma’s was the German sausage, wurst, that would be fried in a skillet and eaten with homemade salt bread. When my grandfather was still alive, the family would butcher a pig once a year; Grandpa and his sons would make hams and sausages and Grandpa converted one of the garages next to the house into a smoke house!  My sister Becky remembered sitting on the basement steps watching the men make the sausages.

While most of our childhood memories were intertwined, in some instances one sibling’s memories differed somewhat from another’s. For instance, I only remembered watching Grandma Schmidt make diamond shaped Christmas cookies, that were studded with a mixture of sugar and finely chopped walnuts (and always thought those were the only kind Grandma made.) Becky chastised me, saying that Grandma made lots of different cookies for Christmas. Grandma baked, Becky recalled, thumbprint cookies with raspberry jam, and a fold-over cookie filled with apricot or peach jam. Grandma made Springerle cookies that were so hard you could not even bite into them, and a small pill-shaped cookie with colored sprinkles on top. Every family member got a dress box full of cookies for Christmas. All I could say was…I only saw Grandma make the diamond shaped cookies and someone else must have eaten up all those other cookies!

To the best of my knowledge, there are no Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors in my family tree—and yet, my grandmother, who cooked and baked an array of foodstuffs ranging from German to Hungarian, did include some Pennsylvania Dutch recipes in her culinary repertoire. For instance, I have often wondered why it was that grandma—who made hundreds, if not thousands—of butter cutout cookies for Christmas – always made many of those diamond-shaped cookies with a diamond shaped cookie cutter that I now own. There, on page 167 of PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH COUNTRY COOKING is a recipe for Mahantongo diamond doughnuts – with the information that the diamond shape for All Saints cakes can be traced to the ninth century.  I can’t help but wonder if that’s not the answer. I vaguely remember us going to Pennsylvania and visiting some distant relatives one time. Grandma often traveled with us (or anyone else in the family going somewhere and inviting her along.) My brother Jim has speculated that we must all have some gypsy blood somewhere in our background

In any case, these were some of our memories, of being children growing up in Fairmount, a suburb of Cincinnati, when Fairmount was still a nice neighborhood in which to live, of our relationships with Grandma Schmidt and each other, of going to St. Leo’s – where even our father, Uncle Hans, and Aunt Annie went to school and where we all had the same First Grade teacher, Sister Taursisius, who taught first graders for 50 years, until she retired to the  convent in Oldenburg, Indiana.

Fairmount was at that time a stable, friendly neighborhood, heavily populated with German and Italian immigrants, where it was safe for children to play in the streets on summer nights or walk to the pony keg to get a bottle of “pop”, where you knew families for blocks around and very often, the children you went to school with had gone to school with your parents.

Adding to my curiosity about the dishes Grandma served to all of her adult children and grandchildren was a chicken broth which contained something WE called “rivillies” but which, I discovered in one of William Woys Weaver’s books—was a tiny Pennsylvania Dutch dumpling called Rivels or Riwweles which is probably much the same as my grandmother’s Rivellies. We also grew up on Spatzle and homemade noodles, dumplings, sauerkraut and hasenpfeffer. I have a distinct memory of going to Grandma’s and finding noodles drying on all the backs of the wooden kitchen chairs. Ok, I never liked hasenpfeffer—a sweet and sour rabbit that you could smell from the bottom of the steps coming home from school. I don’t recall my grandmother ever making hasenpfeffer but my mother did, when my father went rabbit hunting once a year. I don’t know which was worse—seeing him clean the rabbit in the kitchen sink or finding BBs in the gravy. I loathed the smell of hasenpfeffer cooking on the stove.

When we had this chicken soup with Rivels, we would have hunks of hot homemade salt bread to go with it.

Anytime we had a stew at Grandma’s, it would be Hungarian Goulash. (My mother made a stew that always had a tomato base but it wasn’t goulash).  Possibly the most famous of all Hungarian recipes is Hungarian Goulash. Authentic gulyás (Goulash) is a beef dish cooked with onions, Hungarian Paprika, tomatoes, and some green pepper. Potato and/or noodles (csipetke in Hungarian) may also be added according to some recipes.  Authentic Hungarian Goulash is Hungary’s national dish and is probably the most famous of all Hungarian meat dishes. Its origin can be traced back, over a thousand years ago, to the Magyar migration across the Great Plains. The origin of the word “gulyas” meant cowherd or cowboy.  The men and boys gathered around an open fire under an open sky in the evening and created a meal with meat and vegetables in large kettles suspended over the campfires. The soup was referred to, in Hungary, as “gulyasleves” meaning cowboy soup. Another interesting fact is that the use of paprika was introduced to Hungarian kitchens during the years of Turkish rule and was first referred to as “Torok bors” meaning Turkish pepper. It was only in the 18^th century that the name paprika was used.

Hungarian goulash is neither a soup nor a stew; it’s somewhere in between. However, in Hungary it’s considered more a soup than a stew, so look for it among Soups on Hungarian restaurant menus.

When cooked properly, goulash will have a nice and evenly thick consistency, almost like a sauce. In Hungary gulyás is eaten as a main dish. Even in Hungary, most housewives and chefs have their own way of cooking it, by adding or omitting some of the ingredients, or changing something in the preparation process; however they would all say their gulyás is authentic.

This first recipe is an adaptation from one I found on the Budapest Tourist Guide website (the website is no longer valid).  To make this Goulash you will need:

• 1-2      pounds of  chuck, or any tender cut      of  beef cut into small cubes
• 2      tablespoons oil or lard
• 2 medium      onions, chopped
• 2 cloves      of garlic
• 1-2      carrots, diced
• 1      parsnip, diced (*I consider this optional. Grandma’s goulash never had parsnips in it to the best of my knowledge)
• 1-2      celery leaves
• 2 medium  tomatoes, peeled and chopped, or 1 TBSP tomato paste
• 2 fresh green peppers (sweet bell peppers, not hot peppers)
• 2-3      medium potatoes, sliced
• 1  tablespoon Hungarian paprika powder*
• 1  teaspoon ground caraway seed
• 1 bay leaf
• ground black pepper and salt according to taste
• water

1. Heat up the oil or lard in a pot and braise the chopped onions until they are a nice golden brown color.
2. Sprinkle      the braised onions with paprika powder      while stirring, to prevent the paprika from burning.
3. Add the beef cubes and sauté until they turn white and get a bit of brownish color as well. The meat will      probably let out its own juice. Allow      the beef cubes to simmer in it      while adding the grated or crushed and chopped garlic (grated garlic has stronger flavor), the ground caraway seed, some salt and ground black pepper, and the bay leaf. Pour water enough to cover the contents of the pan and let it simmer over low heat for a while.
4. When the meat is half-cooked  (approximately 1 1/2 hour, but it can take longer depending on the type and quality of the beef) add the diced carrots, parsnip and the potatoes, the celery leaves and additional salt if necessary. Taste and then adjust seasonings. You may have to add additional (2-3 cups) water too.
5. When the vegetables and the meat are almost done add the      cubed tomato and the sliced green peppers.  Let it cook on low heat for another few minutes. You can remove the lid of      the pan if you want the soup to thicken.
6. Bring the soup to a boil and add (if you are including it) the csipetke dough; allow about 5  minutes for it to cook.

Csipetke (Pinched noodles added to goulash or bean soup in Hungary) comes from the word csípni, meaning pinch in English, referring to the way of making this noodle. Goulash is hearty enough without csipetke, especially if you eat it with bread, so you can skip making csipetke. (I believe that csipetke is similar to my grandmother’s rivels). We didn’t have Rivels, or Csipetke with Goulash; however, the tiny dumplings were always included in Grandma’s home made chicken soup.

TO MAKE CSIPETKE

You will need:

• 1 small egg,
• flour,
• a pinch of salt,
• 1  teaspoon water

To make the tiny dumplings, beat up a small egg, add a pinch of salt and as much flour as needed to make a stiff dough (you can add some water if necessary). Flatten the dough between your palms (to about 1 cm thick) and pinch small, bean-sized pieces from it and add them to the boiling soup. They need about 5 minutes to cook.

*One final word about paprika – don’t even bother with commercial American-made paprika. It won’t be the same as authentic Hungarian paprika, which I have been finding more and more frequently in major supermarkets. Look for a red and white and green tin labeled “Pride of Szeged Hungarian Hot Paprika”. The last paprika I purchased was from World Market and a 5 ounce tin was only $3.19.

The following recipe is my Aunt Annie’s Hungarian Goulash – and I am assuming, since she was the daughter of my paternal grandmother, that this was the way Grandma made Hungarian Goulash also:

To make Aunt Annie’s Hungarian Goulash you will need:

• 2 lbs cubed beef
• 1 large onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 carrots
• 2 large potatoes
• 1 cup tomato juice
• 1 cup beef broth or 1 cup water & 1 bouillon cube
• 2 tsp dried parsley flakes
• 2 tsp paprika
• 1 ½ tsp salt

Brown beef, add chopped onion, garlic, paprika, salt & parsley. Then add juice and broth. Simmer 1 hour. Add sliced carrots. Simmer ½ hour. Add diced potatoes. Simmer 1 hour.

My grandmother frequently made pans of strudel (generally a fruit strudel) – she had sour apple trees which often became the filling for apple strudel. I remember a cherry strudel and my absolute favorite—one I have never been able to duplicate—was a pumpkin strudel. The raw pumpkin slices were seasoned heavily with pepper, I think. There were enough apples to enlist the help of Grandma’s daughter and daughters-in-law to peel and cook apples to make apple sauce. Any overflow of apples would be loaded into a wagon and Grandma would have one of the grandchildren tote the wagonload of apples to the nun’s house behind St. Leo’s school. The sister who was cook might (or might not) reward you with a cookie. During World War II when sugar was rationed, the apple sauce was made without sugar! When a jar was opened to be eaten, we were allowed to sprinkle a little sugar on our helping of applesauce—we ate it like this for many years after the war (and rationing) ended.

Sometimes Grandma made Sacher Torte; sometimes Dobosh torte. I think we all loved the Dobosh torte the most – seven thin layers of sponge cake with layers of bittersweet chocolate frosting between each layer; the whole thing encased afterwards in the same chocolate frosting.

My grandmother often made doughnuts and on the Feast of the Three Kings, you could expect to find a coin – a nickel or dime – inside your doughnut. One of my earliest memories is sitting on my grandfather’s lap in the kitchen on the second floor, overlooking the back yard, while Grandma fried doughnuts.

Most of my grandmother’s recipes died with her – she never wrote anything down…but her youngest daughter in law wanted to learn from Grandma and stood by her elbow watching, repeatedly, to see how things were made. My aunt was the only person left who remembered how some of these dishes were made. In January, 2012, my Aunt Dolly (whose name was actually Evelyn) passed away.

One of my best memories of sitting at the table with my grandmother didn’t involve an elaborate meal, however. Often, when I was spending the night with her, we would have tea with lemon and some buttered saltine crackers as a snack before going to bed.

To this day hot tea and lemon and some buttered crackers are one of my comfort foods.

So this is what eating “German Food” means to me.

–Sandra Lee Smith

EASTER GREETING!

So often we lose sight of the original (or perhaps not so original) reasons for celebrating holidays such as Christmas, Easter, and other events that were originally pagan holidays. When Christianity was in its fledgling years, the church elders wanted to steer people away from celebrating pagan holidays and instead, celebrate Christian ones, so many Christian holidays were built on a foundation of a pagan one. Sounds confusing? It is.

From Wikipedia we learn that Easter (also called the Pasch or Pascha) is a Christian festival and holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day after his crucifixion at Calvary as described in the New Testament.  Easter is the culmination of the Passion of Christ, preceded by Lent, a forty-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance. The last week of Lent is called Holy Week, and it contains the days of the Easter Triduum, including Maundy Thursday (also known as Holy Thursday), commemorating the Last Supper and its preceding foot washing, as well as Good Friday, commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Easter is followed by a fifty-day period called Eastertide or the Easter Season, ending with Pentecost Sunday.

What adds to the confusion is that Easter is a moveable feast, meaning it is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. The First Council of Nicaea (325) established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon (the Paschal Full Moon) following the March equinox. (I can write it down much easier than I can explain it to anyone).

Ecclesiastically, the equinox is reckoned to be on March 21,  (even though the equinox occurs, astronomically speaking, on March 20 in most years), and the “Full Moon” is not necessarily the astronomically correct date. The date of Easter therefore varies between 22 March and 25 April. Eastern Christianity bases its calculations on the Julian calendar whose 21 March corresponds, during the 21st century, to 3 April in the Gregorian calendar, in which the celebration of Easter therefore varies between 4 April and 8 May.

But, like so many Christian holidays, Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover by much of its symbolism, as well as by its position in the calendar. In many languages, the words for “Easter” and “Passover” are etymologically related or homonymous.  Easter customs vary across the Christian world, but attending sunrise services, exclaiming the Paschal greeting, clipping the church and decorating Easter eggs, a symbol of the empty tomb, are common motifs. Additional customs include egg hunting, the Easter Bunny, and Easter parades, which are observed by both Christians and some non-Christians. Try explaining to any non-Christian how it is that Christians celebrate Easter and credit the Easter Bunny (which does not lay eggs!) with putting colorful eggs in a basket or hiding them in the back yard.

EASTER MEMORIES

The onset of Easter is on Ash Wednesday. Having gone to Catholic grade school, we went to mass every day before classes began, so on Ash Wednesday everyone walked around school with a black smudge of ash on their foreheads. Then we always made a big deal about what we were giving up for lent. The usual things were candy, soda pop, movies (not that we had very much of any of those things to begin with). In my family we always had some kind of fish on Fridays and there wasn’t that much meat to go around anyway.

I do remember my mother placing orders for new clothing from Sears or Montgomery Ward but the highlight of pre-Easter celebrations was going downtown to Shiff Shoes to get a new pair of shoes. These would become our new Sunday shoes and the old Sunday shoes would become everyday shoes. I think most of our shoes were functional, seldom dressy (until I got old enough to buy my own). I leaned heavily towards penny loafers and rarely wore saddle oxfords.

The Stations of the Cross would be said – I think – on Wednesday and Friday evenings. The statues inside church would be covered with purple cloths during Lent. In retrospect, I see that much of our lives revolved around the Church. Our church was St Leo’s, just down the street from my grandmother’s home. My father, uncle and aunt all went to St Leo’s too. My grandparents bought this three storied brick house when my father was about seven years old. Aunt Annie was a toddler who only spoke German and she got lost in the shuffle of the move. My father was sent to find her. I imagine most of the neighbors spoke German too. That part of Cincinnati was heavily populated with German and Italian immigrants.

The day before Easter we boiled eggs and colored them. Easter morning there would be a basket hidden somewhere for each of us. Imagine never refrigerating the boiled eggs—I told my granddaughter this recently. She was astonished. I said we never heard of salmonella poisoning.  And nothing in our baskets lasted very long anyway. Easter dinner may have been one of the holidays where the Schmidt family got together – often at grandma’s – and when everyone  had eaten, an adult would take the carload of kids to a movie theatre and drop us off there with just enough money for admission and either candy or popcorn.  I think Uncle Al usually gave us each a quarter. We thought he was rich.

By the time we got back to grandma’s, the adults would be playing cards and all the dishes had been washed up…by then everything would be brought out again for a snack before going home.

I don’t seem to remember very much about our Easter celebrations.

I remember buying a new outfit for myself, for Michael who was three at the time, and Steve, who was a baby. We were living in an apartment near the Warner Brothers Studio. I never gave much thought to whoever might be going through the nearby studio gates.

Well, I’m not here to explain Christian holidays—what I would like to do is share with you a couple of my favorite Easter holiday recipes!  My #1 favorite is my Cool Rise Cinnamon Rolls. Even as we speak, I have a pan of the cinnamon rolls rising in the refrigerator, to bake tomorrow morning.

Cool Rise Sweet Dough for Cinnamon Rolls

Stir together in a bowl:

2 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

2 Tbsp dry yeast (or 2 little packets)

½ cup (1 stick of butter), softened to room temperature

Pour in 1 1/2 c. very hot water. Mix on medium speed for 2 minutes.

Add:

2 eggs (at room temperature) and

1 c. flour

Mix on high speed for 1 minute.

Gradually add in 2-3 more cups of flour until the dough is thick and elastic, pulling away from the side of the bowl.

Turn dough out onto counter or a cutting board. Cover and let rest for 20 minutes.

Divide the dough into two balls. Roll out one ball at a time. Roll out into a rectangle that is roughly 10×14 inches. Spread melted butter over the top of rectangle to within 3/4″ of edges. Sprinkle sugar on top of the butter. Sprinkle cinnamon on top of that. Distribute raisins over the butter/sugar/cinnamon. Starting with one side, roll up the dough into a long, thick roll. Slice into individual rolls and place in a 9×13″ pan on their sides. I try to get 12 rolls out of each ball of dough and put 12 to a pan.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2-24 hours. The flavor really improves if you refrigerate this recipe overnight. Before baking, remove from fridge and let sit on the counter for at least an hour.

Bake at 350° until golden brown. Remove from oven. While they’re still hot, drizzle some glaze over them. Serve warm. Glaze: a cup of powdered sugar, a drizzle of melted butter, and just enough milk or lemon juice to make a runny glaze. Recently, I saw a bunch of glaze recipes and so I tried one. I was very disappointed with the results. Note to self: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

This is a versatile sweet dough recipe and you can make a lot of coffee cakes with it.

My next favorite holiday recipe (for any holiday!) is my friend and former co-worker Nina’s recipe for making deviled eggs.  I have no idea how many different recipes I have tried for deviled eggs—but always come back to Nina’s recipe!  At work, when we had pot lucks, Nina had to set out one batch for immediate consumption as people arrived at work. She’d have a second batch when the dishes were put out for the department at lunch time.

To make Nina’s Deviled Eggs

6 hard cooked eggs
1/4 C mayo or salad dressing (less if eggs are very small)
1 tsp vinegar
1 tsp mustard
1/2 tsp horseradish
salt to taste
dash of pepper

Nina writes, “I very rarely add salt or pepper, but it depends on what you like. My recipe book also has alternatives: Add 2 TBSP crumbled crisp bacon, or 1 TBSP finely chopped olives, or 1 TBSP finely chopped green-onions or chives.   Enjoy!”

Sandy’s cooknote: I made two batches of Nina’s eggs today, for tomorrow’s Easter dinner at the home of my youngest son and his wife. Don’t add salt! There is already a salty taste to this recipe, which I think comes from the mayonnaise (always Best Foods or Hellman’s brand of mayonnaise) or the horseradish. I topped the filled eggs with a very light sprinkling of Paprika.  **

I   generally associate cookie making with Christmas but Easter is also one of the occasions when I make up lots of large egg-shaped cookies; two of the cut-out egg shaped cookie dough fit on a cookie sheet so you will go through a good amount of cookie dough and I prefer to bake one sheet of cookies at a time* so it takes a while to get the cookies baked.  I baked cookies for all the ladies on my bowling league last week—they each got a carrot-shaped glazed cookie, along with a yellow chick cookie and a white glazed bunny cookie. I’ve done this a few times for holidays – Christmas and Valentine’s Day and now Easter. Now they call me the Cookie Lady.

*The reason I bake one sheet of cookies at a time is because my stove is almost as old as I am and I can bake two sheets at a time, by checking them after five minutes and switching the trays around – but if I am in a hurry or working on frosting, I do one tray at a time and set the timer. I made a lot of cookies this year—who doesn’t like cookies?

I made a batch of Hot Wings for an appetizer but those are so easy—does it even constitute a recipe? I like the McCormick’s brand of Buffalo Hot Wings spice mixture and bought a 4 pound bag of wings with the tips already cut off. All you have to do is mix the raw chicken wings with the seasoning mix and bake them on a cookie sheet in the oven. The directions don’t say so, but trial and error has taught me not to put the wings directly on the foil-covered cookie sheet—I use a rack. You won’t believe how much oil collects on the sheet underneath the wings. A lot!

My sons like the wings best if they are “dry” (not greasy) so I baked them at 450 degrees for 25 minutes according to the package directions—but they weren’t “dry” so I turned the heat down to 250 and kept them in the oven for well over an hour checking every 15 minutes to see if they felt and looked “done” enough. These wings are not mouth-burning hot like many hot wings ARE but we have young children who like hot wings and so the recipe has to be toned down for them.

I’m not hosting Easter dinner this year—I haven’t for a few years. Tomorrow I will prepare for the kids to come and decorate Easter cookies and then make some Easter eggs with construction paper and stickers. Then there will be an egg hunt at my son’s and after dinner, I am going to my sister’s so I can see my nephew and his girlfriend and my niece who I haven’t seen since Christmas. Our holidays are a far cry from those of my childhood.

I wish you all a Happy and Joyous Easter holiday.

Sandy

MY GRANDMOTHER’S KITCHEN

Grandma always made you feel she had been waiting to see just you all day and now the day was complete – Marcy DeMaree.

My paternal grandmother, Susanne Gengler Schmidt, was the acknowledged great cook in my family. My grandmother was German and my grandfather Hungarian. We grew up with all these dishes and delicacies that we lumped together as “German food”; it wasn’t until I acquired some Hungarian friends as an adult living in California that I discovered that Grandma’s thin crepe-like pancakes (which we called ‘German pancakes’) were actually Hungarian Palacsinta.

My grandmother made huge pans of strudel with homemade tissue-thin filo dough, using whatever was in season for the filling. She had some sour apple trees so there was often apple strudel but we also enjoyed cherry, cheese, and even a spicy pumpkin strudel that made an appearance in the fall. She made a chicken broth with ‘rivvels’ – tiny little dumplings and with it we would often have a homemade bread crusted with kosher salt (appropriately dubbed salt bread). Her goulash, I learned, was more Hungarian than German and generally didn’t contain much more than stewing beef, potatoes and carrots.

We enjoyed chicken Paprikash and Wiener Schnitzel and liver dumplings. We all loved the homemade sausages (once a year my grandparents butchered a hog and made a lot of sausages. The hams were smoked in a converted section of the garage).

The one thing I hated (but everyone else enjoyed) was Hasenpfeffer made with wild rabbit that my father would have caught going hunting a few times a year. I don’t remember Grandma ever making this dish but my mother certainly did. It was the bane of my existence in my childhood, to come home from school and the smell of sweet and sour rabbit cooking on the stove wafted throughout the house.

My grandmother always made her own noodles (from scratch!) to go with these dishes and it was not an unusual sight for a grandchild to come running in to Grandma’s and find noodles drying on the backs of all the wooden chairs.

Sometimes there was Sachertorte and sometimes Dobos torte. I think we all loved the Dobos torte the most – seven thin layers of sponge cake with layers of bittersweet chocolate frosting between each layer; the whole thing encased afterwards in the same chocolate frosting.

My grandmother often made doughnuts and on the Feast of the Three Kings, you could expect to find a coin – a nickel or dime – inside your doughnut.

Most of my grandmother’s recipes died with her – she never wrote anything down…but
her youngest daughter in law wanted to learn from Grandma and stood by her elbow watching, repeatedly, to see how things were made. My Aunt Dolly is the only person left who remembers how some of these dishes were made. Amongst my mother’s recipes, I found a recipe for Dobos Torte written by Aunt Annie (Grandma’s daughter) and addressed in the corner “Dear Vi” – my mother.

One of my best memories of sitting at the table with my grandmother didn’t involve an elaborate meal, however. Often, when I was spending the night with her, we would have tea with lemon and some buttered saltine crackers as a snack before going to bed.

To this day hot tea and lemon and some buttered crackers are one of my favorite comfort foods.

When I was a very young child and my grandfather was still alive, Grandma’s kitchen was on the second floor, at the back of the house – with a window overlooking the back yard. I have memories of sitting on Grandpa’s lap while we sat in his rocking chair, watching Grandma make doughnuts—which were undeniably best when hot and sprinkled liberally with sugar.

On summer nights, we all sat outside on the second floor front porch, waiting for the ice cream man to come up Baltimore Street. No TV! No radio! Just sitting and talking and cooling off after a hot summer day.

My grandfather enjoyed, I recall, a dish made up of cooked potatoes, noodles and eggs— that he liked to eat with milk, but I have never seen a recipe and have never quite duplicated it. It might have been something thrown together with leftovers…or maybe you needed homemade noodles to make it right.

He also smoked a pipe…and once, when my mother was very sick – long after Grandpa had died – she sensed a presence by her bed and smelled pipe tobacco.

The Christmas before Grandpa died, I remember him lying in his bed. Grandma and Grandpa gave me a baby doll for Christmas in 1949; I named the doll Susann, after Grandma. Grandpa passed away in February, 1950.

After Grandpa died (I was 9 at the time) Grandma moved to two rooms on the first floor of her house on Baltimore Avenue. She took the two front rooms and rented out the two back rooms (we shared a bathroom with the tenants). She was then able to rent out the entire second floor to another family, while my uncle Hans and Aunt Dolly and their sons lived on the third floor until they were able to buy their first home. Grandma had a kitchen and a combination living room/bedroom with a trundle bed to accommodate a visiting grandchild. The hub of activity was always Grandma’s kitchen.

I went to Grandma’s once a week to spend the night – starting out some time in grade school. I continued this weekly visit all through high school—until I got married, and then Becky and her children and Jim & I would go to Grandma’s for dinner on Monday nights.

When we were all young children, it as considered a great privilege to go downtown with Grandma. She bought most of her produce at Findlay Market and patronized a butcher shop that was in the area of Findlay Market. We carried fresh vegetables home in oilcloth bags that Grandma made on an old treadle sewing machine that may have been grandpa‘s before he died. He was a tailor.

It was only in later years that my siblings and I, along with our cousins, realized that one of Grandma’s greatest gifts to all of us wasn’t in her cooking – delicious though it was – but rather, in her ability to make each and every grandchild feel special. We each grew up believing WE were grandma’s favorite. It wasn’t something she ever said – it was something each of us felt.

She was our anchor; she went to bat for you. She’d stop whatever she was doing to make you a chicken-and-lettuce sandwich, first going out to her garden to pick some fresh leaf lettuce…she would take you downtown with her, to see a movie and maybe get a grape juice drink and a hot dog afterwards. She’d make hot tea with lemon, and you’d have that as a bedtime snack, along with butter and crackers (real butter—Grandma didn’t believe in oleomargarine). She loved to travel, to see things—whether it meant traveling to Niagara Falls with a carload of grandchildren or getting on a streetcar and making a Sunday trip to the Cincinnati Zoo. (My brother Jim thinks we must be part gypsy since we all love to travel and move around to different parts of the country).

I can remember a few occasions of becoming sick at school and at least once two older school girls walked me up the street to Grandma’s. Grandma put me in her bed with a hot water bottle and gave me an Alka Seltzer; then I curled up sumptuously on her bed, dozing while I could smell the cotton cloth of clothing being ironed, and hear Grandma’s daytime radio soap operas, like Stella Dallas.

My brother Bill tells a hilarious story of the time he and our cousin Johnny, one hot summer day, found a tool in Grandma’s basement that Johnny figured would turn on the water faucets at the Junior High school up the street. The two boys went up to the school and turned on all the outside water faucets. They were having a wonderful time dancing in the spray of water as it flooded the parking lot, when they noticed police cars and fire trucks ascending the hill to the school. The two boys quickly turned off the water and taking a back trail, hurried back to Grandma’s, where they sat (completely drenched) on a side step. Of course, the police and firemen arrived, having been advised by other children that Billy and Johnny were the culprits. When the authorities approached Grandma, she would have none of it. Brandishing her broom, she insisted “her boys” (although dripping wet and looking mighty sheepish) hadn’t left the property all day. After the police and fire department left, Grandma shook a finger at the two boys. “Don’t either of you DARE to leave this yard for the rest of the day” she warned. And they didn’t.

My sister, Barbara recalled that applesauce making was a family project in which everyone was put to work. Even small children could help peel the apples—although the actual cooking of the sauce was left to grandma and her daughter and daughters in law. (When there were too many apples or maybe Grandma had her fill of making applesauce, a grandchild would be sent down the street with a wagonload of apples to give to the nuns at St. Leo’s, our parish church).

What I do remember about the canned applesauce is that, during the War years, it was made sans sugar. We had jars and jars of applesauce in the cellar, long after World War II was over, all of it made with sour cooking apples, none of it sweetened. You sprinkled a little sugar and cinnamon on the applesauce as you were eating it.

Joyce Brothers wrote “Becoming a grandparent is a second chance for you have a chance to put to use all the things you learned the first time around and may have made mistakes on. It’s all love and no discipline. There’s no thorn in this rose”. (From “A TRIBUTE TO GRANDMOTHERS”. And now that I’m a grandmother myself, I know this is all true.

The following recipe for Dobos torte is in Aunt Annie’s handwriting. Aunt Annie was Grandma’s only daughter. Here then, is Grandma’s recipe for

Dobos Torte

You will need:

12 TBSP sifted cake flour
12 TBSP sugar
12 eggs (separated)
½ tsp vanilla extract

Beat egg yolks and sugar until light and fluffy. Fold in flour, a tablespoon at a time. Then add vanilla. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites last. Pour about 5 TBSP in each 8 or 9 inch cake pans (that have been greased and floured). Bake 10-13 minutes at 350 degrees. This should make about 12 layers.

Icing for Torte:

½ lb butter (2 sticks)
1 box powdered sugar (1 lb)
3 TBSP unsweetened cocoa

Cream together and moisten with black coffee to spreading consistency.
~~~~
The Wilton Book of Classic Desserts offers recipes for Dobos Torta and Sacher Torte (amongst others). To make the Wilton Dobos Tort you will need

1 recipe Genoise*
2 recipes uncooked chocolate butter icing**
2/3 c. sugar
1 c. coarsely chopped almonds or hazelnuts (optional)

Butter well and dust with flour the bottom of three 8” layer cake pans, buttered, lined with waxed paper, then buttered again and dusted with flour. Spread 3-4 TBSP of Genoise batter in each and bake in 400 degree oven for about 8 minutes or until lightly browned. Carefully remove from pan and peel off paper. Place cakes on racks to cool. Repeat until all batter is used and you have 8 to 12 layers.

Place a layer on a cake plate, spread with icing and cover with a second layer. Repeat until all layers are used. Do not ice top layer. (reserve about 1 cup of icing for side of cake.)

Melt the sugar without stirring in a skillet until it carmelizes. Spread this quickly on top of cake with a hot knife. Mark the cake into serving portions with radiating lines like spokes of a wheel using the hot knife. Ice the sides of the cake with the chocolate icing and if you wish, press nuts into the iced sides. Chill 12 to 24 hours before serving.

*To make Genoise (delicate butter sponge cake)

You will need:
6 eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 CUP sifted flour
½ cup clarified butter, melted and cooled***

Combine eggs, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl and stir till just combined Set bowl over saucepan containing 1” to 2” hot water (water should not touch bottom of bowl). Place over very low heat for 5 or 10 minutes or until eggs are just lukewarm. Stir mixture several times to prevent it from cooking at the bottom of the bowl.

When mixture feels lukewarm and looks like a bright, yellow syrup, remove from heat and beat at high speed for 10 or 15 minutes or until it has tripled in volume and draws out in ribbon form when a spoon is pulled out of it.

Sprinkle the flour, a little at a time, on top of the whipped mixture. Fold in very gently. Then fold in the butter. DO NOT OVERMIIX.

Pour the batter into well buttered pans dusted lightly with flour, and bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes or until cake pulls away from the sides of pan. Remove from pans immediately and cool on rack. Makes two 9” layers, three 7” layers or one 11”x16” sheet.

**To make the uncooked chocolate icing you will need:

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
3 TBSP hot water
1 ¼ cups sifted powdered sugar
1 egg^
¼ cup soft butter
1 tsp vanilla

Melt chocolate in top of double boiler; add hot water and stir until smooth. Remove from heat and blend in the sugar. Add egg and beat until smooth. Add butter a little at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in vanilla.
Makes enough icing for 2 layers or 24 cupcakes

^This recipe precedes salmonella in eggs. Suggest you use the equivalent of one egg in egg beaters as a substitute if you don’t want to chance using raw egg.

***To make clarified butter:

Place any amount of butter in a deep pan. Melt over very low heat and continue cooking until the foam disappears from the top. The liquid butter must not brown. When the butter looks perfectly clear, remove from heat and pour through a sieve lined with cheesecloth into a container, leaving sediment in the pan. (if only a small amount is being made, simply pour off the clear butter, leaving the sediment in the pan). Clarified butter, well covered, will keep for months in the refrigerator. It is pure fat from which all solids and water have been removed.

Sandy’s Cooknote: Aunt Annie’s recipe may be a lot simpler but I have provided all the instructions provided in “The Wilton Book of Classic Desserts” that I have “rediscovered” on my bookshelves. The book was edited by Eugene an Marilynn Sullivan and published by Pine Tree Press for Wilton Enterprises. My copy has a 1970 copyright date.

What makes the book remarkable are the many classic desserts – such as Dobos Torta or Sachertorte and breaks the directions down so that even a novice cook can follow the instructions and make a successful dish. I’ll tell you more about the book another time, if you are interested.

This is as close as I can get to providing an authentic recipe that was made, often, by my grandmother—I can’t remember the cake ever being round, though – in my memory, Grandma made the sponge cakes in loaf pans and the finished cake of many layers was a medium loaf pan size.

Happy cooking and happy cookbook collecting!
Sandy

THE INVISIBLE MOTHER

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I’m on the phone and ask to be taken to the store.

Inside I’m thinking, ‘Can’t you see I’m on the phone?’

Obviously not; no one can see if I’m on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all. I’m invisible. The invisible Mom.

Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more! Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this??

Some days I’m not a pair of hands; I’m not even a human being. I’m a clock to ask, ‘What time is it?’ I’m a satellite guide to answer, ‘What number is the Disney Channel?’ I’m a car to order, ‘Right around 5:30, please.’

Some days I’m a crystal ball; ‘Where’s my other sock?, Where’s my phone?, What’s for dinner?’

I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history, music and literature — but now, they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She’s going, she’s going, she’s gone!

One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England . She had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when she turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, ‘I brought you this.’ It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe .
I wasn’t exactly sure why she’d given it to me until I read her inscription:

‘With admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.’

In the days ahead I would read – no, devour – the book.

And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work:

1) No one can say who built the great cathedrals – we have no record of their names.

2) These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished.

3) They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.

4) The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard, ‘I see you. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does.

‘No act of kindness you’ve done, no sequin you’ve sewn on, no cupcake you’ve baked, no Cub Scout meeting, no last minute errand is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can’t see right now what it will become.’

I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on. The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.

When I really think about it, I don’t want my son to tell the friend he’s bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, ‘My Mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for 3 hours and presses all the linens for the table.’ That would mean I’d built a monument to myself. I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his friend, he’d say, ‘You’re gonna love it there…’

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we’re doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible mothers.

AUTHOR UNKNOWN but isn’t this a wonderful tribute for mothers everywhere?

–Sandy

MEMORIES OF MY MOTHER

George Washington wrote, ““My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All that I am, I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her”. Those words could have been applied to my mother.

As a family, we were probably not very different from many other families of our generation. We were the children of parents who lived through the depression and a World War, people who perhaps had a hard time letting us know that they loved us. I don’t recall either my mother or my father ever telling me that they loved me until after I was an adult, married, with children of my own. I think now, that maybe they didn’t know how. It started to come about after dad had his first heart attack in 1968; we started to tell him and mom that we loved them, and they responded.

But talk can be cheap. Words don’t mean very much if nothing is behind them. My mother showed her love in many different ways, even if she found it difficult to say those words to us when we were children. She made a big deal of our birthdays and all holidays. She really put a lot into making our Christmases special, despite financial hardships.

I think my mother truly was a child of the depression. She was born in 1917 and would have been eleven years old when the stock market crashed and America fell into the throes of the Great Depression. Like so many other people who were children of that great Depression she never quite got over it. She would always be frugal and thrifty; she would never throw anything out or waste anything. If you ever talk to other people who grew up during the Depression, you would hear similar stories from them, and discover that they had similar attitudes. There was always the fear that it could happen again.

The Depression was still going on in 1935 when my parents married and in 1936 when my sister Barbara was born. What ended the Depression was World War 2.

Life wasn’t a bowl of cherries, being born during the depression and war years, growing up in the 40s and 50s. However, none of us, I think, thought of ourselves as poor. We had no more or any less than anyone else we knew.
But we had each other and we forged a bond that nothing in this life could ever break. Yes, we sometimes walked to school in shoes that had holes mended with cardboard. But you know, we always went to school with a hot breakfast in our stomachs and our sandwiches made with homemade bread wrapped in wax paper, or we went to Grandma Schmidt’s for lunch. In retrospect, I realize now that many people in Europe were still suffering from the ravages of war, and didn’t have enough to eat. Rationing continued in England until the 1950s. We always had enough to eat. My mother once told me she had $10.00 a week to spend on groceries. No one ever stretched ten dollars further than my mother. How she accomplished this has been recalled by my sister Barbara (who, although she was loathe to admit it, was older than I and remembered a lot more).

It could not have been easy for my mother, raising seven children and providing them with many of the things she, herself, had been denied, like music lessons, and nice dresses, birthday parties and trips to Coney Island. But she did it.

The writer Marcelene Cox wrote, “To raise good human beings it is not only necessary to be a good mother and a good father, but to have had a good mother and father”.

My mother was a good woman who did the best she could with what she had. But she gave special gifts to us, whether we realized it or not. When I was in the fourth grade, I began taking piano lessons. I could barely read music, much less play, when Paul Whiteman’s Amateur Hour advertised that they would have auditions for children somewhere in downtown Cincinnati – the winning person would appear on his television show. I submitted an application and my mother took me to the audition. She never pointed out to me that I could barely read music much less play. I somehow stumbled through my piece of something very somber by Franz Listz. The point of this story is simply this, my mother never discouraged me, never told me I didn’t have a prayer in this competition. Thinking back on this incident, I find this kind of support absolutely remarkable. Our parents gave us confidence in ourselves, and taught us to be self-sufficient. They taught us to believe in ourselves.
All of us have memories of going to Coney Island on Findlay Market Day and competing in the games. Schmidt kids were bound to win – and we did. None of us was ever afraid of competition. Barb has recalled that even mom would enter these contests – determined to win. Once, she won a silver tray.

When I was 17 years old, my brother Scott was born. And when I was 21, my baby sister, Susie, was born. My mother told me. “your father and I can’t imagine a house without children in it”. What may have been most remarkable about my baby sister’s birth is that my sister Barbara and my mother and I were all pregnant at the same time. David was born in June, 1960; Michael in September, 1960 and Susie in February 1961. I can’t imagine a life without my youngest sister and brother in it. My parents gave us many gifts. Perhaps the most wonderful gift they gave to us was – each other.

I spent weeks searching through reference books and the Internet for the perfect quote to describe my mother. I found the following in an Ann Landers column:

“My mother taught me there’s a time and place for everything. ‘If you are gong to kill each other, do it outside; I just finished cleaning the house’.

My mother taught me religion: ‘You had better pray that the stuff you spilled will come out of the carpet’.

My mother taught me logic: ‘Because I said so, that’s why’.

My mother taught me foresight: “Make sure you wear clean underwear. You never know when you might be in an accident and be taken to the hospital’.

My mother taught me control: ‘Keep laughing and I’ll give you something to cry about’.

My mother taught me the science of osmosis: “Shut your mouth and eat your supper’.

My mother taught me about being a contortionist: “Look at the back of your neck. It’s filthy!’

My mother taught me about stamina: ‘you will sit there until all that hasenpheffer is eaten’.

My mother taught me about weather: ‘Your room looks like it was hit by a tornado’.

My mother taught me about straight talk: ‘If I told you once, I told you a million times, don’t exaggerate’.

My mother taught me it is more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.

My mother taught me the quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.

My mother taught me a closed mouth gathers no foot.

My mother taught me that some days you are the bug and other days you are the windshield.

My mother taught me never to test the depth of the water with both feet.

My mother taught me if you always tell the truth, you won’t have to remember what you said and to whom.”

A writer by the name of May Sarton wrote, “I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a tree that sows seed every spring and never counts the loss, because it is not loss, it is adding to future life. It is the tree’s way of being. Strongly rooted, perhaps, but spilling out its treasure on the wind..” We are all here, today, because Viola Beckman Schmidt lived.

My mother passed away on September 29, 2000. On this Mother’s Day, if you still have your mother -let her know you love her. Someday you won’t be able to do this.

Remembered by Sandra Lee Schmidt Smith

AMBITIONS OF CHILDHOOD; WHAT I WANT TO BE WHEN I GROW UP

When we were children, no one ever aspired to be an insurance salesman or a clerk-typist. We all had loftier ambitions—to be a cowboy in the rodeo or a famous movie star. Few of us ever came anywhere near realizing those ambitions.

However, in my family—two of us have come close. I always wanted to write, and at an early age, began writing stories which I surreptitiously mailed to “My Weekly Reader”.

I was receiving my first rejection slips by the time I was in the third grade. There was never any question in my mind that I would be a Writer.

When I was about ten or eleven years old, my parents purchased an old Royal typewriter. I taught myself how to type using two fingers (and had to unlearn the wrong way when I took typing classes in high school). The acquisition of a Real Typewriter brought the dream a little closer, – even though I knew nothing, at the age of thirteen, about double-spacing and word counts. I began writing “novels” which were single-spaced and rarely re-written. My girlfriends loved to read them, however, and the “novel” would be passed around in class, one page at a time.

One of the great tragedies of this period was my mother accidentally burning one of my novels. I remember tears of anguish – and cries of “I’ll never be able to write that book again!”. And, I never did, but most of the other “novels” of my teenage years have survived. In high school I wrote a novel titled “Charm Bracelet” which included a court room scene. I was aided and abetted in writing this chapter by my typing teacher who happened to also work at the courthouse and kindly encouraged my writing enough that I could write my “stories” in class as long as I completed all my typing assignments by Friday afternoon.

Those old standard typewriters were a far cry from today’s computer keyboards or even electric typewriters which came along some years later. In my 20s, I acquired a Smith-Corona electric portable typewriter on which I banged out stories and poems so hard that the typewriter often danced across the kitchen table. Occasionally I sold a short article or a poem, just enough to fuel my ambitions. What a thrill to receive a letter of acceptance from an editor! (Or even a letter – albeit with a rejection slip – of encouragement).

More practically, I typed insurance policies on the side to make some extra cash when I was a stay-at-home mother). Every poem or short story that I submitted to a magazine had to be retyped when it was returned with a rejection slip. We couldn’t even have imagined the advent of today’s computers or how they would streamline writing!

Life has a way of getting in the way of lofty ambitions, of course, and my life was detoured with marriage and the births of four sons. I spent many years working for insurance companies before finally returning to writing. When I purchased my first computer in the mid 1980s, I told myself “Now I will write”.

My younger brother Bill always wanted to be a cowboy. Cowboy as in, has horses, will ride. I have a black and white photo of him, sitting on the front porch of our house on Sutter Street, hanging onto our black lab dog “Mike”. Bill, at age six, is wearing a cowboy hat and if you look closely, you can also make out the gun-and-holster strapped to his waist. (Every year at Christmas, my two younger brothers asked for, and received, gun-and-holster sets. The pistols were cap guns; a roll of caps was inserted inside the gun so you had more than a six-shooter. It was probably a 50 or 100 shooter). We all played cowboys and Indians (the most coveted role being that of the horse). We went to Saturday matinees to see Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Gene Autry, and Hopalong Cassidy. The rest of the week we ran up and down the street, whinnying and stomping our feet. But whereas most of us outgrew any lofty ambition to really be a cowboy, my brother Bill did just that. Today, he has a farm in Ohio and more horses than you can shake a stick at. He wears cowboy hats and cowboy boots … and even though he is an engineer for a valve company (for somebody has to pay for all those horses and what they eat) – everybody calls him cowboy. And he really is.

–Sandra Lee Smith

PUTTIN’ UP APPLESAUCE

This story was really my sister Becky’s—I was too young to remember this annual event. This is exactly what Becky wrote about it:

Picking apples and making applesauce was a family affair. We’d climb the apple trees and shake the limbs with all our might, and then ran around under the trees gathering up the apples. From there they went into a big wash tub that also substituted for our swimming pool in the summer. The women cored and quartered the apples. Then they were put into a big pot to simmer. When softened, they were poured into a sieve to strain off the skins and seeds. The sauce was put into hot sterilized jars and processed. Sugar wasn’t added until the jars were opened. We had applesauce with every meal all year long.

My Grandma Schmidt had sour apple trees growing in her back yard. I don’t remember if there was one or several of these trees. I do remember Grandma filling a little red wagon with them and instructing me to “take these apples to the sisters”. “The sisters” were the Franciscan nuns who lived in a house behind St Leo’s school. There was St Leo’s church and behind it, the priests’ house, then St Leo’s school, and just behind it, the convent. It always seemed slightly naughty to see the kitchen or living room of the nuns’ home. I remember having my piano lessons in their living room a few times and a sister was always working in the kitchen. I think I may have been given a piece of candy for delivering apples to the sisters.
Grandma would instruct a grandson to climb the biggest apple tree and shake the branches, to get the apples to fall. Then, it seems, every able-bodied female participated in making apple sauce. First all of the apples had to be peeled, and cored. Then they were quartered. And possibly the apples WEREN’T peeled, as I originally thought. But I think Grandma would have wanted the peels to feed to her chickens or a nasty goose that she kept in the backyard one year.

Thinking back on all of this, it’s quite possible that three kitchen stoves were put to use making applesauce, because my aunt and uncle lived on the third floor; Grandma and Grandpa had the entire second floor, and my parents had part of the first floor while another aunt and uncle lived in the other part.

When I was five, my parents bought their first home of their own, so they lived in my grandparents 3-storied brick house for nine years. My Aunt Dolly & Uncle Hans lived on the third floor for much longer, until they bought a house on North Bend Road. Uncle Hans was in the navy in WW2 so that may be why it took them longer. My Aunt Annie & Uncle Al must have moved out of Grandma’s house when I was still very young; I can’t remember them ever living there. They bought a saloon in partnership with Uncle Al’s brother and had a place called “Shille’s Café” out on East Miami River road, across from the river.

But getting back to the applesauce making.

Dusty boxes of canning jars, that everyone called “Mason jars” even though the name “Ball” was engraved on the side of the jar, were brought up from the cellar and I wonder now where they were stored throughout the year—maybe in grandpa’s wine cellar that was under the front porch. All of the jars had to be washed in hot soapy water and then scalded in boiling water. Outside my mother and one of the aunts, and my sister Becky, were peeling apples, cutting away the bad spots. When enough apples had been peeled and cored and chopped, they were dumped into a big pot and rinsed off, then water was added and the apples were put on top of a stove to start cooking. Grandma had a long handled wooden spoon for stirring. She was in charge of everything, never mind that her daughter and two daughters in law were grown women. Grandma was always in charge—sort of like a drill sergeant.

From somewhere in the depths of the cellar a cone-shaped sieve with an odd shaped wooden thing that looked like a misshapen cone shaped rolling pin was brought up to the kitchen and they all took turns feeding the cooked apples into the sieve and pushing the misshapen rolling pin around so that all the sauce was forced through the sieve. When there was ENOUGH applesauce, it went back into a pot on top of the stove, to heat until it was boiling. The applesauce was poured into the hot jars, lids tightly screwed on and the jars put down in yet another pot of boiling water to cook, after coming back to a boil, a certain length of time – perhaps twenty minutes or half an hour.

During the war years, no sugar was added to the applesauce even though those apples were pretty sour. What I DO remember is that, for years after, my mother kept jars and jars of applesauce in a cupboard in our basement on Sutter Street. She would open a jar to go with supper and we’d be allowed to sprinkle a little sugar on the applesauce to make it sweeter. Sugar, you know, was rationed during the War years.

We always had applesauce…even if it wasn’t sweetened. And we all loved Grandma’s apple strudel. Ah, that’s another story.

–Sandra Lee Smith

THINGS WE REMEMBER; GROWING UP IN CINCINNATI IN THE 30s, 40s & 50s

The following are vignettes of things that we remember from our childhood. While most of these childhood memories are intertwined, in some instances one sibling’s memories differ somewhat from another’s. For instance, Aunt Sandy only remembers watching Grandma Schmidt make diamond shaped Christmas cookies, that were studded with a mixture of sugar and finely chopped walnuts (and always thought those were the only kind Grandma made). . Aunt Becky chastised her, saying that Grandma made lots of different cookies for Christmas. Grandma baked, Aunt Becky recalled, thumbprint cookies with raspberry jam, and a fold-over cookie filled with apricot or peach jam. Grandma made Springerle cookies that were so hard you could not even bite into them, and a small pill-shaped cookie with colored sprinkles on top. Every family member got a dress box full of cookies for Christmas. All Aunt Sandy can say is…she only saw Grandma make the diamond shaped cookies and someone else must have eaten up all those other cookies!

In any case, these are our memories, of being children growing up in Fairmount, a suburb of Cincinnati, when Fairmount was still a nice neighborhood in which to live, of our relationships with Grandma Schmidt and each other, of going to St. Leo’s – where even our father, Uncle Hans, and Aunt Annie went to school and where we all had the same First Grade teacher, Sister Taursisius, who taught first graders for 50 years, until she retired to the Convent in Oldenburg, Indiana.

Fairmount was at that time a stable, friendly neighborhood, heavily populated with German and Italian immigrants, where it was safe for children to play in the streets on summer nights or walk to the pony keg to get a bottle of “pop”, where you knew families for blocks around and very often, the children you went to school with had gone to school with your parents..

My sister Becky was diagnosed with breast cancer in the fall of 2000, and had her first surgery in October, 2000. Our mother passed away September 29, 2000, about a week before Becky’s surgery. The memorial service for our mother was delayed to give my sister time to recuperate and, if possible, be able to attend the family gathering in Florida the following spring.

Around this time, Becky began sending those of us with computers memories of her childhood. Having been diagnosed with breast cancer, she wanted, I think, to get all of these memories written down while she was still able. The idea took off and I began collecting all of these memories—often learning, much to my surprise, things about my siblings that I never knew. (She also sent some of these memoirs to Reminisce magazine; some were published).

Initially, I thought we could combine the memoirs with the family cookbook which was finally beginning to see the light of day. However, adding all of our memories (much less all the old photographs) would have made the cookbook project far too expensive. Then I began exploring the idea of putting together a booklet of all our memories, with photographs, to give to all of my sister’s children and grandchildren, the nieces and nephews, as well as others who loved her. As I continued to work on this project, I finally realized that what I had in my hands was the nucleus of a memorial booklet for my sister. As time went by, we began to realize Becky was not going to recover from this illness.

When I visited my sister in June, 2004, I took along the half-completed memory booklet to show to her, presenting it with the idea it would be a booklet for her children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, so they would learn more about their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. If she suspected that I was working on a memorial tribute to her, she gave no indication. My sister passed away October 10, 2004.

Aunt Becky remembers…. “When I was 3 years old, the house painters were painting the house trim. They broke for lunch and left the ladder going to the roof up from the second floor porch. The family noticed that people were pointing up at the house. They went out on the porch to find me climbing the ladder. The only person who had the courage to go after me was Aunt Annie who was home recovering from her operation. Her appendix had ruptured and she had emergency surgery….”

Aunt Becky remembers… “Every fall, our grandparents ordered a butchered hog. The women and children worked in grandma’s second floor kitchen and the men went to the basement to make the sausages. My job was to chop hog fat into tiny cubes to be rendered into lard. Used lard was saved to make lye soap. The men in the basement would make the sausage mixture. One of them would get a balloon-like casing from a jar. After it was rinsed in cold water, he blew into the casing to check for holes. It was then threaded onto a pipe that protruded from the bottom of the stuffer machine. One of them would turn the hand crank and the other guided the sausage into the casing. If a hole appeared, they had to tie a knot in the casing and start a new sausage. For weeks after this, grandpa’s little smoke house was a huffin’ and a puffin’ streams of smoke. After the hams and sausages were smoked, they were hung from the rafters in the garage for the winter…”

Aunt Becky remembers…Coal was usually bought during the summer months. The deliveryman would dump the load into the driveway, and because the men were working, it was left to women and children to get the winter’s supply of coal from the driveway, into the coal bin in the basement. The kids loaded chunks of coal into a wheelbarrow, then one of the ladies wheeled it to the window of the coal bin, using wooden planks to span the steps. By the end of the day we were as black as the coal and very tired.”

Aunt Becky remembers.. “ I was in the third grade when mom decided I needed piano lessons. My mother loved music and loved to dance, and so dancing lessons ceased and piano lessons began. I loved the dancing class but my teacher, Miss Edith, moved out of the public school on Baltimore Street and into her own studio in Western Hills, so it was difficult to attend her classes. The four of us older children all had dance classes, Sandy, Jim, Biff , and I. My sister Sandy and I took piano lessons at St. Leo’s school and Jim learned to play the clarinet. Jim & I were also in the school band at St. Leo’s.

Aunt Sandy remembers… “I took tap-dancing lessons at North Fairmount School when I was in kindergarten. What I remember best about those lessons is that, at the end of the year, we had a recital at Garfield School in Northside. We wore costumes to make us look like little flowers, that our mothers made out of crepe paper. Someone in the family gave me a box of candy after the recital. I don’t think I was a very good tap-dancer but I loved getting a box of “real grown-up candy..as for those piano lessons. I think I took piano in the 5th and 6th grades. My piano lessons coincided with Arithmetic lessons—and consequently, I didn’t learn fractions until I was a senior in high school. I hated arithmetic; no way was I going to confess to Sister Doris Marie that I wasn’t learning fractions! I can’t imagine how I got away with it…”

Aunt Becky remembers… “We recycled everything! Gift wrap paper was saved from year to year. Ironing made it as good as new. Even cloth ribbons were ironed and recycled. Until my mother was no longer able to put up her own Christmas tree, she saved her tinsel from one year to the next. Our tree always remained up until my birthday, January 7th. This made me feel special…”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “One year mom & dad visited me in California during the Christmas holidays. As we were taking down the tree, mom said “Sandy! Don’t you save all your tinsel?”
“Oh, no mom!” I said, “It’s so cheap—we’ll just get a new box next year”.
To which she loftily replied, “Well! That’s why I get to go to Hawaii and you don’t!”

Aunt Becky remembers…“Our grandparents owned an 11-room, 3-family house on Baltimore Avenue. When I was in the third grade, my parents bought their first home and so we moved three miles away. BUT—every day for lunch we walked from school to Grandma’s. Although I was very happy to have my own room (shared with my younger sister), I missed my grandparents’ home terribly. As we grew into young adults, we still spent Mondays with grandma, having supper and watching black & white TV programs. Aunt Sandy’s comment: I spent one night a week at Grandma’s all through high school. Sometimes getting to and from Mercy High School on Werk Road involved as many as 3 buses each way..”

Aunt Becky remembers… “One of my fondest memories was going to Coney Island on Findlay Market day…the games, prizes, and free ride tickets and 5 cent pop (sodas). We rode the street car to downtown Cincinnati, toting a picnic basket full of food for the day. After a brief walk to the Riverfront, we boarded the Island Queen for the boat trip by river to Coney Island. Grandma sat guard over our things while we children raced from ride to ride. When the park closed, we would catch the last boat back to Cincinnati. We slept the entire ride by streetcar to the end of the line. We then had to walk the two or three blocks home.”

Aunt Becky remembers…Picking grapes for jelly, and grandpa making wine in the cellar. The basement always had the smell of fermenting grapes. Watching grandma make strudel and noodles. Grandma would hang the paper thin noodles over the backs of the dining room chairs to dry. Riding the street car into town. Going to the “Orange Bar” for our free sample of a fruit drink. My favorite was orange and pineapple mixed. After grandma made her rounds of paying bills, we went to the butcher shop where she purchased lunchmeats and fruit. When we went to a movie with grandma, we ate our lunch with freshly baked rye bread sticks. Soooo good. I remember picking peaches and making peach jam. Grandma made her special “Peach Brandy..”.

Aunt Becky remembers … “The smell of smoke coming from grandpa’s smoke house. Grandma also had a copper still that sat on the stove, newly polished, complete with a crocheted doily on top! We blew bubbles over the second floor porch railing. We stuffed grandpa’s pipe with soap, then dipped the pipes into a glass of water and blew with all our might!…”

Aunt Becky remembers… “In spite of what Bill thinks he was eating, I’m sure it was the white blocks of oleo*. When it first came out, it was a white block and looked just like lard. It progressed to a plastic bag with an orange dot that you kneaded into the white oleo to make it yellow (margarine). Mom never bought lard; she saved her drippings and used that. Lard was bought in tin buckets. We got our cottage cheese in crocks from the milk man. You had to return them; that’s why they are so rare. It was the same with milk bottles. They were returned to the milk man. We bought our yeast from the bakery. You went in and asked for a piece. They wrapped it in parchment paper. On Sundays after church we had to enter the grocery store by the back door because they were closed on Sundays. Zippels was on the corner of Baltimore Avenue and Carl Street. We also shopped at Schneider’s – they were across the street from St. Leo’s. Schneider’s had the best penny candy. They had a big glass case up in front of the store…” (*Billy told his daughters he ate lard sandwiches when he was growing up).

Aunt Becky remembers… “Next door to Schneider’s was Irene’s Beauty Shop. I got several perms there. It was AWFUL! They put these wires on your head and heated them up. They were very heavy and burned my head. I always had frizz for weeks. Sometimes mom would take the curling iron to my hair; more than once I got my ears burned…”

Aunt Sandy remembers…. “Our birthday parties!. Mom would bake and decorate a cake for the birthday child. We were able to invite a few friends. We played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and drop a clothespin into a milk bottle. It was very exciting, waiting for your birthday to arrive..”.

Aunt Becky remembers… “Helping my mother on wash day. We didn’t use store-bought detergent back then! On Laundry Day, you grated mom’s lye soap into the wringer- washing machine full of steaming hot water. You had to use a laundry stick to retrieve the clothes from the washer. In the back yard, clothes lines were strung from tree to post waiting for the newly cleaned laundry to be hung. My job was to hang socks on a wooden rack to dry. When the socks were dry, I had the chore of matching up the pairs of socks. When I grew older, I was taught how to darn the socks…”

Aunt Becky remembers…“When Grandma decided to cook sauerkraut, she would send me down to Zippels to buy 25 cents worth of kraut. I loved it and ate more than my share on the way home. Then grandma would claim they CHEATED her. I just kept my mouth shut! When we needed a cat, we could always count on getting one from Zippels. More than once I brought a kitten home. There is a family story about me and a cat. It seems the family was painting the kitchen on the first floor. While they were having lunch I decided to paint the cat. Well! The cat was having none of this and he scratched me. I got even, though—I bit his TAIL! Every time I had to go to the grocery store, they’d call out, “Here comes the little girl who bites cats”!…”

Aunt Becky remembers.. “What Grandma Schmidt cooked for us when we went to her house for dinner on Monday nights, and of course, our lunches when we were at St Leo’s school. We’d walk to Grandma’s for a hot lunch. I remember once helping to make some kind of farina dumplings. I loved them in chicken broth. You take an egg and break it into a tea cup, then whip it and add farina until you have a dough. Then you drop it from a teaspoon into the broth. We all remember Grandma’s pancakes. I remember her making a sweetened sour cream as a topping, and her whipped orange Jello with cherries mixed in. I think she also added cherry juice to the Jello. For holiday dinners, there was always a relish tray with olives, sweet midget pickles and celery sticks. Her salads always had the milk-vinegar-sugar dressing on them. We didn’t have bottled salad dressings back then!”

Uncle Bill remembers…. “Coney Island! Loved the games! I think we all won at something. I loved Sunlight pool too—the big sand box! I didn’t know grandma had a still, but I do remember having apple throwing fights and eating green apples. And going on ‘dates’ with my big sisters. Now I realize that you may not have had any choice in the matter…but what I didn’t realize then was that we were a form of ‘protection’ too. Going Christmas shopping with Sandy—amazing what we were able to buy with 100 pennies!..”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “Coney Island! We all loved going there, once a year. I have only the vaguest memories of going there by boat. I remember mostly the car trips to Coney. You wouldn’t be able to go to sleep the night before, just being so excited about it. You knew we were almost there when we crossed ‘The humming bridge’. One time mom let my friend Carol go along with us. Carol went on the Ferris wheel with Biff & Bill. I was too chicken….”

Aunt Becky remembers… “Memorial Day”! . Marching with the school band from St. Bonnie’s on Queen City Avenue to the cemetery on Baltimore Avenue. I played the symbols. After a brief rest, we then stood on the corner by Grandma’s house (next door to the cemetery!) and sold flowers to people on their way to visit the graves. We’d call out ‘Flowers for sale! Fifty Cents a bunch!’ At the end of the day, Grandma always gave us a dollar!”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “For about a month before Memorial Day, mom made hundreds of artificial flowers out of tissue paper and crepe paper. We sold these on the corner by the cemetery, too…that march from St. Bonnie’s to the cemetery on Baltimore Street seemed to take forever. Your legs ached for days afterwards”

Aunt Becky remembers…Picking apples and making applesauce was a family affair. We’d climb the apple trees and shake the limbs with all our might, and then ran around under the trees gathering up the apples. From there they went into a big wash tub that also substituted for our swimming pool in the summer. The women (mom, Aunt Dolly, and Grandma) cored and quartered the apples. Then they were put into a big pot to simmer. When softened, they were poured into a sieve to strain off the skins and seeds. The sauce was put into hot sterilized jars and processed. Sugar wasn’t added until the jars were opened. We had applesauce with every meal all year long.

Uncle Bill remembers…. “Making Christmas tree ornaments from the foil milk bottle lids…Mom’s old white radio. Playing Monopoly on the front porch on Sutter Street. My first bicycle—a green, ugly girl’s bike! But—it was a bike! A couple of years later, Cousin Chuck gave me his 24” Huffy bike. I loved it! Johnny had an English 3 speed but that Huffy was much better on the trails in Mt. Airy Forest…”

Aunt Becky remembers… “During the war years we washed all our tin cans, removing both ends, and flattening the cans. On Mondays, the cans were boxed and set out by the curb for pickup. We also saved newspaper, old rags, and iron. Even my grandparents’ brass bed made its way to the curb for the war effort. My mother was expecting her 4th child, so my father was spared the draft. I did my part by writing weekly letters to our uncles who were in the service. Everyone had a Victory Garden. For ten cents you could buy saving stamps. We pasted them into a little booklet. When the booklet was filled, you could turn it in for a savings bond. Food, shoes, meat, and gas were rationed. You had to have a ration stamp or a token to buy any of these items. If memory serves me right, it took 5 stamps to purchase a pair of shoes. With 4 growing children, these stamps were depleted fast…”

Uncle Bill remembers… “Staying in those little cabins when we went on road trips. Only once do I remember staying at a motel, somewhere along the Pennsylvania turnpike. It was late at

night; I think mom made dad stop. I still feel nostalgic when I see those little cabins along some of the rural highways. I remember sitting in the front seat between mom & dad. I knew every detail of the dash board; I can still see the radio grill and all the radio buttons. There was a little button to the left of the radio—well, a pull type knob; might have been a manual choke. Aunt Becky’s comment….imagine taking trips in a car with NO air conditioning in the car, four little kids and three adults! Aunt Sandy’s note…Grandma usually went with us on these trips. She was a gypsy at heart and would go anywhere, anytime, on a moment’s notice. Uncle Jim thinks we must have all inherited that gypsy blood. It seems to me we always started these trips in the dead of night so all of us children would sleep the first 5 or 6 hours of the way. We each took our own pillow along. How in the world was there enough room in the car for all of us?…”

Aunt Becky remembers… “I think we went to Lake Erie, the one near Detroit, because we visited Dad’s cousin, Sue, who lived in Detroit. This was the last year I took a vacation with the family because I got married the following October when I was 15 going on 16. I remember going to a dance in the town with our cousin Jack. The dress I wore was one I had bought myself to attend a high school dance and that was in the 10th grade. I had bought the dress downtown at a store called “Robert Halls”—it was located in an alley and everything was on plain racks!”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “Jack’s sister Pat and I became pen-pals that year. She was my very first pen-pal. We also went to see Niagara Falls—I think that was the same trip. We all remember that we were supposed to be going to see the Statue of Liberty in New York. Dad got lost and wouldn’t ask for directions—we didn’t make it to New York City! Dad would never stop and ask for directions!”

Uncle Bill remembers… “Robert Halls! I recall the jingle! When the prices go up-up-up and the values go down-down-down…Robert Halls is the reason…I bought a red blazer one Christmas from Robert Halls. Everyone in our “gang” was getting a coat or a suit to wear to Midnight Mass that year…”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “Bills comment about the red blazer reminded me – Jim bought me my first suede jacket when he was in the Air Force and stationed in Germany. Everyone I knew had a suede jacket; it was the ‘in’ thing along with poodle skirts. Jim sent the money for me to get one. Mom thought he had sent too much and gave me only half of the money. I still found a suede jacket. No matter how cold it was, you wore the suede jacket-even with two sweaters on underneath!”

Uncle Bill remembers… “Feast of St. Nicholas—sock full of nuts, oranges and hard candy. Feast of Three Kings—grandma’s doughnuts with a nickel inside! I think I only had 2 or 3 piano lessons—mom gave up on me quickly! Roller skating at Price Hill Roller rink…Ice skating on the lakes behind the house in North College Hill. Biff’s coercion to build tree houses, underground camps, a rocket ship! I suppose the construction crews knew we were taking off with their wood and nails…ran out of camp building supplies when the housing development was completed! Summer passes to NCH swimming pool; sock hops on Friday nights. Everybody brought their 45 records. You’d mark yours with nail polish—no magic markers back then!”

Aunt Becky remembers… “When Halloween rolled around, we went out to “trick or treat” two nights; October 30th was known as “penny night”. We went from door to door begging pennies. When we got tired of this we headed to Grandma’s for our treats. It was always a tradition in our family to make doughnuts on Halloween eve. Grandma made deep fried yeast doughnuts—but she always added her own special treat—money! Grandma put pennies or a nickel or even a dime into her doughnuts. Grandma also made these special doughnuts on the Feast of the Three Kings in January.”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “Halloween! Didn’t we all love it? It went well with the Schmidt belief that anything free had to be good. I always thought that concept stemmed from mom but now I think it was really Grandma Schmidt. Every time Grandma took me with her downtown to pay her insurance, we picked up free booklets at Metropolitan. Then we’d head for the Juice Bar to get a free sample of juice.”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “Going downtown by myself by the time I was 9 or 10 years old. Mom had a coat in layaway at Lerner’s. She’d send me with a $1.00 to make her coat payment. I learned my way around downtown by visiting all the dime stores. By the time I was 12, I was taking both of my little brothers Christmas shopping the day before Christmas. We’d also visit all the department store Santas to get a free peppermint stick. We’d trek on over to Garfield Park to see the living nativity and afterwards, we’d go to Grandma’s to wait for Dad to come and get us. By the time we got home, Santa Claus had visited and we always just missed him! We wrapped our presents in recycled gift wrap that we “ironed” to get the wrinkles out!”

Aunt Becky remembers… “Mom’s kidney stew! I loved the stew but hated to smell it cooking, and I make my liver and onions just the way she taught me. I soak the liver in vinegar water overnight, then dredge it in flour and brown it in hot bacon grease, turning only once. Then I cover it with sliced onions and add water to cover, put the lid on the skillet and let it simmer until the liver is done. NO RED! I like to serve it with boiled potatoes and baby peas. Kidney stew was always served with noodles and peas, also. Mom also liked to soak the kidneys overnight in vinegar water. I was always leery of Mom’s hamburgers because they looked so much like breaded brains. YUCK! One time I saw Martha Stewart showing how to cook and eat the marrow fat. Dad loved the marrow on crackers. Those bones were free at one time. Not any more!..”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “Mom’s hasenpfeffer! I hated it. It wasn’t the rabbit (which dad brought home from hunting—it was the sickly sweet and sour smell of the rabbit cooking and knowing I was going to have to eat it. One time the family was at mom’s friend Vera’s for dinner. They told me we were having fried chicken and I loved it. After we were finished eating, they all shouted “YOU JUST ATE RABBIT!” I’ve been trying to tell them all for years – it wasn’t the rabbit. It was the way Mom cooked it! And smelling it cooking!. Regardless, I never buy rabbit…”

Aunt Becky remembers… “I learned a lot of dances from my mother. She wanted to be a professional dancer. I just loved to dance. Don’t we all? Mom taught me to Charleston, Foxtrot, two-step, Varsity drag, and Camel Walk. The Camel Walk has returned twice as other dances, one as a circle dance called ‘The Bird Land’ and again as a line dance called ‘The Stroll’. In the 40s, 50s, and 60s, the always had dances someplace on Saturday nights. We called them ‘Drink & Drowns’. For $5 a person you got live music, beer, pop, potato chips, and pretzels. The dances we did were the Bunny Hop, Huckle Buck, Hokey Pokey, Mexican Hat Dance, Bird Lane, Mashed Potato, Swim, Stroll, Jitter Bug, Camel Walk, and Cha Cha. Today the young people are learning the Swing Dances. We called the dances Jitter Bug and the music was Swing. One dance we did at the skating rink was the Shottish. At the end of every dance the band played “GOOD NIGHT SWEETHEART”.

Aunt Sandy remembers…. “Blowing bubbles with grandpa’s pipes (how did we get away with that?)…running down to the corner where the street car line ended, to meet grandpa coming home from work. I’d carry his black lunchbox…Going with grandma and grandpa to their “lodge” down near Findlay market. On our way home (by streetcar!) we’d get White Castle hamburgers on the corner in Camp Washington where we transferred cars…I think the hamburgers were 5 cents each…Playing mom’s 78 rpm records while I dusted the furniture on Saturday morning…taking scrambled egg sandwiches wrapped in wax paper to school for lunch. The wax paper would sort of melt into the sandwich by lunch time. (that must have been on days when grandma wasn’t home!)…Sitting on the 2nd floor porch waiting for the ice cream man on summer nights…the bubble lights on Grandma Schmidt’s Christmas tree. No one else had them!”

Aunt Becky remembers…“Sitting on Grandma’s second floor porch in the summer and listening to the radio. Monday night was Baby Snooks, Fibber McGee & Molly. Saturday morning was Let’s Pretend and My Little Margie. Friday night was Suspense, Inner Sanctum, and The SHADOW! Grandma made snow cones for us. She placed ice cubes in a dish towel and with a hammer, she smashed the ice; then she put the ice into a mug and topped it off with homemade jam or jelly…”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “Sunday passes! Grandma would get a pass for 25 cents and if you were the lucky grandchild to be with her at the time, you would ride all over town, sometimes up to the Cincinnati Zoo. Grandma and Grandpa liked to get the Sunday passes and attend the German Mass at St. Joseph’s. We all learned our way around town on those Sunday passes…” Aunt Becky recalls those were her first experiences visiting the Art Museum and Taft Museum.

Aunt Becky remembers… “Grandma had us take turns going to town with her. It was GREAT FUN and the only place to shop back then. No malls! All the department stores were downtown. The public toilets were under Fountain Square and you had to pay 5 cents to use them, so grandma had me crawl under the door and unlock it so she could get in and go. The first thing we did when we got off the bus at Government Square was to go right to the Orange Juice Bar where you could get a free sample—and the last thing we did before getting back on the bus was return to the Juice bar for another free sample. FREE was good. You could have them mix your juices; my favorite was pineapple with grape. We would go pay the gas and electric bill, then the telephone bill, and then go to the Insurance Company where they had all these little free booklets. We’d get one of each. Some times we went and bought lunchmeat and rye salt bread and went to the Albee Theatre. It was also on Fountain Square. Grandma loved the movies!”

Aunt Becky remembers… “Grandma and Grandpa belonged to a German club in Over the Rhine. They held Bingo at St. Joseph’s Church and there were dances. We kids got to sell baskets of chips and pretzels for 5 cents each bag. And we got five cents to keep for ourselves for every bag we sold. The women played their card games and the men played theirs. It was a day-long event. When it was dark they had the dances. By then all of us kids were cuddled up on chairs fast asleep. We still had to walk to the street car and after the ride home we had to walk up Baltimore Avenue to the house. They did not have bus service until English Woods opened during the war years. Aunt Rainy lived in English Woods with Renee and Pete. Uncle Vince was in the service. So were Uncle Hans, Uncle George and Uncle Cal. Dad was exempt because he had 3 children and was doing war work at Formica. Aunt Dolly also worked at Formica. Everyone was doing their part….”

We remember… “The Windmill Restaurant. It was a special treat to go there with Grandma, just the two of you. It was a cafeteria style restaurant and you could choose your own food! What a thrill! Choosing your own food!”

We remember… “Tinkertoys…Erector Sets…Lincoln Logs…Penny Candy…5 cent packs of baseball cards…Green stamps…Telephone numbers with a prefix (ours was Kirby 8846)…old time radio programs (Baby Snooks, Fibber McGee & Molly, Charlie McCarthy)…walking every where! No one ever drove you places….Grandma’s oilcloth shopping bags that she’d fill with fruit and vegetables at Findlay Market—and the lucky child who went shopping with her got to help carry those bags on the street car or bus!”

We remember… “Playing cards with grandma. One of the first games we learned was Michigan Poker. Another favorite game was Skit Scat. We learned about money and how to make change. Aunt Becky recalls learning to count by the time she was three—except, after 9, 10—it was Jack, Queen, King, Ace! Grandma supplied the money and if we won, we got to keep it. On holidays, all the adults played cards. Grandma usually cooked the Christmas turkey. Uncle Al gave us each a quarter and all the children went to the movies. For 25 cents, you had admission and enough money for candy or popcorn. (We all thought Uncle Al must be rich to do this!) We always got Boston Baked Beans or JuJuBees because you got the most for your money that way. We went to the Carl Street movie theatre and after that closed down, to the Queen Ann or West Hills Theatre. If the movie was good, we stayed to see it again. It didn’t occur to any of us that the adults were happy to get all of us out from underfoot so they could play cards all afternoon!”

We remember… “Christmas Eve was the biggest holiday in our family. Mom did everything on Christmas Eve day. The living room door was locked all day long. Mom waited until December 24th to buy a tree because by then they were half-price. Trees cost a whopping $1.00 back then but she could get one for 50 cents by waiting. Mom always tried to have Santa bring us what we had asked for. Our dolls disappeared before Christmas and reappeared on Christmas Eve with new outfits. We’d be at Grandma’s house waiting, on Christmas Eve, until Dad came to get us. We always celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve. Silent Night would be playing on the record player. The tree would be trimmed with handmade ornaments we made in school over the years. One year, Uncle Biff gave Dad a little wax Santa boot filled with peppermints. All the adults laughed over that boot! Biff was offended and went upstairs to cry. All the adults had to go upstairs and convince him that they really liked the little wax Santa boot and they’d only laughed because they liked it…”

Aunt Becky remembers… “There was no such thing as ‘Snowdays’! No matter how deep the snow or how cold the wind, we all walked to and from school (sometimes walking backwards to keep the wind out of your face). Some days the school did not have heat and we had to keep our coats and leggings on to stay warm. By mid-afternoon the heat was on again and we could remove our coats but we kept the leggings on. (These were woolen pants that came with your winter coat). Girls never wore slacks or pants except for those leggings (which itched). The girls all had winter hats with a nice long scarf attached to wrap around your neck. Grandma crocheted these for us…”

Aunt Becky remembers… “Our house on Sutter Street was close to the railroad tracks. Often, men and sometimes women would knock on the back door and ask for a bite to eat. Most often, mom gave them a bowl of cereal. They would sit on the back steps and eat their fill.”

Aunt Becky remembers… “Wash Boards! Mom did not have an automatic washing machine. She got her first clothes dryer in 1954 when Tina (first grandchild) was a baby. It was my job to scrub the socks. I’d slip my hand inside the sock and soap it up with the lye soap. Then I rubbed my hand over the wash board to clean the sock. This was also done on collars and cuffs of shirts.”

Aunt Sandy remembers…”Playing restaurant with my younger brothers! Mom usually worked—I think she was the only mother on our street who had an outside job. I’d make lunch for Biff and Bill—there were always little leftovers in the refrigerator (mom never threw out anything—even if it was only a teaspoonful of creamed peas!) I’d make up a menu for my brothers and they could “order” whatever they wanted for lunch. I learned to bake with mom’s one and only cookbook, an Ida Bailey Allen Service cookbook. My brothers sat out on the back step and ate up all the mistakes. They never cared if the cookies were under baked or burnt! I think I was also the only girl on our street with a free reign in the kitchen. I baked a lot of cookies..”.

Aunt Sandy remembers…”Playing school. We had a shed in the back yard on Sutter Street. It was our “school”, “playhouse” and “The 3-star store” (Carol, Patty & I made things out of yarn, pipe cleaners, macaroni, paper mache, and acorns—which we sold to the neighborhood children). Our “school” was an ongoing summer activity which we all took seriously. We even gave our students (my brothers, Patty’s brothers, and the other younger neighborhood children) homework to do and they’d better have a written excuse from their mother if they didn’t bring in their homework the next day!”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “Having shows. These were held in our backyard, where we could hang blankets and curtains from the swing set. In one of these shows, I wore Becky’s 8th grade graduation dress and my Easter hat to sing “Dear Hearts and Gentle People”. In another show, we performed Red Riding Hood. I was supposed to be the wood chopper who saves Red Riding Hood—but had gone into the house for something and forgot all about my part. Jim was the wolf – he had no other choice but to kill Red Riding Hood and eat her, since no one came to rescue her. We had such a lot of fun doing these shows. We sold popcorn and Kool Aid. One of my clearest memories is mom teaching us the words to “Red River Valley” so we could sing it in our show. Years later, Renee sent me a letter mom had sent to her mother, Aunt Rainy. Aunt Rainy wrote about their putting on shows when they were children….”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “Playing in the cemetery next to Grandma’s house. These were actually just large grassy grounds on a hillside—the graves were up out of sight, beyond a long switchback driveway. We’d roll down the hillsides or chase lightning bugs, or play hide and seek – until “Old Man Reinhart” (the custodian) came charging down the driveway yelling at us. Then we all ran in terror!”

Aunt Becky remembers…“Tin Panning a wedding! We could hardly contain our excitement when there was a wedding in the neighborhood. We patiently sat on the front steps to wait for the wedding party to return from church. When they arrived back at the bride’s house, we gathered up pots and pans and big spoons—anything that would make a lot of noise. We then all stood in front of the bride’s home and beat the dickens out of mom’s pots and pans. We kept up the racket until the bride and groom appeared and tossed us money and candy. This ritual was to bring the newlyweds good luck and many children. After we had chased away all the evil spirits, we headed to the corner store for our favorite candy bar. Mine was, and still is “French Chews”. Even when I was young, “Tin Panning the wedding” was fading, just like tying tin cans on the back of the wedding car and throwing rice for good luck has faded away—now they toss birdseed!”

Aunt Becky remembers… “Curtain stretchers! When it was time for mom to wash the curtains in the summer, she had these large wooden frames with nails all around the edges. First she set the frames to the size of the curtains. These frames had numbers written on the outside. After the curtains were washed and heavily starched, she would begin the stretching by hooking the corners and centers over the nails. Then I had to pull the curtains over the nails, trying to keep the ruffles even. More than once I stuck my finger onto these sharp nails. Sometimes we had to re-wet the curtains, especially if it was a windy day and they were drying out too fast. The frames held several pairs of curtains. Once dried, the curtains were so stiff they could stand up on their own. Once dry the curtains had to be re-hung on the windows. Mom inserted a knife into the curtain rod so as not to snag the lace on the ends of the rods. Vinegar and water was used to clean the windows. We did not have stored-bought window cleaner. When it was time to clean the Venetian blinds, they were taken down and laid on top of the kitchen table. Then slat by slat, I had to wash and rinse every one. This job was very time consuming. I dreaded this chore with a passion. Until we purchased our present home and it came furnished with Venetian blinds, I refused to have them in my home”.

Aunt Becky remembers … “We were all very competitive. Once our mother entered the games at Coney Island on Findlay Market day. She won the three-leg race and got a silver tray. When she was younger she entered a dance contest at Camp Washington Summer dances. During the 20s and 30s, the local swimming pool was drained and they held dances in them at night. I believe this is how my mother met my father. My father and his pal, Vince Laehr, took dance lessons from Author Murray so they could date my mother and her young sister (Aunt Rainey). My dad called my mom “Beck”, short for Beckman. When I was born, my dad called me “Lil’ Beck” and it stuck. This is how I got my nickname. My given name is Barbara; I was the 4th Barbara on my mother’s side of the family. She had a great Aunt Barb, her mother’s name was Barbara; mom’s middle name was Barbara and I was named Barbara. And my great-great grandmother on my father’s side was also named Barbara. I passed this tradition on by naming my second daughter Barbara.”

Aunt Sandy remembers…“The house on Sutter Street. It was my parents first home of their own. Jim was given the responsibility of walking Biff and me to the new house. As we reached the stop of the steps that led to Sutter Street, a big moving van truck was parked in front of the house. Biff and Bill setting fire to the kitchen table. The hole Dad cut into the pantry floor, so that mom could drop the laundry into it, where it fell into a cupboard in the basement, near the washer and dryer. (One time we were playing hide & seek in the house and Biff got stuck in that hole). Renee and I taking turns, on Fridays after school, going to either her house or mine & calling home to ask if I/she could spend the night. (Usually, the answer was no, but we were never discouraged). There was a mud cellar in our basement—two finished off basement rooms and this one room that was filled with rock-hard mud. My brothers liked to play cars in the mud cellar. One time Patty and Carol & I were playing “club” in the basement; I went upstairs to answer the phone and they came barreling up after me, convinced that a “dead body” was in the mud cellar. I went to check – and found a pair of Dad’s wading boots hanging from the rafters. We laughed over that for many years.”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “Our Dogs! Lady, and Mike, Pepper, Nipper, and Scrappy. Mike was the best—he was a skinny black lab; we taught him tricks like jumping over the Back family’s fence that bordered the alley. Monopoly games on rainy summer days. Hanging Dad’s stockings (they were the biggest) on the pantry door, on the Feast of St. Nicholas. We’d get a tangerine and some hard candy and maybe a little toy…. Sitting around the kitchen table, doing our homework, and listening to radio shows (Mr. & Mrs. North, My Friend Irma, The Lone Ranger, Lights Out, Inner Sanctum, The Cisco Kid, the Aldrich Family, Amos and Andy, the Shadow, Fibber McGee and Molly, Baby Snooks, The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Burns & Allen, the Life of Riley, Suspense…one time I entered a contest sponsored by Suspense (twenty five words or less why you liked Suspense…and I won a radio, which I gave to mom…come to think of it, that was the first time I got something for my writing…”

Aunt Sandy remembers… “Our camp (Wee home) on the White Water River. How I hated it – until my mother threw a surprise 15th birthday party for me and we all went down to the camp for the day, and roasted weenies! (It was not so bad when my brothers and I rode our bikes all over the area, sometimes as far as Harrison, Indiana). We played endless games of 500 Rum to pass the time away. I learned to fish with Uncle Cal. On the way down and the way back, Dad would stop at United Dairy Farmers and we’d get an ice cream cone. You could get two dips of ice cream for a nickel – but three dips if you chose a sherbet. Guess what we usually chose?”

Aunt Sandy remembers….St. Francis Seminary! My brother Jim was going to be a priest and entered the seminary after 8th grade graduation. Once a month, everyone in the entire family went to visit him. We children enjoyed the huge grounds and going around collecting pine cones and acorns. Jim won’t tell this story so I will: he never really intended to be a priest. He was constantly falling asleep in class at St. Leo’s (no doubt from being up so late setting up pins at St. Bonnie’s). Sister threatened to hold him back. He told her ‘Gee, that’s too bad—I was planning to go into the priesthood’. Ergo, he graduated—but was committed to entering St. Francis’. Funny thing was, when he came home the following summer for vacation, he somehow lost his vocation…and entered Elder High School for his Sophomore year….”

Aunt Sandy remembers…I was the one in the middle. Becky and Jim were only 21 months apart and had each other. Biff and Bill, although 3 years apart, had each other to play cowboys and Indians and make little towns in the dirt in the back yard or the mud cellar. Not until years later did my relationship with my older sister develop (she always seemed so much older to me, like a grown-up) and it wasn’t until I became a teenager that Jim & I began hanging around with the same crowd and double-dating. My younger brothers always seemed like my responsibility, not people I shared my life with. But I had my two childhood friends, Carol Sue and Patty. Patty’s family moved into the house across the street from us on Sutter when I was about 7. I immediately volunteered to take Patty to school—since they were Catholic, like us, and “I knew the way”. Carol Sue was the youngest of three in her family, and a year younger than me. We three little girls were almost inseparable, growing up, except when we got mad at each other and vowed never to speak to one another again as long as we lived. When we were friends we constantly gave one another presents and when we became enemies we demanded all of our gifts be returned. My copy of “Little Women” went back and forth numerous times over the years.

Patty was seldom allowed the freedom to do the things Carol and I could do, such as riding our bikes all over the various neighborhoods—North Fairmount and South Fairmount, as far as Northside, and all the way to the end of Baltimore Avenue where it met up with West Fork road. Carol recalls that one time we were on our bikes, almost at the end of Baltimore where it goes downhill, when my bike encountered gravel and I went into a spin and flew off the bike just as a truck came barreling around the corner. I vaguely remember the fall and scraped knees but must have blocked the approaching truck out of my mind. Where Baltimore met West Fork, there was a Dairy Queen, Putz’s, where everybody went on summer nights to get an ice cream cone. Occasionally, Carol’s father drove us there for ice cream. I don’t think Patty’s father, Mr. Back, drove, and without a question, my father would never have driven three girls to Putz’s to get ice cream.

We learned the boundaries of our neighborhoods, riding our bikes. Mine was an old bicycle that had belonged to my mother and weighed a ton. It was a major accomplishment to grab hold of the bike and run, fast, up the steps to our house on Sutter Street (before you could lose your momentum).

When not riding or bikes, or roller skating, we played dress-ups. The old ladies on our street donated discarded dresses and lace curtains, their old shoes and purses to the cause. We’d dress up and parade up and down the street. When not doing that, we might be making doll clothes; we each had a box of discarded scraps of fabric given to us by our mothers and the neighbor ladies (primarily Mrs. Babel and Mrs. Silz. Their children were grown up and moved away, but they were infinitely patient and kind to the three of us, buying our four o’ clock seeds for a nickel or letting us run to the corner grocery store for them). Making doll clothes was a rainy-day affair, when there was nothing better to do. Another rainy day affair was Monopoly, which we magnanimously allowed our younger brothers to play with us. If we were not playing dress-ups or Monopoly or making doll clothes, we might be playing school (using the shed in my back yard for a school house) or we’d make things out of macaroni and acorns, to sell in our “Three Star Store” (we had a star-shaped rubber stamp, which is how the “store” got its name). When not doing any of these things, we might be sitting on Mrs. Babel’s porch swing, singing harmony (You are My Sunshine) and trying to put Patty’s little brother Bobby to sleep for a nap.

When we got a little older, I became interested in cooking and—since my mother allowed me free reign of the kitchen—we made brownies and cookies and sometimes got into heated debates over the best way to make icing. My young brothers sat on the back steps and ate up the mistakes. And, as we got older, we began double-dating.

My family moved away from Sutter Street first, to our new home in North College Hill. Then Carol Sue’s family moved to Mt. Healthy. Patty’s family was the last to leave Sutter Street. We three married and had children (four for me, three for Patty and four for Carol). I moved to California. Things changed…but not the friendship of three little girls.

Aunt Becky remembers… “It was during the mid 70s that I made the decision to return to school. I enrolled in art classes at the University of Cincinnati, DAA College. I was in good company. Lois Walsh, my best friend and sister in law was also attending classes, and so was my FAVORITE aunt, Dolly (Evelyn Schmidt). Aunt Dolly was interested in painting and drawing. I wanted to try it all. I began with a ceramic class; free form and potter’s wheel. One of the last classes I took was in 1984, ‘Foundry Sculpture’ class. I had a BLAST. Attending classes with kids who were 20 years younger than I was very enlightening. They were all very nice to me. I found that age has no barriers when you are interested in the same things. Some times I don’t think they took me serious. My brother Jim was also attending evening classes at this time. I suppose we were all late bloomers!

Christmas of 1978 I requested flying lessons. I was 42 years old and had a 2-year old grand daughter (Trisha). My youngest child was now 14 years old (Jimmy). And I felt like life was passing me by. The year Trisha was born, I went out and bought myself an organ and took organ lessons. Since I knew how to read music, it was just a matter of learning how to play bass with my feet. This would help me with flying. You steer the plane with your feet by stepping on the rudder pedals. If I was ever going to learn how to fly, the time was NOW!

I had always dreamed of flying. NOT in an airplane – I would float above the earth looking down. In my dreams I would take a running jump and leap off the ground and begin flying. I still have these dreams.

I soloed on March 6, 1979, and passed my exam on December 21, 1979. Helen York was my instructor. We had ONE hair raising experience!

One day, while we were practicing power on stalls, I froze when the plane stalled and went into a dive. Let me explain what a power on stall is. With full power you pull back on the yoke until the nose of the plane is pointing straight up. What happens is the plane stops flying because the wings can no longer provide lift. When this happened, the plane nodded over and went into a dive. You MUST push the yoke forward and get the plane to start flying in the direction of the fall. I had a death grip on the yoke and would not let go until I saw the trees coming up to meet us! Usually Helen would say ‘My Plane’ and I would let go of the yoke and she’d take over. She did not say this on that day. I panicked and let go of the yoke and she took over the plane. Helen recovered like the ace pilot she is and once we had a safe altitude, she told me to take the plane home. (Harrison Air Park). She told me later it was a good thing we were flying the aerobat because any other plane would have had the wings ripped off.

I took several other lessons with commercial pilots and learned more about stall recovery. Helen would go on to become a commercial pilot for Comair…”

–Sandra Lee Schmidt Smith

REFLECTIONS – BECOMING A VOLUNTEER

Let me explain, briefly, about my Reflections. In the 1970s when all four of my sons were finally in school and the youngest entered first grade, I was asked to be the editor of the Beachy Banner. Our school, Beachy Avenue Elementary in Arleta, needed someone to type up the monthly newsletter on these long inky ditto masters. The office secretaries in turn ran the copies off to be distributed to all the students to take home to their parents–announcements of PTA meetings and special events. After an issue or two (which I considered dry and maybe just a tad boring, I began writing my own column and titled it “Reflections”. I was also a volunteer at the school and began to find inspiration everywhere I turned. I was really unknown at my sons’ school up to this point–I typed insurance policies at home in my spare time and my husband had his own business which also demanded a lot of my time. But after I began writing “Reflections”, mothers would come up to me at the school, to tell me how much they enjoyed what I was writing. I had found a niche for my writing and it was a most rewarding period in my life, which lasted until we moved to Florida. The following is one of the first of the “Reflections”:

REFLECTIONS

BECOMING A VOLUNTEER

(February 1976 issue of the Beachy Banner)

A hazy California sun shines brightly on the asphalt in the school yard; we are very much like dozens of other elementary schools in Southern California, yet we are unique.

These children are ours alone.

I had forgotten what going-to-school was like, but when I enter the first grade classroom, old memories are stirred..the faint odor of chalk dust, the smell of books and library paste, the sight of blackboard and desks. Yet it is different. It bears little resemblance to the classrooms of my youth; it is cheerier, less structured. There is a rug area and two live-in guinea pigs receive a great deal of attention. Rows of desks have given way to pint-size tables and chairs; walls are happily decorated with drawings and murals.

I know many of these children. My son went to kindergarten with most of them. Some of the children display, with an air of superiority, their knowledge of me; they greet me; they inform the others that I am Kelly’s mother.

The teacher thanks me for coming. I am going to be a volunteer this year. I will spend a little of my time, daily, working in the classroom. Despite the face lift that classrooms have undergone, I note with comfort that the teacher looks and talks the way teachers looked and talked when I was a child. Perhaps some things never change!

Another mother is in the classroom; we are there to help the teacher and her Aide with a math class. We are given instructions, which we promptly forget. Assignments are given out. For an hour we work frantically with more than thirty children. A raised hand means that a child needs help. We dart in and out of a wave of raised hands.

But, a sense of bafflement gradually gives way to a feeling of participation. We are contributing to the education of the citizens of tomorrow. We are in awe of the teacher and her career. There are four of us helping these children during this one, brief, period.

What happens in the classrooms where there are no Aides? No volunteers? What does the teacher do? We don’t know.

After an hour, the teacher thanks us gratefully. We can leave.

Exhausted, we go home.

We have had a morning to think about! **