Two old pomegranate trees graced the schoolyard. A roadside sign touting “Pomegranates!” snapped my thoughts back to Jenny and me at the Eunice Knight Saunders School in Hollywood. Reaching Interstate 5, the okra aroma of cotton fields was in my nose. The pale blobs had metamorphosed into beautiful amber-gold cakes.Īt Paso Robles I turned east. After a lifetime of waiting-15 minutes, I was frantic with the fragrance-we opened the oven door. To this creamy mixture we plopped in an egg, dropped in the orange mash, dumped in a cloud of flour and whiff of cinnamon, scattered in raisins, stirred feverishly, then daintily pushed blobs off a spoon onto the baking sheets we’d greased with the flats of our hands. Then in a deep bowl, we took turns using a stout spoon to beat and beat until the shortening and honey (sugar was rationed) turned fluffy. (I’d long been my mother’s dinner party sous chef, peeling vegetables, tossing salads, stirring stews, but baking wasn’t one of her passions and so I’d never baked.)įirst Jenny and I smooshed the fruit’s jellylike pulp with forks on a wooden board. These were the first cookies I ever made, and I was mesmerized putting the dough together. In their garden, small lanterns of persimmons shone from a leafless tree.
The robin’s egg blue stove made my mouth water, with its long legs, stacked ovens, shelf for raising dough, trash burner and two warmers.ĭriving home down Highway 101, signs heralded fruit stands with “Apples! Pears! Persimmons!,” and suddenly I was 9 years old in Jenny’s mother’s kitchen, baking cookies-persimmon cookies. childhood, in a small kitchen that reminded me of my best friend’s mother’s, were food ration books and coupons, Victory Garden seed packets, gas rationing stickers and cupboards crowded with boxes of spices, sacks of grain, dried beans, dehydrated soup mixes and Mason jars brimming with home-canned green beans, cherries and rhubarb. But when we reached “The Home Front: Santa Cruz County’s War Front During World War II,” I stood still. We ambled through the centuries, dioramas crowded with tools, furniture, clothing, journals and keepsakes of each period. She led me to her favorite exhibit, which featured the daily life of Santa Cruz County from earliest times.
After lunching downtown one day, Dinah and I walked over to the Museum of Art and History.
In late October, I drove up north to visit my daughter and her family in Santa Cruz.
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