Leaving Home by Keillor Garrison

Author:Keillor Garrison
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2009-12-25T20:00:00+00:00

"I don't know if I would be up to it. . . .",

"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth

.me. Phillipians 4:13. "

She practiced for two weeks and baked about forty cakes,

most of them barely edible. She was experimenting with

strange ingredients, like maple syrup and peanut butter,

marshmallows, cherry bits. "You can't just stand up in

front of a- crowd and bake an ordinary chocolate cake," she

said, but we convinced her that hers was good enough. She

baked two of them that Friday, both champs. On the big

Saturday she packed her ingredients, cake pans, mixer, and

utensils in a cardboard box and covered it with a cloth,

and they drove to the Cities, stopping on account of car

trouble in Anoka -and transferring from the Dodge to the

bust The bake-off was -at three o'clock.

They arrived at two-thirty. She had assumed the bakeoff was

in the Home Activities building and then she discovered it

was here at the grandstand. Peter Pan Flour had gone all

out. The bake-off was part of. the afternoon grandstand

program, which also included high-wire acts, a big band

playing Glenn Miller tunes, and Siberian tigers jumping

through hoops of fire. She and twelve other women would

stand on stage and bake cakes, and while the cakes were in

the oven, Joey Chitwood's Thrill Show would perform

daredevil stunts on the dirt track, and Olson Younger the

newspaper columnist would, judge the contest and award the

prize. We helped Aunt Myrna to the stage. She was weak and

moist. "Good luck," we said.

I stand here and look 'up at the grandstand and can see how

nervous she must've been. I remember sitting up there in

the forty-ninth row, under the pavilion, looking down at my

tiny aunt in the green dress to the left of the saxophones

while Joey Chitwood's Thrill Show drivers did flips and

rolls, roaring around in white Fords. She stood

at a long table whipping mix in a silver bowl, my aunt

Myrna making a cake. She was mine, my relative, and I was

so proud.

And then the cakes came out of the oven., The State Fair

orchestra put down their newspapers and picked up. their

horns and played something from opera, and the radio-

announcer emcee said that now the moment had come, and

Olson Younger pranced around. He wore a green suit and

orange tie and he waved to us with both hands. It was his

moment of glory, and he sashayed from one entrant to the

next, kissing her, rolling his eyes, and tasting her cake.

When he tasted Myrna's cake, she shrank back from his

embrace. She said a few words to him and I knew she was

saying, "I don't know. I just can't seem to make em as rich

as I used to-this isn't very good at all. It's gummy." It

was the greatest chocolate cake in the world but he

believed her. So she came in tenth.

A woman in white pedal pushers won because, Younger said,

her cake was richer and moister. He had a hard time getting

the words out. You could see the grease stains, from her

cake, beads of grease glittered in the sun. Uncle Earl

said, "That's not cake, that's pudding he gave a prize to.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.