From Kenny Miller's Kindle book
The Heart is Where the Angels Sing
"Go down and get the deer head" she ordered her second son seated at
the kitchen table.
"Awe Mom, you aren't going to put up that stupid deer head
again?" the boy pleaded.
"Get the Santa suit, too!" she ordered.
He hated to go down in that basement. There we're all kinds of
threats down there. There were shelves of old canned goods the family
would probably never eat. Occasionally, he spotted a mouse or lager.
And of course, give a cricket a quarter of an inch around an old
warped wooden basement window and a tribe of the damn things would
soon be jumping around and making their knee scratching noises.
The head was a magnificent buck with a five-point rack and was
no doubt the bragging prize of some hunter of years gone by. The
taxidermist mounted the prize deer's head with a slight proud
uplifted turn to the right.
No doubt he envisioned his handsome work would be prominently
displayed over the fireplace hearth of somewell-to-do hunter. Little
did he know it would be the seasonal prize decoration of a Christmas
loving housewife.
"Did you get the Santa suit?" she asked her young son as he
struggled through the basement door with the musty old deer head.
“Awe Mom, you aren't going to do the Santa bit are your?" he
pleaded again.
She didn't steal the mount from someone's mantle, she discovered
him on top of the beer cooler in the Chief Bar, a local business her
husband once owned. She also discovered an intriguing piece of
electronics compliments of a liquor company. The flashing light
display was designed to catch the attention of the bar patrons and
suggest they buy a bottle of cordials, a line of after dinner sipping
liqueurs made from everything from apricots to raspberries.
This wife saw instant possibilities in the flashing lights,
particularly the large blinking red one in the center of the
cardboard display. Take one moth-eaten deer head and tape a red
blinking display light on the old deer's nose and you have nothing
less than "Rudolph the red nosed reindeer...." hanging on the front
porch of the small town Christmas wonderland house.
“Listen,” she said as she and her son stood on the front porch
ready to put up the Christmas display. “Can you hear the wind?”
“What wind, Mom?”
“Listen to the Rossiter pines,” she said as she pointed across
the street at the tall pines, which dominated the huge front lawn of
the Rossiter house. “The trees will tell you when the snow is
coming.”
“Is it going to snow?” the boy asked as he looked at the big
pines and listened to the wind gusts as they whistled through the big
trees.
“It will snow soon,” she said. “Let’s get the old boy up and
blinking.When we’re finished with this, we can start on the cookies.”
The boy smiled at his mom now standing on a folding chair with
the deer head over her shoulder. She soon found the big nail and slid
the mount on it. Next, she taped the red bulb to his nose. “OK,
honey,” she said to her son, “plug him in.”
He plugged the cord into the outside electrical socket and the
red nose started to flash.
“There,” she said. “It’s Christmas.”
She had become a famous cookie maker in this small town. She
made them to share them so her cookie trays were welcome holiday
gifts. There were always her seasonal usuals. Divinity, a wonderful
white type of fudge. Fudge with walnuts both light and dark
chocolate. Mice, a little licorice flavored crunchy cookie about the
size of diet bread stick cut into half-inch chunks and date bars covered
with powdered sugar. She also made a special bar made of chocolate chips,
coconut, and dates baked into a light brown crust of brown sugar.
The favorite of the complaining, but helping deer head-hanging
son was her sugar cookies. She had every cookie cutter ever known to
K-Mart, Sears, or any other store.
When she finished making the greatmound of sugar cookie dough,
she took her prize rolling pin, carefully dusted it with flour, and rolled
the now floured dough out on her large flour covered, only-for-cookie-cutting,
heavy cloth.
Once perfectly rolled and perfectly floured, she stepped cautiously
back a step of two and let her perfect little darlings sons take over
the cookie cutting and decorating process. The three boys attacked
the waiting dough like feeding sharks.
Another favorite, which required the help of her three little
angels, was a sugar cookie, about an inch and half in diameter, with
a special chocolate mint center. Only those mints would do and if it
meant driving the 120-mile round trip to Sioux City to find them, so
be it. It would not be Christmas in this house without these special
sugar cookies with the hard-to-find, chocolate mints baked inside.
The boys would gladly give up the deer head and the stuffed Santa but
it would never be Christmas unless they had a good fix of their mom's
famous mint cookies.
The dog jumped and barked as the young boys teased her with
rolled up pieces of cookie dough. Great cookie dough from the dog's
point of view but it was a little hard on the Scottie's system. She
especially liked a little hunk of warm fudge when one of the boys
stuck it on top of her very active little black nose. Her red tongue
went crazy and her head bounced wildly trying to reach the sweet
prize.
"Look what he did to my Christmas tree, Mom!" protested the
older son as the little guy decided his older brother's Christmas
tree looked good enough to eat without baking and promptly did so.
"He got more that I did!" hollered her second son as he tried to
push his bigger brother out of the way.
"Mom, make him give me the Santa cutter!" The little brother
wanted to eat his brother's cookie and have his the cutter, too.
"Someone go find Uncle Bill and tell him to come up here," she
ordered.
Her bachelor farmer brother had to be ordered or invited to the
house. He was the family historian and guardian of ancient family
tradition. Their roots went to the small town of Bergen, Norway and
her bachelor brother knew the traditions and the roads that lead back
to Norway.
She worried about her bachelor brother living on the old farm
place. Nothing had changed at that old farm since she lived there as
a girl. He wasn't a good housekeeper and she worried about what the
neighbors would think. He didn't give a damn about what people
thought of him as long as they were friendly enough to take time to
visit.
"What is that smelly stuff?" the middle son asked as he entered
the kitchen, climbed up on the footstool and looked at the boiling
pot on the stove.
"Lutefisk,” came the quick answer from his Uncle Bill as he sat
at the kitchen table patiently waiting to be served his part of the
traditional dinner. "It's what your ancestors had for Christmas
dinner."
"This ain't no fish Uncle Bill, it's square and hard as a rock,
and it ain't got no fins or head," he said with ten-year-old
authority.
"Why sure it is. It's just been cleaned, cut up, and dried in
the sun out by the sea,” his uncle carefully explained as he pushed
his Dekalb seed corn hat toward the back of his head. He reached into
the top part of his overalls for his can of Prince Velvet leaf
tobacco and a cigarette paper.
"Your ancestors were mostly fishermen and they had to dry the
fish because they didn't have ice boxes like we have today,” he
explained as he held out the cigarette paper in front of his chin and
carefully poured some strands of tobacco on the paper. The boy sat at
the table with his uncle, grabbed a cookie, and started to munch as
the family history lesson unfolded.
"When they got ready to eat the fish,” the uncle continued as he
licked one edge of the paper and formed a cigarette, "they soaked the
dried fish and then boiled it in great big pots to make it tender,
just like your mother is doing."
The boy listened and watched as his uncle pulled a wooden match
from one of the many pockets found on the top of a good set of
dress overalls, struck the match on a brass button, and lit the
loosely packed cigarette.
"In order to have fish for Christmas dinner, the fish would have
to be dried to preserve it so they could save it from the fall to the
winter," the wise uncle continued. "It had to stay out in the sun for
days to get that hard, and the dogs might come by, have a little
sniff, and pee on it."
"Mom!" the boy protested,"I ain't gonna eat any smelly fish
that has dog pee on it!"
By then, the beloved Uncle was laughing so hard that small
strands of lighted tobacco were being pushed out the business end of
the home-made cigarette like a Roman candle, landing and burning his
only good pair of overalls.
“What’s in the sack, Dad?” one of the boys asked as his father
came into the kitchen balancing a couple of brown grocery bags.
“You dad is going to make his Christmas concoction,” the boy’s
mother said as she knew it was time to give up her kitchen to her
husband.
He sat the two bags on the counter, took off his coat, and
started to unload his groceries. The first items to come out of the
brown bag were eggs--dozens of eggs. The next items to come out were
bags of powdered sugar. Then came pure creamery butter and finally a
few bottles of vanilla extract.
“What are you going to do with all of those eggs, Dad?” the boy
asked as he peered around his father.
“Crack them,” he said.
“Why? You making cookies or something?”
“No,” the father said as he opened the cardboard egg container.
“I am making a drink.”
“What kind of a drink, Dad?”
“An adult drink.”
“The one that makes Uncle Jelly’s nose all red?”
“Yup,” the father said as he chuckled. “That’s the one.”
He wasn't very concerned about the clean kitchen floor or the
spotless counter tops as he started to crack the eggs and pour the
egg back and forth between the two shells until most of the white was
in one half and the yoke was in the other half. Some of the whites
didn't make the pass and ended up on his shirt, the counter, or the
floor. The trusty dog helped clean the floor.
"Where's the nutmeg?" he asked his wife as he continued to trash
her kitchen and ransack her cupboards.
He dumped the whites into the sink and put the perfect, unbroken
yokes into a mixing bowl. After a dozen or so crack and sorts, he
added his next ingredient, a few cups of powdered sugar. A measuring
cup wasn't necessary. A coffee mug would do just fine. Last in was
the butter and vanilla extract. Then, using his wife's magic wooden
spoon, he blended all of the stuff into a smooth, yoke yellow batter.
Next, he filled the whistling tea pot with water and put it on the
stove. Out of another tall skinny brown paper sack came a quart of
Old Crow.
There was a special set of matching white mugs that she stored
on the top shelf of one of her cupboards. She knew what was going on
so the cups were washed and ready. As the teapot whistled away, he
carefully measured a tablespoon of the secret stuff into each of the
white mugs.
Next was a shot of Old Crow. He then filled the cup with boiling
water and stirred the magic mixture until it was nice and smooth.
When it passed his smell test, he dashed it with a little nutmeg.
Presto! His famous Tom and Jerry known from downtown Hartington clear
out to Bow Valley. A much different smell now filled the house. And,
before long, so did a bunch of much happier looking neighbors,
family, and friends. To bad the old deer couldn't have gotten a
snoot-full of his Tom and Jerry adult delight. His musty smelling fur
coat would have a much different smell and the snarling grin might
have turned into a Christmas smile.
The boy's father made a roaring fire in the fireplace so the
scene would be postcard perfect. He added a little color to the fire
with a wax disk he bought in Sioux City. When he tossed one of those
disks into the fire, the flames changed color. The jumping flames of
green red and gold fascinated his young sons.
At the other end of the room, was the family Christmas tree.
The tree had to be at least a six footer because that part of the
living room had a little alcove of windows, which faced the street.
It took some doing for the boy's dad but he managed to arrange
for Santa Claus to make an appearance on Christmas Eve. Santa
never missed an appearance in those believer years but he put off most of
the neighbors until later that night or sometime in the wee hours of
the morning.
This Santa was a little different from
the one the boys visited at the big Sioux City
department store a little earlier in the season.
He wasn't as fat. His voice seemed familiar
even though the boys couldn't quite place it.
And, this Santa didn't wear wire rim glasses.
Santa did have a bettermemory and knew
the boy's names without being told. The other
department store Santa had to ask. This Santa knew exactly what the boys
wanted and delivered right on the spot! He was in and out with a flash.
In the blink of the old deer's nose, the Christmas season was
over. The long Nebraska winter lay ahead with the mountains of snow
still to come, announced by the talking wind from the Rossiter trees.
New sled tracks cut through the fresh snow on the golf course
hills. New ice skates cut some clumsy curves across the rough ice on
Little Creek.
Bunnies ran from the bad shots from would-be young hunters
and their new BB guns. And the short-legged Scottie made
valiant attempts to make it out of the snowdrifts she was tossed into
by her young keepers.
The deer head went back to the basement shelf.And one boy wouldnever eat fish that didn’t come with fins.
The Heart us Where the Angels Sing now on sale for only 99 cents.
It's great read for those long winter nights ahead!
Merry Christmas!
No comments:
Post a Comment