Monday, October 29th 2007
Where Angels Fear To Tread
;)
I can’t say that I remember too much from my 5th birthday, but I can recall that cake and the basement of the house that sheltered me for my first 12 years.
Note the shag carpet. I remember that carpet like it was yesterday. I adore shag, I have a large shag area rug in my own house and if I had the room I would have more of them. I also remember the smell of the carpet. We had a poodle named Charlie for a very long time that preferred the texture of the carpet to the elements of the outdoors. Perhaps it was his own spiteful behavior; I think he knew that my Dad didn’t care for him too much. There were always small dried turds embedded in the fibers that I guess ma missed when cleaning up the last delivery. Nobody ever seemed to mind or if they did they didn’t vocalize it to us. We always had birthdays, football parties, holidays and general get-togethers in that basement and we always sat there, on the floor among the soiled shag, beer, cake or present in hand unaware of the matter beneath our feet and knees.
Now the cake, my mother was famous for this cake as it became the bona fide birthday cake for both my brother and I for a very long time. It was a zucchini cake with chocolate Cool Whip as the frosting. We were definitely Midwest and boy did we love this cake. My father grew the squash in the garden as did my uncles so there was always plenty of it around. That was probably how the cake came to be, lots of squash and nowhere to put it. I remember the labor involved. The zukes had to be grated and the pulp pressed to release the water inside the stringy flesh. It was hard to imagine watching ma elbow deep in zucchini guts that it would be transformed into a delectable chocolate cake that would be chock full of Hershey’s chocolate chips and topped with that light, airy cocoa topping that complimented the richness of the cake better than anything I have yet to taste.
Later in life I realized that that zucchini did more than just free up fridge space it gave the cake lasting moisture that kept it perfect for days long after the party. I also came to find that it benefited from a couple days in the fridge after it had time to sit much like a stew would be.
I cannot remember the last time I had the cake. I should’ve asked for it to be FedExed to California for my 30th. Oh well, there is always next year.
That’s so weird because I remember my mom making zucchini bread all the time when I was a kid. It must be some kind of common denominator among suburban housewives everywhere. My parents would grow the zucchini in our garden, make it into this bread that had like a pound of butter and sugar in it, and then give it to our relatives as gifts. That shit was slammin’ too! I also remember that we lived next to the woods and there was this groundhog that came and ate the zucchini every year. So my dad asked me if I would help him find its den. We did and then he poured a gallon of gasoline down in it and lit it on fire. Looking back, I think maybe that was a bit extreme.
What a fine lesson for an impressionable youth! And I thought I had it bad going to the gun range with my dad.
PlanetT, my mom would have had your dad for breakfast, complete with grilled zucchini as a side dish.
Am I glad the worst thing my dad ever did was telling me the plot of Psycho as a bedtime story. Then again, I shouldn’t have asked.
Yeah, even though I couldn’t have been older than 9 or 10, I remember thinking, “This is totally fucked up.” The gun range – now that’s where real men are made! My dad tried to make me shoot clay pigeons with him and his buddy one time. I really sucked at it. I found the experience so wholly embarrassing and emasculating that I vowed never to shoot a gun again. I much preferred to sit there and scowl at them while I listened to my Paula Abdul tapes.