Monday Morning

I seem to have a very small group of folks who read my blog.

I could almost name your names.

For those of you who might stay at my blog for any length of time, reading - you might begin to hear on my November playlist several Dolly Parton songs. I was roaming playlist.com on Saturday and I ended up listening to what the site had of Dolly's songs. I am a Dolly Parton fan. I love the way she sings. I am not a fan of country music, ...but...there are some country music artists whose voices I love for their passion and the twang and it fascinates me. Country music usually gets too doleful for me and woebegone - and hardknock stories - Hard for me to relate -

When I was a child there was a lot of music in our house - but it was classical, traditional church hymns, or show music or band music - I guess - it was whatever Daddy was working on with the choir, the glee club or the band - but then very early I know that Mary Ann's favorite 45 was a big band song - Pennsylvannia 65000 - she loved it and one day while she was at school - I was at home, sick - and accidentally broke it. I remember looking at Mother and having such an "OH MY GOSH!" feeling. I think she found Mary Ann a replacement. Mother and Daddy had come out of the Big Band era - so we still had a good bit of that kind of music - probably, from their younger years. We did have the soundtrack from My Fair Lady - from Broadway, I guess - I saw that old cover last week when I was in Evergreen - anyway - random thoughts - but what we never had was even a hint of country music - BUT - I remember there were some country music shows on TV in the 50's - and I remember liking one of them - but I also remember being in the minority in my family of 4 and Mother teasing me a bit about liking it.

I said all of that to explain why there are so many Dolly Parton songs on my playlist - if anybody cares - which it's likely that noone is really interested - Playlist is so fun to browse through. I think I've said that before. One can listen to songs from way back and conjure up very old memories.

Just want to say a few things about this week before Thanksgiving Week. First - much cleaning and organizing to be done this week. Yipes! Second - I made a fruitcake yesterday. I want to say, on behalf of all the fruitcake people out there - I LOVE FRUITCAKE - a good one - storebought fruitcakes are not real fruitcakes and no wonder so many bad jokes are told about FC. Not every recipe for fruitcake is a good one. I have a really really good recipe - but yesterday I tried a new one - out of a Paula Deen Magazine - I'll know in a week if it's good. Fruitcakes have to be made ahead and allowed to "age" a bit. A week isn't usually long enough - and they can be frozen and kept in the freezer for the next season - I have some of two fruitcakes from last year - in my freezer. I didn't plan to make one this season - but ran across this recipe and wanted to try it. If anyone is a fruitcake lover and wants my best recipe - I'll share it. If this one from Paula Deen is good enough to recommend - then I'll do that too.

Okay - so I have to search and find a letter that Mother wrote me - a few years back - after I shared with her and Mary Ann my very good, very enhanced fruitcake - which I had painstakingly made and nursed through the aging process - She wrote me this letter and I typed it and can't find it in my documents - so I must find the "hardcopy" to add to this post. I'll go ahead and post what I've written here - and then edit by adding the letter - after I put my hands on it. This letter is a treasure of mine and it's as if Mom laid her aged hand on my head and said, "You are Blessed". She didn't know it had that effect on me - it was just a sweet note that she was kind enough to write - Let me go find it. I love it. Be back in a minute.........

I found it!

Dear Elizabeth,

I never thought it would be my daughter who could make a fruit cake that tasted like the ones Granny used to make - I've told you, I'm sure, what that meant when she made those fruit cakes, I can't remember how far ahead of Christmas, but long enough that we had these containers, like round cheese hoops, I think, anyway, she'd put them in those things & cover with some sort of cloths & keep them soaked in wine or something - Anyway - it was one of those things that I looked so forward to. It was "beginning to look a lot like Christmas" -- That was before there was such a thing as a "store bought" fruit cake. If there was, I sure didn't know about it.

Not much to report - Mary Ann & I enjoyed going to Greenville & eating at "Cracker Barrel". Then that afternoon we visited with Rachel & her boys at Flo's - Those boys are so fine & so good looking & so tall. After leaving there we went over for a short visit with John & Martha. It's always good to see John & Martha.

I think I've covered everything, which isn't much - we'll keep in touch about all the coming events - Hey to everybody -

I love ya'll -

Mom

This was written to me Christmas season of 2000. I was delighted to have conjured up for Mother, memories she'd felt as a child.