The Cake Comment

When I was 7 we lived up north in my Great Grampa's cabin for a summer. It was just Mom and us kids. I thought it was because Dad had to work and couldn't join us. That's another story.

Aunt Lo and Uncle Gee lived about a quarter of a mile down the road from us. Uncle was a tall, broad, smiling, craggy faced farmer and Aunt Lo was a short, round, true believer, who put 110% into everything she did. They had 2 boys, Woh and Fum that were in their late teens. The boys had a big old collie named, honest!, Shep. Shep was no pup, he was as big as me on all fours and as big as Mom standing up.

Aunt Lo had promised a wedding cake to a young couple in her church. That Saturday she baked and whipped and iced till she was covered in white dust but the cake was done and it was a beauty.

That cake was half chocolate and half vanilla, buried in white bakers frosting with trim all around it in pink and roses draped over the corners with a big sugar ribbon in the middle behind a small bride and groom. Their names and the date were sculpted under that. Aunt Lo had put tooth picks all over the cake and then covered it with layers of plastic wrap to keep it from the dust on the dirt roads they had to travel. It was so BIG a sheet cake that it took Uncle G and Fum both to load it in the back of the station wagon.

While Aunt Lo got cleaned up, Fum was cleaning out the car with the vacuume. The doors were all open except the back loading door. Do you remember the windows in the rear of station wagons that could be rolled down? Their wagon had one and it was rolled down.

Again, it was a beautiful day for a wedding, sun lit blue skys with pretty little clouds drifting on a gentle breeze. One of those perfect days when nothing could go wrong.

Because it was such a warm, sunny day all of us kids were out playing in the lilacs. There was a great, empty space in the middle of them, just our size, that kept the heat at bay.

Out of the clear blue sky comes this deep rumble followed by a big BOOM!. We were awed that a jet had gone right over our house and were getting out of the bush to look at it when this horrendous scream ripped through the air! Then another!

We bolted for the house but Mom had already cleared the door and was headed, full speed, up the road. We beat feet after her.

We knew it was Aunt Lo screaming, she was the only other woman inside hollering distance. We must have made pretty good time because she was still screaming and trying to kill Shep with her purse when we got there.

We watched as she would scream his name and he'd run toward her, like the good dog he was. Aunt Lo would wind up to swing on him and he'd duck and run away. If she hadn't been so purple it might have been funny but even at 7 I knew purple was the color you got just before your head exploded. Mom ran right on up but we hung back, a little worried about the swinging purse.

Come to find out, Shep was afraid of airplanes, especially the sonic boom kind. When the boom went off, Fum was the nearest human to hide near.

Shep had been laying under a tree near the back end of the car. Shep would have seen him in the driver's side of the front seat with his vacuume. When the boom rang out Shep jumped through the back window, came down on the far end of the cake and leaped the back seat and then the front to huddle under Fum.

Aunt Lo had just come out the door and was crossing the yard to leave. She heard the boom, saw Shep fly into the back of the car and started screaming before he got to Fum.

Mom had Fum and Uncle run the cake back into the house and sent us home. She and Aunt Lo cut out the spot where Shep's four feet landed. It was just like a diamond pattern, Mom told us later. Being an experienced cook, Aunt had made an extra cake for her family. They trimmed a piece out of that one to match the hole, snugged it into the cut out, re- iced the area, minus a few roses and got it back in the car, all in lightening time. Some how the dog had missed the center where all the special decorations were.

All was well, the wedding went excellent and no one ever knew the dog had jumped in the cake.

I do always make an extra cake for my family when I am fancy baking, even today.