Food, grandparents, and memories

So many people had written comments about food memories that in my mind I'm starting a list of all these different foods I want once I get out of here. One in particular that I would love to have is one of Grandmom Schuhart's cakes. She made many different ones but the one that stands out in my mind was a half chocolate, half orange cake and the frosting was what was the orange part. I have tried for years to make frosting like hers and just have never been able to. She also made this almond butter nut pound cake that was amazing. But her black walnut cakes at Thanksgiving and Christmas just drove us all crazy.

My great grandparents and grandparents were butchers specializing in beef and pork. At one point they had stalls in many of the markets in Baltimore - Belair, Broadway. The Broadway market is in the historic section of Fells Point. The Belair market was the last market that they had a stall in. I can still remember the stall across the aisle from us was the Lambrights where they specialized in pickles and smoked fish. Mr. Tony, the produce man, had two stalls to our right and there was a bakery stall to the left with all different kids of desserts but particularly schmeercase (a type of cheesecake). It was always a treat during our vacations to visit Grandmother and Granddad Cronise each summer, when mom and dad would take a two week vacation, to be able to go to market with Grandmother one day. I got to run the cash register and screwed it up from the very beginning. In one of the conversations I was having with my brother Steve, yesterday, we recalled all the different kinds of soups that Grandmother Cronise would make. Since Friday and Saturday were big market days, grandmother would always put on a big pot of soup on Thursdays while she and Granddad were working in the slaughter house getting everything prepped to take to market. Those soups in particular that Steve and I were talking about yesterday were a chicken corn with hard boiled eggs, oxtail soup with home made noodles. Grandmother had to work fast to get those noodles into the soup before we would eat them all. She kept telling us we'd get bugs in our stomach if we ate those raw noodles. She also made wonderful ham and bean soup, split pea, and one we always had on New Year's Eve - lentil soup with pepperoni in it. During these two week vacations at Grandmother's we would play in that wonderful house, she would spoil us to death cooking all these wonderful foods that we loved so much - with the last night always being home made pizza. The only thing we hated about those vacations was grandmother's sidewalk from the front gate all the way to the back was brick, and we would have to weed all of the grass out of the brick. We'd watch the Mickey Mouse Club and all the shows of the day. Granddad would be lying on the floor in the living room watching boxing, smoking these nasty King Edward cigars. Grandmother's garden was full of lots of different kinds of flowers. There were peonies all over the front yard. One time Granddad told us to pick the ants off the peonies that were crawling over the unbloomed flowers. Grandmother happened to see us doing this and wondered, "What are you doing?" We said, "We're picking the ants off the peonies like Granddad told us to." She said, "Stop that. The ants eat the wax and that allows the peonies to bloom." She also had several large, dark French lilac bushes that had the most amazing fragrance, and lots and lots of roses.

After Granddad died in 1970, grandmother sold the contents of the house and moved to an apartment in Oaklee Village. The house was full of all kinds of claw foot oak tables, bowfront china closets, this big old fashioned furniture. Much of it, of course, she was not able to take with her to her apartment but a few treasured pieces she took with her. For either her first or second wedding anniversary, Granddad gave her a beautiful Hoosier cabinet in a green washed oak. After Granddad gave it to her and they moved in to great-grandparents' house and this cabinet ended up sitting in the attic until grandmother moved into the apartment. So this early, early gift from Granddad was in perfect condition when she moved to Oaklee Village. After Grandmother passed, she left it to me. It is one of my prized possessions. It still has the flour bin, the pull-out cutting boards, the roll-up front, and the pull-out enamel tabletop.

Grandmother was also an amazing crocheter. Even though she had arthritis quite badly, she was still able to make such beautiful baby outfits, embroidered with silk threads, complete with jacket, hat and booties. Baby blankets, more doilies than you could shake a stick at. For my college graduation present she made me a beautiful afghan safely stored away in the cedar chest.

She used to make a lot of different kids of Santa Clauses at Christmas. Some with jiggly legs that would hang on the door, Mr. & Mrs. Snowmen - each of them faithfully brought out every Christmas whether we put up a tree or not. For Easter she would crochet little chicken covers for plastic eggs and additionally a crocheted Easter egg that when you untied it the baby chick would pop out. She once spent two years crocheting a tablecloth for my mother's dining room table in fine cotton and in a very intricate pattern. I used to take orders for a lot of these items form people in my office who would want something for an upcoming grandchild or a niece or nephew. And somehow I had managed to hold onto one of the baby blankets. Just a couple years ago, after my brother Steve remarried, his wife's daughter was going to have a baby. I remembered that I had this baby blanket and I sent it up to Steve. It was a very special gift for his grandchild.

Grandmother would never go to church without being what she thought was properly dressed with a hat, earrings and lipstick. I remember picking her up one Sunday and she had forgotten to put on her jewelry. I had to turn the car around, go back to her apartment, and pick up some jewelry for her to put on.

She almost never missed church. If she wasn't there, someone would be asking, "Is your grandmother all right? Why isn't she here today?" As she got older it got more and more difficult for her to walk. First agreeing to use a cane, finally a walker, and then eventually a wheelchair. However, she still insisted on sitting on her pew - second pew from the front on the left. It would take her some time to get up there but nothing was going to stop her. When it finally got to the point that she was confined to a wheelchair, the church didn't have an appropriate place for a wheelchair to sit so I would roll her up to the front of the church and she would sit in the center aisle outside the pew. As the choir would process, they would simply march around her. Eventually, the church decided that they needed to make appropriate seating for wheelchairs. It was on the other side of the sanctuary. No matter how hard I tried to convince Grandmother that they did that just for her, she just never was real happy that she wasn't able to sit where she wanted to in church.

It was only the last couple weeks of her life that she was unable to attend. But throughout all the different sanctuaries we worshipped in - the original butcher's church on Catherine Street, the Overhills mansion sanctuary on Rolling Road, and then eventually the current church building at St. John's, she just loved being surrounded by her grandchildren.

The times I would be able to get to Baltimore on a business trip or for a visit I would always make sure that I would go over to Lorraine Park cemetery and put pink carnations on her grave. For years the family plot had simply been marked by a beautiful Peace rose but eventually a more traditional tombstone was erected.

One time as I was leaving the cemetery, I noticed a name on a tombstone that was familiar. It turns out that actress Mildred Natwick is also buried in Lorraine Park cemetery.

After the house on Franklintown Road was shut down and grandmother moved, Mom took as many of the peonies and the roses to plant in our yard as possible. I'll have to check with Mom to see if any of them are still surviving. One rose in particular was called Sweet Talisman. I know they breed roses for appearances these days but that one was bred for fragrance. When the furniture was being sold there was an enormous cabinet in the kitchen that many people wanted but it was so tall it simply wouldn't fit anywhere. It went to Betty Meirs's barn for a while and I believe someone actually raised a ceiling in a room in their house so that they could purchase this giant kitchen cabinet.

A wonderful family friend of ours, Nancy Garrison, had purchased Grandmother's dining room chairs. They were oak chairs with caned seats. When I was starting to set up my first apartment, Mrs. Garrison came to me and said, "I bought the dining room chairs from your Grandmother's house and I have never used them. Would you be interested in having them?" I said, "Absolutely, how much to do I owe you for them?" And she said, "Oh, just pay me what I paid her - $12 for six chairs." I learned how to re-cane those chairs myself. In some cases unfortunately, cutting myself on the cane. I believe it took me three days to do the first one but by the time I got to the sixth one, I got it down to about five hours.


Grandmother also crocheted me curtains for my first apartment. I have absolutely no place to use them any longer but I still have them tucked away and every once in a while I take them out and take a look at them.

My very last Christmas in Baltimore before moving to Jacksonville I was living in the Carriage House at our church. It was a huge wonderful house that was actually a retreat facility and I was actually a kind of resident caretaker. Since I knew it was going to be my last Christmas there, the family decided to get together to have Christmas at my house. It was also easiest to get Grandmother's wheelchair into the house since there was only one step. I had dinner plans for that evening but told everyone to come over between one and three o'clock so that we could celebrate Christmas. I wasn't serving a meal but had planned on having dessert, cookies, that sort of thing. When Mom drove up with Grandmother in the car, she got out of the car with pies that Grandmother had gotten up early that morning to bake. One was mincemeat - one of my personal favorites, and the other was a pumpkin. Whenever grandmother would bake a pie with cutouts, she would always bake the extra pieces with cinnamon sugar for us all to enjoy. I couldn't believe that she went to the effort of getting up that early to bake pies. She also had gone to the effort of crocheting me some placemats and potholders. Her work wasn't nearly as fine as it used to be but they were still made with love. It was a very special Christmas.