Stirring Up Memories

A Meal Fit for a King

IT WAS the Depression era, and several times a week, rabbit provided our only meat dish. I remember my father peeling an apple after supper, mostly for me, but always saving the peelings to bait the rabbit traps. He made his own traps and set them out in the orchard.

I never minded eating rabbit. I thought it tasted every bit as good as chicken, and when my mother fried it crispy brown in her big round iron skillet, it was a delicious treat.

Mom also made flawless brown gravy with it to top freshly baked biscuits and a dish of kraut, which she had prepared from the past summer’s cabbages. This was indeed a meal fit for a king!

— By Alma Smock, Monrovia, Indiana

The Most Delicious Treat

I GREW UP on a farm with enough to eat but with very few luxuries. Store-bought cake mixes from Rue Brown’s grocery store in Loa, Utah, were a luxury supreme.

Once Mom did buy a box of cake mix, then let me lick the beaters and the bowl after she had poured the batter into the cake pan. It was the best-tasting stuff I had ever had! Some months later, she bought another box of cake mix, and it stayed on the kitchen shelf for weeks. I guessed she was keeping it for a special occasion.

Sometimes my parents went off on an errand or a visit and I was left home alone with that cake mix. One day, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I figured out a way to open the box, remove a spoonful or two of the sweet powder and close the box so no one would know the difference.

I added a little milk to the mix and had the most delicious treat. It was so good that I did it over and over again every time I was left alone.

Finally, that special occasion must have arrived, because Mom reached in the cupboard to retrieve the box of cake mix. Well, she found very little mix in the box. She marched straight to the store to show Mrs. Brown, who quickly replaced it with a full box and apologized to my mother for the inconvenience!

— By Harold “JR” Johansen, Huntsville, Utah