Bear Claw Ate Lee Child's Lemon Pound Cake

Last weekend I had the pleasure of introducing Lee Child on stage and rubbing elbows with him (he’s a Yankees fan) as I chaperoned him for the day at our Milford Readers & Writers Festival in Milford, Pennsylvania.

Prior to the festival, when I was going over final arrangements with his associate, I noticed that Lee had requested his driver pick him up before our dinner for festival speakers and organizers, so I said I’d get him something to eat for dinner. She described Lee as the very definition of the word “chill” (he is)—content with a place to have a cigarette and a cup of black coffee—and suggested he'd be happy with a piece of lemon pound cake for the car ride home.

Manette got a chuckle out of that story and the day before the festival she saw slices of lemon pound cake as impulse purchase items on the checkout line at the grocery store. She bought one for Lee.

When I met Lee the morning of the festival at the Hotel Fauchère, we were going over the schedule for the day and I mentioned that I would arrange something for him to eat before the car picked him up. I told him the story of the lemon pound cake. He smiled and asked me to thank Manette.

After the first event I went home to walk Styles and when I looked for Lee's lemon pound cake it was gone. We call my stepson, Zac, Bear Claw, because he has a habit of wandering downstairs in the middle of the night and eating whatever is around, most times mauling it in the process and leaving a trail of crumbs and wrappers behind. In this case there was no evidence that Lee's lemon pound cake had ever existed.

I was sitting next to Lee during the next presentation at the festival and someone on stage mentioned food. I leaned over to Lee and explained to him who Bear Claw was and that he had eaten Lee’s lemon pound cake. He laughed.

I had told Manette about Bear Claw’s indiscretion before I returned to the festival, and when it came time for me to introduce Lee on stage, we were sitting in the front row, waiting to go on. Manette walked up and I introduced her. She handed Lee a paper bag and leaned over to speak to him. I heard Lee say something to her about Bear Claw and they both laughed.

After the festival, Manette told me she had given Lee a lemon meltaway cookie—the only substitute she could find at the Patisserie Fauchère. In the process she said she was a fan, too. She said Lee smiled appreciatively. Then Manette said, “Of lemon pound cake.”

A Downy Woodpecker Christmas

When the weather starts to get cold we drain our fountain, cover it and move the bird feeder into the backyard in front it, where we can watch the birds better.  The bird feeder creates quite a spectacle, attracting not only the usual sparrows, but mourning doves, blue jays and pairs of cardinals.  They feed in groups from it, cluster around it on the ground and sit on top of the fountain before swooping in.  This year we bought suet with nuts embedded in it to put into the wire cages on the sides of the bird feeder, to see if we could attract woodpeckers.  We did.

A large red-bellied woodpecker (oddly named—they have a distinctive red head but their bellies are tan) is a regular customer, and just recently a downy woodpecker showed up.  I’ve been trying to get close enough to get a good photo of the bird feeder with the downy woodpecker on it, but they’re temperamental things, and every time I so much as step outside the little guy flies off.  I had to settle for the shot through the window at left.

The downy woodpecker, pictured in the stock photo at right, isn't considered a truly exotic bird, but I haven’t seen one in many years.  It was certainly exotic for me as a kid growing up in my small town of Mt. Tabor in New Jersey.  Mrs. Stickel, our second grade teacher, gave our class an art and nature project in the fall of that school year, in which we were charged with making the bird of our choice out of papier-mâché.

We were to use the cardboard center of a toilet paper roll as a form, so that meant the bird had to be fairly small.  (Although Neil Hutchinson settled upon a flicker, which is about the size of a small crow.  I have no idea what he used for the center of it because paper towel rolls weren’t that common back in the day.  Maybe he just used a ton of papier-mâché.)

Mrs. Stickel marched us down to the library where we scoured reference books of different birds.  Inside Audubon's The Birds of America I found a plate with the downy woodpecker.  I’d never see anything like it: a white back; checks and spots of black and white on its wings; a distinctive red dot on the back of a black cap atop its head; the sides of its head white with black ovals around its eyes like Petey, the dog on the Little Rascals; and a tiny beak the bird books call a “bark-sticker.”  The downy woodpecker was to be my fall project.

I seem to recall the project took us the better part of two months, working in the back of the school room for about an hour every other day, applying layers of papier-mâché and waiting the requisite time for it to dry before reapplying.  Then attaching the wings and beak, and finally painting.  By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, I was the proud owner of a decent replica of a downy woodpecker.

About two weeks before Christmas that year I woke up to an early snowfall.  I came downstairs and looked out a side window of 89 St. Johns Avenue, itching to get at six inches of wet snow, perfect for making snowballs.  And on mom’s bird feeder in the backyard, there it was in the flesh—my first downy woodpecker.

He perched on the suet, poking his beak into it, working with frenzied movements of his head as if he was afraid another bigger bird would run him off before he got enough to eat.  He pecked at a few sparrows to shoo them away and returned to jabbing at his food.  I ran into the kitchen to bring mom into the dining room to show her, but it had flown off by the time we got there.  I didn’t see it again that entire winter, but I’ve always remembered that first look at a downy.  Even today, seeing one reminds me of the beginning of the Christmas season.  Happy Holidays.

Victorian Christmas

Every year or so during the Christmas season, I try to return to the small town of Mt. Tabor in northern New Jersey where I grew up.  Not only does it bring back memories from my childhood, but the town itself hasn't changed much since the Victorian era, so it’s like walking into a Victorian Christmas.

Mt. Tabor, NJ

Mt. Tabor was founded in 1869 by the Methodist church as one of two camp meeting grounds in New Jersey for outdoor summer religious retreats.  The Methodist faithful would pitch tents and camp out in either Mt. Tabor or Ocean Grove for the month of August to study the Bible, attend revival meetings, and hear sermons and religious lectures.  In time, the revelers built cottages on the 16’ x 25' tent lots and Mt. Tabor soon became a summer resort.  Eventually the cottages were winterized, which led to a year-round community.  Many of the original cottages still exist today.  Homes in the old section of town are covered with Victorian filigree, trim and railings and many are still painted with bold complementary colors true to the Victorian era.

Mt. Tabor is still a hilltop community of about 1,000 people with beautiful wooded streets, 15 MPH speed limits, its own nine-hole golf course—the former farm of Stephan Dickerson, who sold the property to the Methodists in 1869 and whose descendants still live in town—basketball courts, a playground, a baseball diamond and Mt. Tabor School, to which I walked across town as a child, as do the children today.  It was a special place, and still is.

But for most of us, the Christmas season was the most special.  Christmas decorations were a tradition in town; not the Santa Claus and reindeer variety, but white and multi-colored lights adorning the angular peaks, gingerbread and railings of the Victorian homes.  There was no rulebook that said you had to participate, but almost every household did its part to decorate the town.

In our family, trimming the outside of the house was as much an annual ritual as decorating the Christmas tree.  We’d march up to the attic and bring down all the lights, then crawl under the porch to drag out the ladder.  Dad would direct us to our stations, then climb the ladder and my three brothers and I would feed the strings of lights along like a bucket brigade, Paul, the youngest behind me, Jon ahead of me, and Mark, the oldest, a "big kid" with his feet two rungs up on the ladder.  By the time we got back inside hours later, the house was warm from the fire and Mom had Andy Williams, Burl Ives and Tony Bennett singing Christmas songs on the record player.  The house smelled like fireplace smoke, pine from the Christmas tree, and cinnamon and cloves from the hot mulled cider Mom had ready for us.  After a snack and Christmas cookies with the hot cider, we'd tackle decorating the Christmas tree.

I'm sure it didn't snow for some Christmases, although my memory is a blank for those, as I always remember walking around town on snow-covered streets with my family to take in the lights, and to participate in groups of Christmas carolers performing for the neighbors.  It had an aura of something from Charles Dickens’ era: the crunch of snow underfoot, Oh Come All Ye Faithful wafting from a few blocks away from another group of carolers, and our noses and fingers stinging from the cold air.  I always half expected to see Scrooge, after his evening transformation by the ghosts, with Tiny Tim beside him, walk around the corner.

On those caroling evenings we were frequently invited inside for hot chocolate by the neighbors.  Maybe people would think that's corny today, but it still goes on.

Another tradition was sledding (we called it “sleigh riding”) and tobogganing on the golf course.  The fourth green, sacred ground that couldn’t be tread upon by kids in summer, was always made available to us in winter as a perfect launching pad for our rides.  You could even find Chas Fouquet, the most obsessive golfer in town, helping to give our sleds that initial push across the expanse of the green to build up speed for a breathtaking run down the hill to the long slope of the third fairway.  There was also a rite of passage at about the fifth or sixth grade that advanced you to taking runs down "Bloody Guts", the 45-degree bone-crushing hill from the tee down to the sixth green over rocks, nasty tree stumps and a stream bed that would eat you alive if you didn't properly negotiate the four-foot-wide bridge across it.

As I write this I've decided I'm going back to Mt. Tabor this year to walk around town to take in the Christmas lights.  Hopefully snow will cover the streets, as it should.  Most things in our lives change, but Mt. Tabor will always hold, for those of us who grew up there, the ability to transport us into the past by virtue of its retention of the traditions of old.  I wish you all happy holidays with the hope you have an opportunity to revisit some of your own traditions of the season, and that your memories of former holidays are as precious as mine.