Janine Stubbs
GREAT
GRANDFATHER BAIRD’S VICTORY GARDEN
AND
AUNT MARY’S CHERRY PUDDING
Great Grandpa Baird
was anxious to cultivate many flowers, fruit
trees, nut trees, and whatever
else he felt like planting. He designed
gardens around the houses where he and his family had lived over the
years, but later he wanted more space to create
beautiful grounds and
gardens for his friends and family.
He planned for
much more, when he found the right place. He
would experiment with grafting
and build a greenhouse and plant cherry
trees everywhere. Cherry trees were his favorite. He loved the beautiful
blooms that burst forth in the springtime. He popped the newly formed
cherries into his mouth and savored the sweet juices as they
saturated the inside of his cheeks.
It was time to
retire. He worked most of his life. When he was a
young man he worked beside
his father on the family farm, outside of
Hope, Arkansas. After he finished high
school
he went to work for the
Pioneer Telephone Company, laying the first telephone lines all the way
to
Oklahoma and Texas, from the far reaches of
Arkansas, where he was
born. His father fought in the
Civil War, but he fought in no real war.
However, he did fight along with his wife,
her war
with cancer, as he cared
for her and his four little girls, when younger men than he, were soldiers in
World War I.
Being quite
successful in his career as a manager for what eventually
became Southwestern Bell
Telephone Company, he saved enough
money to buy a twenty acre farm between Oklahoma City and Lake
Overhoster. He built a stately house
with Grecian columns and a
large basement that covered the entire size of the house.
He retired in the
early 1940’s when this country was involved in
World War II. There were
shortages of food and supplies and he wanted
to make sure he could provide enough food for his family that lived
nearby. The basement provided cool storage for vegetables, fruit,
and canned preserved foods.
Every Sunday Great
Grandpa Baird invited all the relatives to a
big Sunday dinner. It
was usually his daughters and their families. The
women would prepare the meals and clean up and the men worked in the
fields, caring for the crops.
It was a bountiful
garden that provided food and beauty for numerous
tables. Fields of daffodils
jumped up brilliantly yellow every spring. Red
roses climbed arbors leading into smaller flower gardens with fish
ponds on three sides of the house. White lilies floated on
flat green leaves and peeked out of the ponds' waters.
flat green leaves and peeked out of the ponds' waters.
There were rows of nut trees and fruit
trees, but the most prolific fruit
trees were Great Grandpa Baird’s
favorite, his cherry trees. They
blossomed a spectacular show every spring and took up much of the
garden. When the cherries appeared from the pretty pink flowers there
wasn’t much time for harvest. The guys were prompt in picking them
so as not to lose them to the
midday sun.
There was little refrigeration in the 40’s so my aunts used their creativity
to cook and prepare them
in different ways. They canned cherries. They
prepared cherry jams and jellies. They cooked cherry pies, cherry cakes,
cherry short cakes, but the family’s favorite cherry dish was Aunt Mary’s
Cherry Pudding.
Many years later, I
inherited one of my Grandmother Nellie’s cook
books and when I opened
it, I saw tucked inside was a yellowed index
card. On the card was written Aunt Mary’s Cherry Pudding Recipe.
Aunt Mary’s daughter, Daisy, sent the recipe to my grandmother in a
letter long ago.
Sometimes, I take
out the old yellowed card and display it on a silver
tray on my kitchen sidebar.
When I pass by I reflect back to my aunts
and other relatives who worked so diligently to provide food for their
loved ones’ tables when it was most needed. And I think of my Great
Grandpa Baird’s beautiful garden and I cherish Aunt Mary’s Cherry
Pudding Recipe.
