Momma Cash's Fruitcake

My mother made a pretty good fruitcake. As a kid I'm not sure I could really judge a good fruitcake, but Momma's was tasty. And I think it not only had a lot to do with the labor intensive preparation of the candied fruit that began in September, but also the octane of the final product. It was actually flammable. I was talking with my sister Sharon about it recently. Sharon wound up with the recipe as directed by Momma's last will and testament. And according to Sharon the amount of liquor it took to properly imbibe the fruitcake was not part of the original recipe, but merely my mother's attempt to appease Pops.

Some people use to say Pops "had a problem" with alcohol. I'm here to tell you I never saw Pops have any trouble at all with it..none whatsoever. He could drink anything without any problems. And he must have had one hell of a resistance built up. I remember once the dentist was trying to put him under and failed. He was afraid to give him anymore anesthetic and consulted with Momma in the waiting room. Momma suggested the dentist hum the "Doxology" to put him to sleep. It apparently worked.

Anyway, Pops required a pretty hot load when it came to his fruitcake. And Momma's recipe was the real deal. As a young girl one of Momma's aunts had been seasonal kitchen help at a small bakery on Collins Street in Corsicana, Texas in the early twenties. She had met Gus Weidmann and was careful to watch as they made his old world recipe from Wiesbaden. You had to be pretty special to have a copy of Auntie Nina's purloined recipe. Momma had received a copy upon Nina's demise. Nina's daughters never talked to Momma again. Like I said, it was special fruitcake and with Momma's "Cash" version, it was heaven.

Momma had some ancient wooden molds made from 1x4s that she used to 'pickle' her fruitcakes. She would wrap them in cheesecloth, place them in the mold and for a good month or more drizzle her famous concoction of rum and Southern Comfort slowly onto each cake. After a few weeks she knew whom was going to get which cake. She had this down to a science.

I'm not saying stealing fresh baked goods from Momma's kitchen never happened, but if it did, you had to be real good with no witnesses. And that rarely happened. So I was really surprised when I got home one evening and found Sharon, Cole and Holden all sitting in the front room looking like murder suspects. As I walked in they all stared daggers at me. I'm sure I gave them my best Vinnie Barbarino "who..what..". Then Momma commanded me to come to the kitchen.

She stood there with her fists planted on her hips and scowled at me. I didn't have the slightest idea what was going on. She stepped aside and pointed at the kitchen counter where her fruitcakes were nestled. And one of the molds was empty. She asked me sternly, "How did that happen?"

I was innocent. I shrugged my "I dunno" shoulders, told her to talk to my brothers and turned to walk away. Momma snatched me by the shoulders and crammed me down into a kitchen chair. For the next ten minutes Sharon, Cole, Holden and I endured a hell fire and brimstone sermon that was worthy of any Baptist minister. Every time I looked up my brothers and sister were all giving me that "we know you did it look". Cole was cracking his knuckles and Holden slowly drew his finger across his throat....but I didn't do it! Unsatisfied Momma left us all alone to see if the guilty party would fess up. The room grew silent. The only noise was the dog scratching on the back door to get in. I got up and let him in.

'Basil' was our big old black lab. Pops had named him for a movie star named Basil Rathbone that had played Sherlock Holmes. I guess he thought he had a good nose for figuring out things. We boys called him "Bigs" because of his fascination with and eternal habit of always licking his junk...his BIG junk. I let him in and sat back down in the chair. I didn't pay any attention to him as he left the kitchen and went to front room where everybody else was sitting.

Cole was the first one to notice Bigs was wobbly. He hollered, "Something's the matter with Bigs!" We all stood up to see and sure enough, Bigs was wobbling all over the front room trying to lay down. Sharon was convinced he was having a stroke. Holden thought old man Higgins had poisoned him. Bigs finally fell over on his side and sighed. Cole got up to kneel down beside him. Suddenly Bigs stretched out so far his feet almost touched the sofa and groaned. I was with Sharon and betting on the stroke. Then Bigs drew his legs up and in one huge projectile issuance he placed every bit of the missing fruitcake on the rug three feet in front of him. He hadn't even chewed the candied cherries...they were still pretty much whole....

Sharon did her "eeeww" and ran out of the room. I looked at Holden and remarked, "I told you it wasn't me". Cole hollered for Momma to come see...and ol' Bigs just rolled over on his drunk back and wanted someone to rub his tum-tum. I swear he was smiling.

Momma came back in the room and started hollering for someone to 'clean that up and get that dog out of here'. She was noticeably upset because it was her good rug. We did a typical Cash family fire-drill and in five minutes everything was back to normal. Momma apologized to all of us and gave us a hug.

A few minutes later Pops came home from work. As he grabbed a beer out of the fridge he asked Momma what was for dinner. She replied 'baloney'..which was Momma Cash's way of telling us all to 'fix it yourself'. Pops looked a little perplexed and looked down at me and asked, "What happened?"

I told him, "The dog puked.." and went off to my room. He probably felt a little isolated when we all left him alone to wonder what in the hell had happened. He grabbed the newspaper and sat down in his chair with his beer. Everything was back to normal.