Centennial Golden Muffins

I belonged to the Cloverly Girl 4-H Club for years. My mom was the leader and Nora Libsack was her assistant. All the girls from our Pleasant Valley School and other neighboring country schools joined 4-H. We learned to cook, sew and decorate. Mom was the chief of sewing and making garments with perfect stitches and fit. I still have the little micro black and white checked cotton apron I made for my first project. It was hand sewn and the stitches had to be exactly spaced within the checks. These were small checks. I’m sure mom had me count the checks before I made the stitch. In the fall we entered our summer’s work at the county fair at Island Grove Park. If we made a Grand or Reserve Champion on our projects we could enter them in the State Fair in Pueblo. I was a blue ribbon sometimes red ribbon winner. Some times Mom had a Grand Champion winner that made her and Nora so proud of their accomplishments.

Mostly Nora taught the cooking. I learned to make sugar cookies that came off the cookie sheet perfectly with the smallest amount of distortion. Jellies had to be clear with no bubbles and a perfect seal of the paraffin. I think I made mostly apple jelly probably from apple juice. I like to make jams better now so you have some flavor and little pieces of fruit to spread on a piece of bread. No more messy paraffin anymore to seal the jars. The lids fit tight and a quick turn upside down for a few minutes and the jars are sealed perfectly.

I made bread on summer. White bread, white flour. There is nothing tastier then a piece of warm bread spread with a little real butter. I was reminded of that today. We had a few bananas that were speckling up on the counter from last weeks Christmas fest. From the bottom drawer I pulled out my favorite banana bread recipe tucked in an old cookbook from a collaborative effort of some people from Stan’s engineering job that he had some 35 years ago. I just love that recipe as it has no fat and always bakes up perfectly. I sliced off a few pieces and gave one to my bus driver. He was trilled to receive a piece of homemade bread. He said when he grew up his Mom would always make bake goods from scratch. Not so much today as his wife usually buys whatever the grocery store sells that is already boxed up. I wonder if his mom was in 4-H.

Before we advanced to bread we learned to make muffins. The recipe in the 4-H manual told us not to beat the dough, but barely spoon it together for under twenty strokes. I can still make pretty good muffins keeping to that minimal mixing routine. My friend Lois Goldsmith was in the same muffin group. There was some centennial celebration in the community. Colorado had its centennial in 1976 as it became the 38th state in 1876. I know it wasn’t in 1976 as I was about 10 which would have been 1956. Whatever the celebration, centennial was theme. Lois and I teamed up to give a demonstration at a contest in Greeley. Lois was the presenter and I was the person putting together the ingredients while she talked. We made Centennial Golden Muffins. These were the same muffins are in the second year 4-H cookbook with added golden butterscotch chips. These chips were new to the market as only chocolate chips had been available. This made a delicious change to the standard muffin. Lois and I practiced each day at her house or mine. We made muffins galore to the delight of both families. We were ready for our demonstration at the contest. Lois became sick with mono or some other sort of illness, became hospitalized and wasn’t well enough for the demo we had planned together. There went our big opportunities to be young Martha Stewarts. There was no replacement for Lois, so the show didn’t go on. Thinking back to this time, I probably could have completed the demo on my own, but just didn’t have enough confidence to do it or there were rules about entering specific names for the demo. I still make muffins today skipping the butterscotch chips to add blueberries, cranberries, peach instead.

Christmas

Christmas growing up is but a vague memory. I’ve seen videos when I was about five of a Santa that came to visit on Christmas Eve when we lived in the Tipton house. My mom must have been taking the photos as dad was in the movie so I don’t think that Santa was played by him. This Santa was slight of build so it wasn’t my Uncle Swede either. He was kind of short so maybe it was my Uncle Rodney, Aunt Ruth’s brother who played Santa.

This Santa was the lowest tech ever. He had the red velvet suit, probably made by one of the handy seamstresses in the family, but his beard was not silky and full like the Santas you see today. It looked in the video like white cotton. This was about 1950 when cotton came in a big roll about eight inches wide wrapped in blue heavy cardboard like paper. Poor Santa looked like he had been in the medicine cabinet into that roll of cotton to find a white beard for him to wear.

Santa handed out wrapped gifts for all of us. There was a great racket when he arrived as he jingled these grand bells that were from the horse harness that was placed over the horse’s neck. The bells varied in size and were about 4 inches in diameter and had a great big melodious tone. This string of bells was from my Great Grandfather Frank O. Swanson’s carriage equipment when he would drive his wife to town in a sleigh about Christmas time at the turn of the century in the 1900’s. The strip of bells were handed down to his son, my Grandfather, Carl O. Swanson and then to my Dad, Harold O. Swanson. Dad guarded them with abandon. They are still guarded in one of my closets. I take them out once in a while on Christmas Eve. We have taken a walk through our neighborhood years ago on our way to Cynthia Jones’ house to Christmas Eve dinner. We spent many Christmas Eve’s together with that family as John and their son Geordie were best friends. One evening the houses were all adorned with luminaries along the sidewalks throughout the whole neighborhood on a Christmas Eve. We walked in the middle of the quiet snow-packed streets and gently shook the bells as we walked. They are the best bells I have ever heard.

My dad was a roly-poly guy who made a great Santa for our school, Pleasant Valley. The parents all contributed one present for each child. My dad would put on a Santa suit that probably belonged to the school as I never found any Santa suit remains when I helped clean out their home. I don’t remember any tacky cotton beard. He would Ho-Ho-Ho his way into the school with a big red bag slung over his shoulder packed with gifts. He would call out all the kids’ names. He knew them all as this was a close knit neighborhood. He asked them questions about being good or bad. After they battered back and forth he gave them a gift. In the 1950’s gifts were pretty simple. A few nuts and a fresh orange or apple were a treat. Checker boards, monopoly or a baby doll were a special treat. No one wanted to receive any coal, which was in easy supplier from the furnaces that were then stoked with shovels full of coal.

When we went to church on Christmas Eve at eulota (Swedish name of Christmas Eve service) at 4:00 am on Christmas morning. The ushers passed around little boxes of candy for all the children. There were all kinds of yummy treats that we only saw at Christmas time. Ribbon candy and hard candy filled with creamy or crispy favors are still fragrant in my mind. I loved the cinnamon puffs that made our tongues and lips red.

We would sing out the old familiar Christmas carols that have been around for hundreds of years. Today we attend various Christmas concerts where they play a few of those Christmas carols. I still get a lump in my throat when I hear Joy to the World. It is a lot different hearing live music played with feeling than the same tunes piped into the malls like it is played by drones.

We started going to the Tuba concerts on a Saturday around the first week or so of December outside in downtown Denver at Larimer Square. Hearing those big ole’ tubas belting out Jingle Bells is a delight. On that day twenty or thirty tubas fill the street to play Christmas carols for the Holiday crowds. There are generations of people joining in the fun. They have been gathering for over twenty-five years at various city streets across our nation. My son John took his little girl Anya, age one, to her first Tuba concert in Boston.