The Writer's Pen

The following pieces were written by members of the Hartley Writing Group, who penned each submission during a writing exercise at a recent gathering.

Members could choose to write a prompt on one of five topics: a cooking/baking failure; a good or bad vacation memory/experience; a flat tire experience; summer gardening; or summer storm memory.

A flat tire experience

By Roger Brockshus

My wife, Rita, and I were planning a short trip to Branson a couple years ago. Our daughter, Hillary, and her family live in Platte City, Mo., just north of Kansas City, so we planned to stay with them a couple days before driving to Branson.

Hillary is a teacher and had an in-service day when we were there, so that meant her kids were home for the day. Since Hillary and her husband, Brett, were working, we decided to take our grandkids out for lunch and go to a park afterwards. However, everywhere you go around Kansas City involves driving on a freeway at some point. I was trying to get on I-435 in some fairly heavy traffic, and didn’t see a big pothole on the edge of the road. Sure enough, I hit that thing hard with my right front tire, and I knew it was flat as soon as I got onto the freeway.

I had moved to the left lane – why, I don’t recall – and pulled over to the shoulder. When I got out, of course the flat tire was on the roadside. I didn’t have much room to work, but managed to change the tire with cars screaming beside me at 70-plus mph. Rita was on the phone with Brett asking where we should get the tire fixed, when I let out a profane word or two at a car going by. Rita gave me a look, Brett laughed, and our grandkids kept saying, “Call 911” over and over again!

Well, the rest of the story is that the pothole ruined both the tire and the rim on our Toyota Camry. The shop Brett recommended needed to order replacements from Toyota, and it was going to take three or four days! Now what, go on without a spare tire?

We decided to drive Brett’s pickup through the Ozarks to Branson and pick up our car on the way back. It was, however, a very different experience driving a full-sized Ford pickup instead of a Toyota car, especially since the roads aren’t as flat and straight as they are in northwest Iowa. I would look in the mirror and see six or eight cars following me. A couple times I pulled over to let them pass.

It was not a pleasant trip, but one we will remember for a while. As for our lodging near Branson, that is material for another story. Let’s just say we were happy to get our car back and go home.

A summer gardening experience

By Donna Davis

Growing up on an island off the west coast of Florida, I never had much luck gardening.

I was a 4-H’er and public speaking, leadership and sewing were my preferred projects. I tried flower gardening one year, but it never occurred to me that anyone would actually “buy dirt,” so of course, nothing grew in the sand. My year-end completion report consisted of pictures off the seed packets of what the flowers were supposed to look like.

Fast forward to age 52 when I married a man 22 years my senior, who was accustomed to spending summers in his natural habitat of upstate New York. He was a renaissance man and wrote poetry, fashioned pottery, kept bees, built his own homes, and was an Iwo Jima survivor, but he came from a family of farmers. He could grow anything and set about teaching me, from rototilling a 20’ x 30’ plot, planting seeds and tiny plants, watering, and weeding – you all know the drill. But after we moved into the woods where he and his son built us a cottage, the gardening got really interesting.

The first year we created a patch near the highway close enough to one of his cousin’s homes so I could haul water in buckets from their outdoor water spigot to the garden, back and forth, up and down the rows. It sounds like spousal abuse now, in retrospect. The next year he hauled barrels of water up from the creek, which served me for several days of watering, after which we filled them again.

Finally we created a beautiful garden deep in the woods adjacent to our barn. Here we had hoses and pumps bringing water directly from the creek to the barrels that were positioned next to the gardens. That’s when I developed the sensation of becoming a vegetarian fisherman, as I patiently watered row after row, day after day, awaiting the inevitable results.

And what a lush garden resulted; what a harvest we enjoyed! Beans grew so high I realized where the Jack stories came from, as well as cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, zucchini and butternut squash, many of which we took south to share at Thanksgiving. It was so much fun, and so many lessons were learned from our patience and perseverance. I have so much gratitude for those 15 years, which fed us and formed me.

Imagine – from the sands of a Florida island, to the woods in upstate New York, to the vast expanse of farmland in Iowa – finally beholding the source of the food I’ve been eating all my life!

Thank you, Iowa!

Heavenly Biscuits!?!

Judy Taber

I truly have not had many cooking failures. I love to try new recipes. Sometimes they are keepers. Other times we look at each other and say, “Don’t need to keep this one.”

Gary has wanted me to make noodles for a long time. My mom never made noodles – we always bought them. I thought this would be a new adventure. I had watched cooking shows on TV where they made noodles – effortlessly it seemed.

I measured out my flour, added baking powder and a bit of salt, poured it onto the counter and made a well in the middle. Then I cracked and added eggs into the well. Using my hand, I began mixing the egg with the flour until it all came together into a ball. I got my rolling pin and proceeded to roll it out flat. I tried again and again. It would not flatten or roll out. Nothing I did seemed to help. In fact, the ball of dough became even more resistant.

Finally I gave up. I threw it outside for the barn cats to eat. They smelled it and gingerly touched it with a front paw. Withdrawing the paw, they circled the dough expecting it to jump at them. Soon they lost interest. I couldn’t believe I had made something that the cats wouldn’t even eat. From there, it ended up in the burn pile to disappear the next time I burned trash.

Apparently I added too much flour, mixed it too long, or both. I have not tried to make noodles since. Maybe this winter!

Like Mom Used to Make

By LaVonne Hansen

Don and I had been married a couple of years when this traumatic cooking experience happened. I was not a great cook, and even as a youngster, it was not something I enjoyed nor was interested in.

Fast forward. Our meals were simple but adequate. We never entertained – at least we didn’t share meals. Then one day, Don came breezing in the kitchen door with a package of liver. He seemed to be excited over the purchase. He asked if I would make liver patties like his mom used to do. Panic! That’s not all. He had invited a friend from work!

I tried to do as he instructed, but alas, when we opened the oven door, we could see burnt offerings of hunks of liver. We broke into laughter. Thank goodness. Grilled cheese sandwiches never tasted so good.

Chow Mein…a Culinary Disaster

By Cheryl Stanley

As newly-weds and college students, we had to carefully ration our grocery allowance to survive from miniscule paycheck to paycheck. I thumbed through my new wedding Betty Crocker Cookbook looking for a main dish that could be stretched over more than one meal, yet had reasonably priced ingredients.

Before I married, my family usually had menus that reflected our Scandinavian background. In other words, there was little in our spice world that was exciting or dramatic. If we ventured into unusual food, it was canned or dry packaged.

The canned Chinese food of the day had overcooked vegies in dull monochrome colors with a few strange crunchies we could not identify. Early pizza in a box had a crust textured like cardboard, soaked with a small can of tomato sauce, and a tea-bag-sized envelope of Parmesan cheese. Even that sprinkle of Parmesan smelled “disgusting” to the unsophisticated.

Now was my opportunity to prove myself a worldly connoisseur of fine foods. By the time I had purchased all the fresh ingredients for Chow Mein from scratch, there was very little grocery money left for variety the rest of the week.

The crisp, delicious Chow Main was a culinary accomplishment. But after eating it for the next five days, my husband never asked for it again – he wouldn’t even order it in a genuine Chinese restaurant.

So much for my Julia Child impersonation…and back to Swedish meatballs in mushroom sauce.