My Mother's Newsworthy Pie

                I had three months between graduation and my wedding day.

            “Well, are you going to teach me how to cook?”

             My mother looked up from her book, her eyebrows raised. 

            “Cook? If you can read, you can cook.” Her face brightened. “Let’s shop for your trousseau!”

            That was my Mom – thoroughly modern Matilda. She must have been a great reader because she was a good cook, although not at first. She loved to tell the story of when her father in law (my detective grandfather who died the year I was born) decided to visit his son and daughter in law. It was during World War II and Dad was stationed in Ann Arbor Michigan. Mom shared a cottage on base with Ann, another soldier’s wife.

            The first thing Grandpa Charles did when he arrived was declare he had a yen for an apple pie. Mom pulled her roomie aside.

            “Ann, I have no idea how to make a pie! What should I do?”

            “I don’t know. He’s your father in law.”

            I’m told as fathers in law go he was one of those grumpy types, like a cop with no patience and sore feet.  But my mother said he was rather sweet in an awkward sort of way.  Mom grabbed her cookbook and followed all the directions. She did a fairly good job of rolling the dough into thin circles on the newspaper she had spread out.  

            “Fortunately, the newsprint disappeared as the pie browned in the oven,” she would say whenever she recounted the story of her first apple pie.

            As far as I’m concerned, that’s what bakeries are for.

             

           

 

           

Livestock

                 When she saw a mouse in her house, my mother’s declaration that the place was “filled with livestock” made me picture cattle rambling through the living room. (She was occasionally given to hyperbole.)

             I first saw our little mouse when he ran from under the basement door to hide behind the dry sink in the family room. My shriek made him do an about face and race back to the depths from which he had come. I stuffed a towel under the door, hoping he would give up and go away.   

             He didn’t. The hole he nibbled out of the edge of the plastic cookie container sitting on my kitchen counter was huge. Then I noticed a sesame cookie resting behind the back burner of the stove. When I told my husband I thought it must be a huge mouse to be able to carry food that size, he came to see. By the time hubby walked into the kitchen the cookie was gone – and that was in broad daylight.

            I bought every kind of mousetrap you can think of. Most of them grossed me out. I dreaded having to see its little head …well, you know. I found one trap that actually kept the dearly departed inside, hidden in a separate compartment. I put every kind of lure I could find in that trap but no luck. The only other thing I could think to do next was stay up all night armed with a shotgun and night vision goggles.

            Meanwhile, I kept the counters clear of cookies and even put the sugar bowl in the toaster oven every night. I planned to starve the bugger out but I think Mother Nature took care of our little visitor.

            We live in the boonies and our property butts up to open fields. On wintery mornings I find some mighty strange tracks in the snow. If I were a hunter I would probably know what livestock are roaming around our trees and under our windows at night; I can tell you the creatures are not small and they take big strides. I see hoof prints but those long sets of three horizontal lines, two up front and one behind, are pretty scary.

            I think mousie went outside searching for food one night and got et.