Locavores

For the past few weeks, people entering the Cranky front door have stepped inside and looked quizzically at the bottoms of their shoes. It's not dog poo, but something equally disgusting: a plum that's seen better days. Squirrels in the Cranky neighborhood have been working overtime for a month to frantically gnaw on the fruits of the Crankies' plum tree and then hurl the remainders down to the sidewalk. Where the ants and flies take over. House Beautiful, this is not.

Back in March, this tree gave little evidence that it would create oozing, buzzing Superfund-type sludge. But that blossoming harbinger of spring has been transformed into a source of fruity, fermenting plum smoosh.

Meta Cranky imagines a perfect world in which tender plum trees would sport warning labels that say: "Hey dummy! Don't plant this by your sidewalk! Only a complete moron would make the mailman walk through plum goo for month and still expect to get the New Yorker on time." Call it a failure of imagination, but she never envisioned that the wee sapling in the back of her car could block the front of the house and create what Herr Cranky now calls "a jungle vibe."

Since this tree is all about fecundity, a fraction of its seed-bearing fruits remain in the tree, where Cranky #2 and her BFF tirelessly arrange ladders to remove as many as possible. Cranky #1 led a party of teenagers into the tree, where even more were secured. Since a truly ripe, mouth-ready plum would either have been 1)gummed by a squirrel or 2)pulverized upon impact with sidewalk, the Crankies are picking their plums al dente, letting them ripen, and then turning them into jam.

Meta Cranky's compulsion to preserve fruity bits in teeny jars is a product of her Red State upbringing. The thickets of ripening sand plums near Cranky Girls' Farm move the locals to stand in sandburrs, among throngs of snakes and clouds of mosquitoes, to fill feed sacks with very small, very local, produce. The locals take these sacks to granny ladies who then make a tart, red jam. People in Philadelphia eat scrapple, which MC can tell you is big mistake. Those crazy Canadians eat cheese curds and gravy, which might be OK if you're trying to pack on blubber like a penguin. In the whole universe of local cuisine, you could do a lot worse than plum jam. It's rather a point of local pride: since this product is not available in stores or on QVC, you're not going to get any unless you make it yourself. Or someone likes you.

The Crankies' very urban plum tree stands in for a thicket of Red State sand plums. What we lack in snakes and sandburrs, we make up for with plummy spots on our living room carpet. Cranky #1 declares that the act of jamming satisfies her itch to hoard food. Apparently, children exposed to the Little House books at an early age will expect to hang onions from their rafters and cram their cellars full of potatoes. If they have neither rafters or cellars, they'll settle for putting plums into mismatched mayo jars.

In 1957, the Cimarron River flooded at Hazel's house, marooning a few dozen aunts, uncles, and babies for several days. Meta Cranky asked Friendly Cousin about this years afterward, wondering what all those people found to eat. Food wasn't a problem, Friendly Cousin reported. Before the cellar filled with water, they brought up all Hazel's canning jars, full of local produce.
--MC

Who Do You Think You Are: The Quaker

The Crankies are taking a road trip this summer and will stop to view their ancestral homeland. Major Cranky's Quaker family hailed from eastern Indiana, where Quakers still abound and will let you go to their fabulous liberal arts college for $44,000/year. Just because they're pacifists doesn't mean they're not capitalists.

DAR Matron and Cranky Oil Baron, Meta Cranky's genealogic-obsessive relatives, have mapped
The Quaker's DNA, so there's very little new ground to be covered in the who-begat-whom department. But smaller Crankies might be interested in info that isn't included in the Indiana Dead Quaker People records.

In every picture MC has seen of The Quaker, he looks like he's already been dead for three days. We recognize that he might be shown to better advantage in pictures prior to 1949. However, the photo of him with his son, grandson, and great-grandson indicates that they're all working from the same basic pattern; he might very well have been Quaker eye candy in the 19th century.

The Quaker left Indiana when his widowed father remarried; his difficult new stepmother helped him light out for the territories to score free real estate in the Oklahoma land run. Late in his life, he spent a weekdays at his son's ranch. His daughter-in-law Hazel recalled him fondly and respectfully, but her details never offered much personality. The most revealing nugget Hazel shared was his habit of reciting the Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley. Riley delighted in homey country rhymes with lots of dropped g's. She heard The Quaker's rendition of  "How Did You Rest, Last Night?" each morning before breakfast. If she harbored homicidal thoughts about the Hoosier Poet or her father-in-law, she kept them to herself:

"How did you rest, last night?"--
I've heard my gran'pap say
Them words a thousand times--that's right--
Jes them words thataway!

Riley is credited with establishing the Midwest's cultural identity; he's got a lot to answer for.

Major Cranky's stories about his grandfather had more narrative arc. For example, good guys caught some bank robbers in the Kansas flint hills while The Quaker was waiting for the land run to start. The good guys applied frontier justice, and the bank robbers were quickly dispatched, with one exception: the 13-year-old robber. The women of the group, including Mrs. Quaker, demanded that the boy be released, and eventually, he was. When Major Cranky first heard this story, he was horrified: "Grandad, I'm only 13. Would you have wanted to hang me?" His grandfather, whose Quaker theology opposed war, slavery, and capital punishment, told him: "Don't. Rob. A bank."

The Quaker adopted new folkways, and even a new religion, in his new venue. He sang in the choir with the Methodists, and even prayed in public when he was asked to say grace over meals. In the 21st century, his notable feature seems to be his even, balanced sensibility: for fun, he and Mrs. Quaker read the Congressional Record of an evening. Sometimes, maybe, No Drama can be a good thing. Sure, Grace Kelly shoots the bad guy to save Gary Cooper. But she only played a Quaker in the movies.
--MC

BFF

There's a special category of really good friend you make before you're six. Cranky #1 discovered her BFF at kindergarten meet-the-teacher and hasn't looked back. Similarly, Cranky #2 picked out her BFF by end-of-business on kindergarten opening day. "She just looked like a really good friend for me," C2 explained. At the end of her first playdate at BFF's house, she announced: "I want to be part of BFF's family." And to their everlasting credit, best friend's family didn't smile tightly and reflexively recoil.

Recently, BFF walked home from school with the Crankies, and en route she reflected on the responsibility of best-friendness. "It's not easy being Cranky #2's best friend," BFF observed seriously. "She hugs me really hard." Even if your politics and taste in significant others diverge wildly, your pre-6 BFF will remember that your panties had big picture of Cinderella on the butt, and that you used to hug really hard.

If MC's best-friend-since-we-were-four ever decides to write a tell-all, then MC is in big trouble. People who know the color of the shag carpet in your childhood bedroom are bound to have other intimate details in their files. Happily, the benevolent BFX4 publicly remembers only the least-embarrassing anecdotes. Since her knowledge of Cranky Farm lore is infinite, she is a fabulous reference for C1 and C2. Ask her about testing Cranky Sergeant's reflexes by putting a rubber snake in the garden: MC collapsed into the strawberry bed while watching her mother chop BFX4's rubber snake into tiny bits with a hoe. The snake was sliced like a loaf of French bread, Cranky Sergeant was triumphantly flustered, but MC and her BFX4 were transcendentally thrilled with the success of their joke.

The all-day breakfast joint with the gingerbread pancakes and Zen vibe features quotes on the back page of its menu. The one that resonates for Meta Cranky reads something like: "a good friend will visit you in prison. A really good friend will come to your lecture." Since she read that menu years ago, MC has developed her own list of what a really good friend will do: Be charming to your geezer relatives. Check your head for lice. Help you retrieve an impounded car and keep it a secret for 20 years. These are the friends, as an adult, you are drawn to because of their wit, their braininess, or their selfless generosity. Yet there are other friends who met you when you were just an illiterate mass of narcissistic id, and they loved you anyway.
--MC

Tales from the Crypt

How does Meta Cranky know that she's become a crone? Let's count the ways. Could it be that she's the only mommy in the kindergarten hallway gallery whose hair is colored with a gray crayon? Perhaps the most recent Mother's Day card: "My mommy's name is Meta Cranky. She is 78 years old." Then there's that Wheatsville checker who looked at Herr (and Meta) Cranky's membership card and announced, with anthropologist-like fascination, that he was born after they joined the co-op. We could have told them that humans mated with Neanderthals! Heck--we lived down the street from Flying Aardvark and Runs Like a Girl!

Yet leave it to a faceless institution to deliver the unkindest cut. Here's the latest indignity: MC has contacted her alma mater to see whether it would like to charge her outrageous tuition to take a few classes. Since MC's path is generally the complicated one, she asked for, and received, especially helpful instructions from the helpful admissions office. In the process of dredging up MC's historic academic information, Ms. Helpful promised to call if her transcripts were no longer legible. "Come again?' asked MC. "The microfiche deteriorates over time. But that's OK. You'll have time to order a copy from the originals." The microfiche deteriorates over time? To paraphrase Ms. Helpful: MC has generated documents so old that they require special conservation techniques. Like an original reel of Birth of a Nation. Or a lovely French cave painting.

Wait, there's more: "That would include your transcript from A&M." Now this bit of information was fascinating, since MC never attended A&M, although she was once provisionally admitted to library school at UCLA (without applying!). The answer to that puzzler is that MC took a class at a school so long ago that the school's name has changed. Happens all the time. The creepiest part, however, is that MC has no memory of taking any class at that university. Herr Cranky still owns a working cerebral cortex, and he declares it was a Spanish class. If that's the case, then why doesn't MC speak Spanish?

MC chooses to see this loss of memory as an opportunity to create her own reality. Of course she took a summer Spanish class in 1984! If she digs around in the bottom of her purse, she'll find her diploma from the NASA cooking school and a pay stub from her part-time brain surgery gig. The one at the drive-thru clinic. You think she doesn't have a license to practice law? She'd show it to you, but the records burned up in that fire they had in San Francisco. You know, the one after the earthquake?
--MC

Roundup

The school year is drawing to a close, and Meta Cranky has proof. She visited the Kindergarten Roundup for the '10-'11 crop of small people and recognizes that Cranky #2 soon will be displaced by someone younger and cuter. At Kinder Roundup, MC watched impossibly young parents copying wee children's passports and presenting a very great number of immunization forms from California. The Crankies' school is, apparently, very popular with people born in California five years ago. The school professionals inspired friendly confidence in anxious parental units; no child is, as of yet, being left behind.

Meta Cranky felt a twinge as she watched these parents sitting in uncomfortable folding chairs. They're still thinking it's about their children, she observed. From her eight years of elementary mommy experience, MC can report: yes, but. If MC ran the public school system, there would be an open bar at Kindergarten Roundup and the principal would share the following info:

Moms and dads. Look around the room. You will be seeing one another quite a bit for the next little while. Unless you come across with $15K/year for private school, win the lottery at the Ann Richards leadership academy (girls only!), bail early to go to a middle school magnet program, or the economy recovers and you get your old job back in California, you will know these faces in exquisite detail by the end of 2017. That's seven years. About a hundred birthday parties. Want to do girl scouts/boys scouts? That's 2 meetings/month X 9 months X 7 years. Not counting campouts. Do the math. Now guestimate how many hours you could share with these people doing playground duty, Spring Fling silent auction, or Carnival food booths. I think you see where I'm going here.

Some of these people will be within your comfort zone for friendliness/snarkiness/perkiness/ sincerity/absent-mindedness. Some of them will not. You will do yourselves an enormous favor if you can, at your earliest convenience, recognize your tolerance for these qualities and migrate toward your tribe. Some of these people will laugh at your jokes. Others will ask you, sincerely, if you think the principal can get the janitor to address his butt crack issue.

MC once sold baked goods for an entire evening with two other Veteran Mommies. During their Carnival stint, they were confronted by New Mommy, who had a serious problem with a confetti egg that had been broken inside the building. "I'll clean it up," offered MC. "The children should know not to bring them in the building!" steamed New Mommy. "Maybe you should put up a sign if that's the policy," suggested MC, helpfully, "Besides, I'll clean it up." "The janitors will be SO angry," New Mommy tossed over her shoulder as she stomped off. Veteran Mommies looked at each other thoughtfully. Then one VM offered kindly, "She's a Kindergarten Mom. When she's a Fifth Grade Mom, she'll know." The other VM observed: "We will crush her."

Some kindergarteners are heartbreakingly sweet. Others will be sent to the principal's office after they squeeze the hamster. You will learn to tell the difference. Similarly, you will learn that you can have a grand time slinging lasagna in the school cafeteria if only you get the right shift.

In summary, Kinder parents: Be smart. Use the buddy system. Be kind to one another. Or it will be a very long seven years.
--MC

Cakes We Have Known

After weeks of school deadlines, work deadlines, and time out for strep throat, the Crankies found themselves on a Friday afternoon with time on their hands. The day cried out for recreational baking, and the Crankies answered the call. Gardener Friend had turned them on to the recipe on the back of the German Chocolate box; the Crankies consider her a reliable source, and not just because of that thing she does with her blender and the margarita mix. Faced with the empirical data, however, Meta Cranky quailed. She cannot serve a cake involving eight eggs and 3.5 cups of butter unless someone significant is certifiably dead or recently born. The Crankies found a slightly less caloric alternative, and no one has asked for three cups of butter on the side.

MC has told small Crankies that their lives would be different if she could make piecrust; she sincerely believes that piecrust is a quality of life issue. A house with an efficiently working rolling pin operates on a rareified plane, like a household where people casually lapse into Latin. MC can produce a pie, but the crust is an awkward exercise rather than a joyous, confident celebration of sugar and fat. The undertaking is not unlike P.G. Wodehouse's description of the "furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French." It can be done, certainly, but at what cost.

Still, cakes require no apology. MC's menu rotates around a half dozen or so that are forgiving and have ingredients generally found in the pantry. Back in the day, she thought highly of Mrs. Melton's Pear Cake, which always arrived from Denton in a paper sack. Not until she read the instructions did MC glean that the paper sack was part of the recipe. Take Mrs. Melton's cake out of the oven and put it in a paper sack for some completely arbitrary amount of time. Let's say 2.25 minutes. And then you're done. MC has absolutely no excuse for not asking Mrs. Melton, Hey, what's the deal with that paper bag? when she had a chance. Now it's lapsed into the fog of mystery like Piltdown Man, or what John Edwards ever saw in Rielle Hunter.

Mrs. Melton's Pear Cake requires pears, and that means planning and organization. Yet even a person on deadline who has been eating Ramen noodles for a week can make Chocolate Oatmeal Cake out of available materials. Jacki and Hadacol gave MC this nicely typed recipe card back in Age of Metternich. Jacki said, essentially, Take this, you won't be sorry. When MC pulled out a pencil to copy it down, Jackie graciously offered the very same card, saying she'd long since memorized it. With this baby, you get your yin (the thrill of chocolate and coffee) along with your yang (good-for-you oatmeal). It's like putting Metamucil (or Colon Blow, as Hazzir calls it) in your milkshake. Two great tastes that, when combined, will stave off intestinal cancer.

Perhaps someday MC will wield a pastry bag with enough flair to wildly misspell in icing something worthy of Cakewrecks (Thanks for being our "Dad" remains a fav). Or finally become proficient in parchment paper and produce those multi-layered beauties that get served up on Aunt Minnie's Fostoria cake plate. Until then, we'll rely on an enthusiastic audience to move our product.
--MC

Update on My Secret Sharer

As previously reported, Meta Cranky has been robbed. Specifically, an Indian academic in Orissa put his name on an essay MC published very long ago. Since then, MC has been gratified to watch red-faced, apoplectic professor-types hold forth on the topic of on plagiarism. Her favorite, thus far, is a professor who, when presented with plagiarism, has re-instated students who dropped her class in order to fail them. Insert Clint Eastwood in "To Sir With Love" and you get the picture. Buy an essay from Questia and make her day, sucker.

MC contacted the journal that published her long-ago essay. Its lawyers asked how much of MC's essay was republished under Secret Sharer's name. Percentage-wise. Well, SS left off the epigram and inserted some British-isms. That should knock off a percent or two. In fairness, Secret Sharer appears to have read MC's entire essay before he truncated it. Still, she was there first.

Now that she knows her Secret Sharer's name, MC's curiosity has gotten the best of her. SS's vita is online, as is the website of his current university. She wants to know why a person from a 3,000 year-old culture, who speaks Hindi and Oriya, bothers with the topic of her essay. MC's plagiarist is from the ancient Kalinga nation, readers; the author of the Mahabarata was born in the city where Secret Sharer teaches. Its residents are rightly proud of their 72-foot statue of Lord Hanuman. They would be within their rights to sniff at a potboiler by 19th-century British girl who kind of complicated Percy Shelley's first marriage.

MC thinks the principal of Secret Sharer's school offers a clue. The principal's message on the school website notes that: "The rationate of education can only be realised when the drive to a mindless competition for jobs is stopped. In its place we will try for holistic assemblage of mind and body. Our goals is to reorient education in this direction." A climate of "mindless competition for jobs" could move a faculty member of a small college to think he needed to steal my essay. Let's remember, though, Lord Hanuman's curse. Hanuman, you will recall from the nine-hour Broadway production of the Mahabarata, cannot remember his powers unless someone else tells him what they are:

You are as powerful as the wind (Hanumanji was the son of Pawan, God of wind);

You are intelligent, illustrious & an inventor.

There is nothing in this world that’s too difficult for you;

Whenever stuck, you are the one who can help.

Mary Shelley seems a little pedestrian compared to all that.
--MC