After the lunch shift, I got out some cake pans and went to work. I’d found the recipe in an old church cookbook that I came across at a flea market when I was in school. I frequented them and garage sales for exactly this kind of thing—especially old cookbooks from bake sales and church socials. Spiral bound and usually well used, they contained recipes that stood the test of time. Meat loaf, chicken and dumplings, brisket—they were still around for a reason. But I particularly loved the desserts, especially the cakes. Good old-fashioned cakes like triple coconut. Hummingbird. Spice. Black walnut.
I’d gone straight to the black walnut cake recipe in this cookbook because it was on the most worn-out page. The pages with the spatters and the spoon rest stains were the ones used most often, so you knew they’d be good. And this one was no exception. Given to the First Methodist Church cookbook by a Mrs. Myra Oglesby of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, this black walnut recipe was “in my family for generations. My mother used walnuts from her mother’s trees, picked by hand and shelled by the fire.”
I loved this idea. I loved that the cookbook had grease stains and chocolate speckles throughout. I loved that someone a hundred years ago sat by a fire and shelled walnuts. In much the same way a quilt could tell a story, so could a recipe. You could approach an old recipe like a detective and whittle out clues about the people who had written it. Did a recipe call for shortening or butter? Margarine or oleo? The term oleo was used only by people of a certain age, so I could often date the recipe based on this one word. Occasionally, I’d get very lucky and find an old recipe box that contained handwritten index cards, and I’d marvel over the penmanship. People used to write! In cursive! On purpose!
And how charming, albeit frustrating, to find that some of these handwritten recipe cards included measurements only the family would understand. “Two spoonfuls of vanilla using the old blue enameled spoon.” “Three dashes of vinegar from the green glass cruet.” “Add salt till Uncle Elmer’s face pinches.”
The black walnut cake was a labor of love for Mrs. Myra Oglesby, and for anyone who used her recipe to bake for their family and friends. Of all the recipes I’d come across, this one was my favorite. Thick, rich, stacked high with three layers, and flecked with walnuts and cinnamon. The surprise was the slight tang from a cup of buttermilk, and the flecks of coconut that were spread throughout the cake. But the highlight? Delectable cream cheese frosting, whipped fluffy with egg whites and creamy butter.
As I pressed the final touch of chopped walnuts onto the outside edge of the cakes, I glanced out the diner’s big front window and saw that it was almost dark. Where had the time gone? I quickly hurried the cakes into the old-fashioned glass display case by the cash register, where the desserts had lived since the thirties, and turned off the lights. Letting myself out the front door and into the soft early summer evening, I stopped, suddenly overcome by how truly beautiful my hometown was. Had I been taking it for granted all these years?
The streetlights were just coming on, adding another layer of gold against the sunshine peeking over the old elm trees. The streets in the downtown area were a bit higgledy-piggledy, as many of the small towns in the Northeast were. Old Indian trails, post roads, even cow paths had over the years become the roads we see today. The town was built at the foot of the Catskill Mountains, and some of the oldest homes were built almost directly into the hills themselves, with tiered porches spilling down along Main Street.
After being inside all day, I walked the long way around the block to where I had parked, breathing in that special June twilight, where even the air seemed gentle, cushiony on tired arms and legs. Kids were outside, taking advantage of those extra hours of sunshine, riding bikes and yelling back and forth in that unconcerned way all kids have of being present in the moment, and your entire world is whether you can talk your mom into having a Popsicle. I walked a little further, cutting down Locust and down along the river walk, the Hudson sparkling gold and orange. A marshy scent rose as I got closer to the water, clean and a little silty from the oozy mud.
It really was a great little town. If you liked that roll-the-sidewalks-up-at-eight kind of thing.