“I never even heard of Betty Ford before,” Sam had told Susan.
He, by choice, came to the office at least three times a week after school. He never told his mother he’d do it for free (he wasn’t that stupid), but it seemed like both deep work and somehow play to sit at Haze’s desk in the late afternoons, reading her words and those of her readers (although from the mid-1990s on, thanks to e-mail, there were far fewer handwritten or typed letters in the files).
He might laugh at a column spotlighting a circus acrobat who’d estimated he’d done forty thousand backflips, and blink back tears of sorrow and rage after reading what Haze wrote after the Columbine high school shooting. And while the early part of the 2000s featured lighthearted personal interest stories (the kid who overcame dyslexia to become a spelling bee victor; Haze’s increasing dismay when standing in front of dressing-room three-way mirrors), almost as many were impassioned and angry.
She wrote about the integrity—or lack thereof—of the 2000 Florida election debacle (“Hanging chads? Sounds like something you’d see a dermatologist for!”), she wrote about the “shock and grief that has knocked me to my knees” after 9/11, and about “the screech of hawks drowning out the coo of doves” in the run-up to the Iraq War.
“RIGHT ON!” “Total drivel!” and “Get over it!” were some of the responses readers had regarding Haze’s Inauguration Day column, and Susan reprinted it, followed by the recipe Haze had originally included.
January 20, 2001
Oh, my. It’s really happened. Our new president was sworn in today. The Supreme Court majority who aided and abetted Mr. Bush’s entry, and who in my opinion sacrificed a concise, thoughtful, and analytical decision to blind partisanship, will forever after (one can hope) have to explain the unexplainable, which is why they let their version of the story trump the real story.
I’m particularly disappointed in Sandra Day O’Connor. I was transfixed by her story—growing up on a Texas cattle ranch as a rough-and-tumble young girl, armed with a rifle, shooting jackrabbits for food. She ultimately went on to Stanford Law School and found it hard to find employment but ultimately had various positions as an attorney. While people (of the male persuasion) were trying to pull her down, down, down, she worked her way up and up and ultimately reached the pinnacle of her law profession, becoming a Supreme Court judge.
There were four other wrong votes besides hers, but as she had been a swing voter of late, seeming to regard her rulings on a case-by-case basis, I thought she’d swing right this time. Right meaning correct, not right meaning political leaning. I thought this because she’s a woman, and I always hold women to higher standards. Because in truth, we seem to want to do right more: right for everyone, not just for ourselves. Even as I type that, it seems an over-the-top statement, but really, isn’t it true? Aren’t the mothers on the block always looking out for all the children, aren’t our first teachers (mostly female) the ones negotiating for fair play, teaching us empathy and how to get along?
And then those gifts are dismissed as slight, unrealistic, and, worse, feminine.
I’m furious at Judges Scalia, Rehnquist, Kennedy, and Thomas, who proved that impartiality and fair-mindedness is not the rule of law, but I’ve swallowed an extra dose of disappointment over Judge O’Connor, because as a woman, I expected her to be on the right side.
I feel so helpless and unheard right now . . . you may too. Or you may not. In either case, enjoy these bars, which have earned their title.
SUPREME LEMON BARS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2 cups flour
½ cup powdered sugar
1 cup softened butter
In a large bowl, combine above ingredients until crumbly. Press into bottom of ungreased 13″ × 9″ pan. Bake for 25–30 minutes or until golden brown.
Combine in large bowl:
4 slightly beaten eggs
2 cups sugar
¼ cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
Stir in ¼ cup lemon juice. Pour over warm crust. Bake for an additional 25–30 minutes until top is light golden brown. Cool completely.
In a small bowl, combine 1 cup powdered sugar and 3 T lemon juice (use more juice if you want thinner consistency), and drizzle over cooled bars. Optional: Sprinkle with blueberries or other fruit.
Makes about 36 bars.
To the Editor:
Haze Evans’s recipe does me no good as I don’t bake. But here’s a little recipe I’d like to pass on to her:
1 cup personal interest stories
½ cup wit
½ cup insight
1 T local flavor
Mix well, and serve to an appreciative public. Meanwhile, toss out all political rants and smart-aleck recipe titles.
Sincerely,
Harlan Dodd
While it wasn’t as biting as the letters Joseph Snell had written, it was the first letter from Harlan Dodd that sounded like the Harlan Dodd Sam knew, and it was printed in the paper on Monday. On Tuesday, they printed another politically charged column but with no accompanying recipe.
October 29, 2002
There are some pretty sights to see on the ride down from Granite Creek to Minneapolis, but those of us in the van were so lost in our thoughts that even when we looked out the windows, I doubt we really saw the lakes, the last colorful hurrahs of the deciduous trees, the golden bristle of harvested farm fields, scenes I’ve witnessed during countless autumn drives. Although we were traveling in a journalistic capacity, it was more a pilgrimage we were making, and inside the van it was as quiet and somber as a funeral cortege, which I suppose it was, even as we lacked a hearse or a riderless horse and weren’t in a line of cars with their headlights on.
It has been a hard four days. When the first reports came in about a small plane crash, I felt that flick, that flick of a black shade being yanked down on my normal, sunny, smiley day. “No!” was my inner shout (or maybe it was outer, as I was home with a cold and heard the news on the radio, and when I’m alone, I may occasionally talk aloud to myself): “A private plane carrying Senator Paul Wellstone, his wife, daughter, and campaign aides went down in a small northern Minnesota town.”
I’ve had conversations/arguments/shout-fests with plenty of people, but I knew many Republicans who loved our senator as much as Democrats did. He was the rare politician who cared, who went into politics for the best reason, for what should be the only reason: to help people.
“We all do better when we all do better,” was one of his many true and pithy sayings, and he worked hard every day in his sly, good-humored way to bring this particular philosophy to bear. I loved him as much as you can love a politician before worrying about your mental health.
The van drove past the exit that would in normal times lead us to Junie’s, the best truck-stop restaurant in the world, but none of us had an appetite, and besides, we didn’t want to be late for the memorial service.
“I’m going to pay tribute to Paul Wellstone, and in my suitcase I’m bringing . . . Affection.”
I don’t know what compelled me to break the somber silence with a riff on the old car-trip game that kids play, and Susan McGrath, who sat next to me in the back seat, threw me a sharp and puzzled look but seconds later said, “Well, I’m going to pay tribute to Paul Wellstone, and in my suitcase I’m bringing Affection and . . . Bravery.”
“I’m going to pay tribute to Paul Wellstone,” said Mitch Norton, our paper’s managing editor, who was driving, “and in my suitcase I’m bringing Affection, Bravery and . . . Commitment.”
We played the game all the way to Z, and I don’t remember all the words said and who said them, but I do remember “honor,” “love,” and “sorrow.”
It was an emotional, sometime raucous service, attended by national politicians, including Senator Ted Kennedy and former president Bill Clinton. There were some in the arena who booed politicians who stood for things opposite of what Wellstone stood for, and I found that booing
disrespectful—at least they showed up!—but when emotions are running high and raw, manners are sometimes forgotten. There were musical performances and eulogies given not just for Paul Wellstone, but for his wife, daughter, and aides, eulogies that ran the gamut from humorous to anguished to long-winded. Later some television and radio pundits who weren’t even at the arena—weren’t even in the state!—were outraged by the “incivility” of a memorial service that often seemed more like a political rally (well, Senator Wellstone was, after all, a politician), made the ridiculous claims that the audience had to be prompted to applaud, that the overflow crowd packing the arena included busloads of people paid to attend.
None of them mentioned the man being honored, wondered why over twenty thousand (unpaid) people felt a need to go to his memorial service (it’s the only senator’s funeral I’ve ever felt a need to attend). None of them thought to talk to all those whose faces were etched with sadness, whose hearts, if x-rayed, would have shown breaks. None of these pundits were curious enough to let go of the story they wanted to tell.
This was the thing about Paul Wellstone: he believed in stories, in yours and mine and ours, and his job was to do everything he could to make those stories better.
EVEN AS SAM’S FINGER PUSHES THE DOORBELL, he tells himself, there’s still time to go, and after hearing the three-note ding-dong-ding and waiting a respectable two seconds, he is ready to turn around and flee.
The door opens.
“What?” shouts the old man, as if Sam were a persistent Jehovah’s Witness.
“I . . . I brought you some cookies.”
“Cookies!” says Mr. Dodd, and although he sounds as if he were scolding Sam, he motions him in with a furious wave of his liver-spotted hand.
Following the man through the living room and into the kitchen, Sam is compelled to remark, after the man’s motioned him to sit at the small dinette table, “It’s so clean in here!”
Harlan Dodd looks at the boy as if all marbles he might have possessed have been scattered.
“Why does that surprise you?”
Not knowing the answer himself, Sam shrugs.
“Do you drink coffee?” barks Mr. Dodd, “because I personally can’t eat a treat without coffee.”
That the man uses the word treat makes Sam smile, but whereas Mr. Dodd might have asked, “What’s so funny?” he doesn’t, because he’s opening a canister at the counter, and as he makes coffee, Sam looks around the neat kitchen, marveling at the precise rectangle of the dish towels hanging from the oven handle, at the gleaming white-tiled counter whose only occupants are the coffee maker and a toaster. A television in another room is on, and Sam hears agitated, albeit muted, voices squabbling about Obamacare.
As the coffee brews, the old man sets china cups, saucers, and dessert plates on the table.
“Uh, can I help you?” Sam asks.
“Do I look like I need help?”
Sam cringes at the man’s sharp tone.
“It’s . . . it’s just that these are my wife’s things,” says Mr. Dodd, his voice still gruff but slightly softened by apology. “I don’t want anything to break.”
Mr. Dodd had been long widowed when the Carroll-McGrath family moved in next door, and it’s hard for Sam to imagine he was ever married.
“You must miss her,” he says after a long, awkward pause.
“Of course I miss her!”
“What was her name?” The words are out of Sam’s mouth before he can censor himself, something he immediately thinks he should have done, judging from Mr. Dodd’s apoplectic face.
“Katie!” he says with the same sneer he might say, “Idiot!”
He busies himself at the refrigerator and a cupboard and returns with a matching china creamer and sugar bowl. Cloth napkins and heavy silverware are taken out of a drawer and placed on the table, and finally, when the coffee’s brewed, Mr. Dodd serves it and sitting across from Sam, helps himself to a cookie.
“Katie—of course her real name was Kathryn,” he says. “She would have said, ‘Harlan, you’ve got company. Put those treats on a proper plate!’”
Looking at the table set with the kind of dishes his mother keeps (but rarely uses) in a hutch in their dining room, Sam says, “I’m surprised you let me sit here, let alone bring out all this nice stuff.”
“And why’s that?”
Sam wishes he had a switch to turn off the blush that warms his face. It’s one thing to feel stupid but another to show that you feel stupid.
“Well, you don’t exactly like me much.”
Mr. Dodd chews for a moment and takes a sip of coffee.
“I don’t know you enough to like or dislike you. Although I’m fairly sure you like to visit me on Halloween—even though you and your friends seem to prefer the trick part over the treat.”
Another wash of color rises on Sam’s neck and face as he thinks, busted, and he mumbles, “Sorry.”
“Silly me—I thought putting bags of dog excrement on people’s doorstep and setting them on fire was a thing of the past! I was so glad to see you boys brought back the tradition.”
Sam looks up, surprised at Mr. Dodd’s joking tone.
“And the—what was it, lard, Crisco—on my door handle the year before? Priceless. Whatever will you do for this Halloween?”
Sam smiles and says helpfully, “Well, we could always TP your backyard.”
It appears joke time is over when Mr. Dodd says with gruffness back in his voice, “Don’t you dare,” but seconds later he laughs, and Sam, relieved, joins him.
Minutes pass as they enjoy their “treats,” which Sam’s coffee also turns into, thanks to all the cream and sugar he pours into it.
“You say you made these?” says Mr. Dodd, examining a cookie, and when Sam nods, he says, “What shape are they supposed to be exactly?”
Sam shrugs. “Crescents, but it was hard rolling them out.”
Taking a bite, the old man chews, swallows, and says, “They taste better than they look.”
“Thanks. They’re one of Haze’s recipes.”
“Katie always enjoyed those, and her columns.”
“So did you. At least you used to.”
Mr. Dodd looks at him oddly, and Sam explains.
“I’ve been working for my mom . . . at the Gazette, reading Haze’s columns and all the letters from readers. She saved them all.”
Mr. Dodd nods, his gazed fixed on the cream pitcher in front of him.
“Katie was the one who introduced me to Ms. Evans’s columns,” he says, emphasizing the “Ms.” “When she and I were first married, we’d sit here at this same table, and she’d read them aloud to me, and then I’d read aloud the funnies to her. Mark Trail and Hi and Lois were her particular favorites.”
Sam stares at Mr. Dodd; he can’t picture the old man reading the funnies to anyone.
After a moment he says, “I noticed that you seemed to like her columns, at least by the letters you wrote in, but then you changed, and you started writing letters like the one we reprinted the other day.”
Not content with a mere bite, Mr. Dodd pops a whole cookie in his mouth and chews for a long while, and after a generous slug of coffee he says, “Haze Evans is a fine storyteller—when she’s content telling just a story. But her political rants and raves got to be a bit . . . much.”
Sam listens for a moment to the televised voices, one of which is hollering about “Benghazi!”
“Like those?”
Boy and man stare at each other for a long time.
“So tell me more about your wife,” says Sam finally. It’s a peace offering the man accepts, and twenty minutes pass as Dodd tells Sam of the love of his life, who had the mind of a judge (“she easily could have been one, but she ran her own business instead—Interiors by K. D.) and the looks of Connie Stevens (“not that you’d know who that was, but believe me, my Katie was favored as physically as she was intellectually), a woman who died far too young of “that scourge, cancer.”
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When Mr. Dodd offers him a third cup of coffee (he had never before finished even one in his life!), Sam declines, sensing that as a good guest, he should be on his way.
“I’ve got to study for a history exam.”
“It’s important to know your history,” says Mr. Dodd and standing up, adds, “Thank you for the cookies. Thank you for the visit.”
“You’re welcome,” says Sam. “I wouldn’t mind doing it again.”
“Coffeepot’s usually on,” growls Harlan Dodd.
25
“You don’t have to keep calling me Mr. Wilkerson,” says the silver-haired man sitting across from Mercedes. “You could call me James.”
“Only if that’s your name,” says Mercedes. Her reaction to nervousness is to joke, and a little tension evaporates when he chuckles.
“Could I interest you two in any dessert?” asks the server, a young woman whose easy graciousness will take her far in the service (or any) industry.
“What do you recommend?” asks James.
“My favorites are the chocolate mousse—it’s really rich but really worth it—and you can’t go wrong with the warm raspberry cobbler served with our homemade ice cream.”
Mercedes and James exchange twin raised-eyebrow looks.
“Let’s try both,” says James.
IT’S SEVERAL DEGREES from being a balmy autumn evening, and James asks Mercedes if she’d like to walk a bit.
“A walk would be nice,” she says as he helps her put on her coat. “Especially after all that dessert.”
Zig’s Supper Club is on a hill, situated in a neighborhood Mercedes isn’t familiar with, and she enjoys the stroll that takes them alongside a dark expanse that is the golf course, its fairways and putting greens not illuminated by the streetlights.
Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes) Page 24