The Rural Diaries

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The Rural Diaries Page 11

by Hilarie Burton


  I flipped through the glossy cellophane pages. There were Barb and Dick, grinning with their plastic cups of wine. Celeste, the shop’s chocolate maker, in a cute nineties sundress. Faces I recognized from the shop smiled or stuck out a tongue, hamming it up. And there was Ira, with his thick curly hair, not a trace of gray, wearing a suit and beaming. His dream sprawled across the pages of that album.

  John eased himself into the chair beside me. It was as if all the panic and adrenaline that had fueled his long days since Ira had passed just drained away. He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

  In a quiet voice John told me about how his birth father had died the day after he was born. He was lucky though, because not only did he have this wonderful stepfather, Roger Hoffman, but he had also had Ira, who hadn’t had any children of his own. All through high school John had been Ira’s star employee, and after John got a business degree at college, Ira created a second manager position for him and paid John’s salary out of his own pocket just to keep him at the store.

  “He used to joke all the time, ‘John I’m going to leave the shop to you.’” John gave me a wry smile and my stomach pitched, overwhelmed by the thought of all the debt Samuel’s had racked up and that Ira’s dream was in danger.

  * * *

  A couple of weeks later, Jeffrey made a short trip home. We invited Andy, Phoebe, Paul, and Julie out for Saturday night sushi at Osaka. Usually, Jeff was obsessed with appetizers and always ordered far too many, completely stuffing himself before dinner arrived, but that night he was focused. As we were all sitting down at the table, Jeff launched his idea: “I think we should buy the candy store.”

  Surprised, I turned my head and looked at him, silently asking, What are you talking about? We had talked about helping John, but now we were buying a candy store?

  If the others were surprised too, it didn’t last long. In fact, it wasn’t even a discussion; everyone was on board. We loved Ira, and Samuel’s was an institution in our town. We could not let it turn into an anonymous franchise store. This was not a business opportunity for us; this was a save-Samuel’s-for-the-town situation. It was a preservation initiative.

  John Traver agreed to meet with us, so we three couples with four children in tow gathered at Samuel’s, the eleven of us crowded around two tiny tables as John laid out the worst-case scenario for the shop—how much monthly overhead was, how much money was owed to various vendors. He paused as he spoke, careful with his words.

  It was pretty dire. Samuel’s was deeply in debt. Then, John quietly admitted that he hadn’t cashed a paycheck in two months because there wasn’t enough money in the account. He showed us the equipment. A huge refrigerator took up half the shop and didn’t work; the coffee machines needed attention, and the coffee wasn’t great. Ira had started ordering the cheapest supplies he could get; the candy was all penny candy. Everything was an economy choice, yet still the shop had maintained its charm because of Ira.

  John knew it was going to be daunting to step into the shoes Ira left behind. He was shy. He was very thoughtful. He remembered every customer’s name down to every kid who came into the shop. But, being a dynamic force like Ira is a lot day in and day out. It would require a big change of personality and extroverted energy, and we needed to know whether John really wanted that. Our other fear was that we were going to buy the place and then John, the person who held all the knowledge and all the relationships with the vendors, who was the key to the whole business, would decide to leave. He had already been offered a significantly higher-paying job at the Wells Fargo bank in town.

  Rhubarb Preserves

  Rhubarb takes a couple of seasons to come in; you have to plant it and let it grow for two years. So while I still had to earn my gardening stripes at Mischief Farm, I pillaged the farmers’ market for the best rhubarb, with its bright pink and red stalks. My great-grandfather, Dirk Kolenbrander, used to make a strawberry-rhubarb preserve that he would send through relatives to us, all the way from Iowa, where he was a reverend. He was a regal-looking man, with snow-white hair and vintage browline glasses that were so old they became hip again. He wore inexpensive but beautiful suits and raised bright children with my great-grandma Nellie.

  The image of this elegant man rolling up his sleeves and making preserves in between writing sermons always captivated me. The preserves would arrive in recycled plastic containers, and us kids would crowd around the table, where mom would slather hunks of bread with Great-Grandpa-Dirk-strawberry-rhubarb preserves and dole them out. Then Mom added rhubarb to the strawberries in her garden so she could make it too. Now I use that recipe to make my own preserves.

  I’m a preservationist, and Jeffrey is too. In a way, moving to Rhinebeck was an act of preservation. Both self-preservation and also the preservation of a set of ideals—volunteerism and community.

  After watching the mom-and-pop shops of our childhoods get swallowed up by big box stores and strip malls, we’d found a new, safe place in Rhinebeck. Losing Ira was hard, and the idea of losing Samuel’s was devastating, given the twenty years of love Ira had put in to the store, giving all of us in town a place we considered “our spot.”

  Ira had planted the shop. We were gonna keep making the jam.

  Kolenbrander Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam

  2 cups fresh strawberries, crushed

  4 cups chopped fresh rhubarb

  ¼ cup bottled lemon juice

  1 package (1¾ ounces) powdered fruit pectin

  5½ cups sugar

  In a Dutch oven, combine strawberries, rhubarb, and lemon juice. Stir in pectin. Bring to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly. Stir in sugar. Return to a full rolling boil. Boil and stir for 1 minute. Remove from heat. Skim off foam. Ladle hot mixture into six hot, sterilized pint jars, leaving ¼ inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace if necessary by adding hot mixture. Wipe rims. Center lids of jars. Screw on bands until fingertip tight.

  Place jars into canner with simmering water, ensuring they are completely covered with water. Bring to a boil. Process for 5 minutes. Remove jars and cool.

  * * *

  I knew it was his life and his decision to make. I asked him point blank: “John, what do you want out of your life? Do you what to be the town candy man until you retire, or is this just a chapter for you?”

  The town is in John’s blood. His father had been a beloved member of the town council. Streets are named after his family, which goes back to the 1700s. And his parents are small business owners here in the community. So I wasn’t surprised when he said without hesitation, “I want to do this forever.”

  We were so relieved. John was the key to making sure that this was going to work.

  As we started gathering the kids, John put his hand over his heart and said, “You don’t know what this means to me.”

  Next, we went to Ira’s husband and asked whether he would be interested in selling the business to us. We offered to buy it for the amount of debt that the shop owed so he could pay off all the debt and clear Ira’s name.

  Grief is a confusing thing, and everyone grieves differently. Given the shop’s debt, Ira’s husband seemed to see-saw between being happy that we were trying to save the shop and resentful that Samuel’s existed at all. The negotiations lasted from May to December, but during that time, the friendships among our group of friends were fortified, along with our resolve to make sure Samuel’s thrived.

  Meanwhile, other people were circling the shop, coming in the doors with real estate agents. One investor wanted to turn it into a cybercafé, and another person wanted to turn it into a bicycle shop. All of a sudden, people who had not been friends with John Traver were showing up asking a lot of questions.

  The building was owned by a gentleman who owned a number of places in the historic district and lived in Florida. The landlord, Joan, ran everything for him in town, and her son Bill was the building manager of the shop; so I went out to lunch with Joan and learned everything I could—that they
hadn’t been charging Ira what they could have for rent, and that they hadn’t raised the rent in years because they knew he couldn’t afford it. Joan was gun-shy about asking us for more, but we knew that there were things that needed to be fixed that Ira hadn’t mentioned to them because he was so ashamed that he wasn’t paying the rent. The bathroom had a leak, the floor needed to be fixed, the place had electrical issues and a number of outlets that didn’t work, and the back screen door was falling off and needed paint. During the months that we were negotiating with Ira’s husband, we were also getting our ducks in a row.

  We decided that Andy, Julie, and I would be the managing partners and that we would report back to Phoebe, Paul, and Jeff. Andy and I would take our kids with us when we met with the accountant who had been doing Ira’s taxes. We saw this as an opportunity to teach our kids about business so when they grew up they’d have no issue going into the office of an accountant or a lawyer. We took them to our lawyer meetings with John Marvin. We took them to the bank branch in Rhinebeck when we opened our new account with David Tellerday—yes, he’s a banker and his name is Tellerday. He let the kids play with the stuff on his desk while we figured out what type of account to open.

  The town rallied around the preservation of Samuel’s. Everybody wanted the business to succeed. It was Ira’s legacy, and a Rhinebeck institution.

  Friends and neighbors in the community doubled down. David began coming in regularly for coffee and maybe a sweet or two. He observed the way things had been done for years and made helpful suggestions. “Open earlier!” he urged us. “Get the crowd coming in before work.” Dick and Barb would pop over from the department store to see how everything was evolving and to pat John and me on the back. “Keep going,” they said. Parents from Gus’s school became more and more visible in the shop, bringing the kids in after class. This wasn’t just lip service. The community showed up. And they kept showing up.

  11

  People who hire all these things done for them never know what they lose; for the homeliest tasks get beautified if loving hands do them.

  —Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

  A month and a half passed as we worked hard to negoti- ate and navigate the details to buy Samuel’s. During that time, Jeff was still down in Durango shooting the movie, and when he assured me that things were not nearly as dangerous as the interweb made it seem, Gus and I ventured down.

  Durango looks like a town out of a Western movie, complete with a baroque cathedral and an old town prison that has been converted into a hotel, which is where the cast was staying. The tiny rooms used to be jail cells, and there were no better cellmates than my boys. Plus, Chad Michael Murray, my character Peyton’s husband from One Tree Hill, was staying right next door to Jeffrey. My two “husbands,” neither of them legal! Besides Chad, Jeff was working with a fun pack of guys that included Ray Liotta, Chris McDonald, and Bill Paxton, who became Jeff’s closest friend on the project.

  The prison yard was now a courtyard with a pool that sat dead center in the hotel, with all of the cellblocks overlooking it. All the dudes hung out there when they weren’t filming. Bill would bring down his huge hardback copy of his character Sam Houston’s biography and excitedly spout off fun facts about the legend. Bill loved his work. His energy was contagious. Gus called him Uncle Bill and reveled in the attention of these rough and rowdy guys.

  One day by the pool, the guys were raving about Gus, and out of nowhere, Jeff announced in front of all of them that we were trying to have another kid. We’d been busy with settling into Mischief Farm and buying Samuel’s so hadn’t talked further about having another baby. It was news to me that he was on board, but I’d take that news any way I could get it!

  Bill was also on board with this plan and cried out, “All right man! We’ll watch Gus. Go make it happen now!” It was mildly mortifying.

  * * *

  Gus and I returned home, and Samuel’s stayed open by the skin of its teeth. By August it seemed like the deal was going to go through, and come hell or high water I was going to make it work. I lived by the philosophy that if you act like something’s going to go wrong, it will go wrong. If, however, you act like it’s going to go right, it will go right. I could hear my dad’s voice saying the “want-to” creates the “how-to.”

  I took it as a sign when I woke up to a text from our groundskeeper Awesome early one morning.

  There’s more cows.

  Now ol’ Ed Hackett and I had become quite fond of each other by that point. When you get past the rough exterior, you realize Ed is just a guy who really loves his wife, Barb, and their kids and cares a heck of a lot about his community. When he saw how much money we were wasting on tractor gas to mow all our fields, he said, “Why don’t you dummies just let me put some cows in those fields? They’ll handle your grass.” Genius. We’ve been boarding his dairy cows ever since. So when Awesome said there were more cows, I just thought Ed or his son Ed Junior had gotten a jump on the day and dropped more cows off at the crack of dawn.

  I texted Awesome back.

  Okay, great.

  Quickly he responded.

  BABY!

  Baby?! We had a pregnant cow? Still in my pajamas, I threw on boots and raced down to the front pasture in the Rhino. Sure enough, the big chubby cow I thought had just been super lazy in the August heat was not so chubby anymore and was standing guard over her five-minute-old baby. Baby cow hadn’t even stood up yet. He was still covered in gunk and his mama licked at him, loving him through the grooming. Gus was still asleep. Jeff was a world away. I’d been so lonely and unsure of things with the store, then this miracle happened on our farm and the whole world was right again.

  I’ve always believed in signs from the universe. I was a kid who prayed for signs. I would walk to and from school, talking to myself and noticing odd occurrences and taking them as motivation. The flowers are up early—things are going to be great today. There’s a dead baby bird on the ground by the holly bush—I’m done for.

  Privately, I was hoping the calf’s birth was a sign that I’d get pregnant again soon. Although with Jeff away and me ensconced in Samuel’s, it would have taken a whole lot more than a mere sign—it would have taken a goddamn miracle to conceive on the few days we were actually in the same place.

  * * *

  When Gus started school again in September, I created a new routine: drop kiddo off, head over to Samuel’s, do as much as I could to spruce up the place without making it seem like I was doing anything, as we hadn’t legally taken ownership yet, pick up kiddo, head back to farm, hurry out to garden to harvest our first crop of veggies, do rounds on the animals, collect eggs, feed child and dogs, bathe child, bedtime. And then after Gus fell asleep, I’d try to cram in all the paperwork and emails I’d ignored all day.

  Whenever we took ownership of Samuel’s, I wanted the shop to be in good order and a reflection of the love and effort we were all putting into it. To get there, the shop needed a cleaning. A thorough cleaning. John was fanatical about the merchandise and making sure the shelves were dusted and arranged in a tidy fashion. But endless boxes were piled up, the ceiling leaked, the bathroom was in shambles, and there was a trashcan that hadn’t been moved in years. I started pulling everything out from its settled place and uncovered an avalanche of housekeeping. It was like stumbling into a fifteen-year-old boy’s room and opening the closet door to find all the hidden dirty laundry. Essentially, what Samuel’s needed was a mother. I brought cleaning supplies, snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, and got to work.

  The rumor mill in Rhinebeck didn’t have to work very hard before word spread that a bunch of actors were buying the shop, and one of them was literally on her hands and knees scrubbing the shop from top to bottom. Locals started popping in just to see the spectacle of the teen-drama actress turned janitor. Some people had been grumbling about how these “city people” were going to come in and ruin what had been a good thing. And I get it. Ira was beloved, and the shop truly
was a small-town treasure. I understand why people would be concerned about “outsiders” (and Hollywood outsiders, at that!) coming in and turning it into something else. Once we started sprucing the place up, however, John confided in me that people had commented on it to him, saying how they were changing their minds about the upcoming new ownership.

  Once the cleaning mission was complete, one particular eyesore gnawed at me until I couldn’t take it anymore. All along the entire counter of the shop, plates of enticing baked goods were lined up. It would have been a feast for the eyes if not for the scratched-up and yellowing two-by-four-foot sheet of Plexiglas that was supposed to keep germy hands and faces away. It was the least enticing baked goods display on the planet.

  We didn’t own the place yet; negotiations were dragging on and on. But if Samuel’s was ever going to be the cute boutique sweet shop it was destined to be, we had to get rid of that enormous sneeze guard.

  Zucchini for the Win

  Sometimes you just really need a win, an easy layup, a sure thing. During that first year at Mischief Farm, when I was desperately searching for signs that we’d made the right choice and everything was going to be okay, little things could make or break me. Success in the garden was the best of the best signs. And the zucchini in particular were glorious for my ego.

  Honestly, it’s a pretty easy plant. The seeds are big and easy to manage. The plants aren’t fussy about water. And once you get them going, they churn out an absurd amount of food. The blossoms are the loveliest of delicacies, and by now we’ve all seen zucchini ribbons served as pasta, or baked with parmesan cheese, or turned into addictive zucchini bread. Zucchini is a gem with many talents.

 

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