One Funny Fruitcake Story

Now, truthfully, I really like fruitcake...Especially Harry & David's wonderful, crumbly dark fruitcake (not that sticky-sweet fruitcake confection they make). But I sure can't get any now that I don't have the employee discount any more! Have to settle for that awful store-bought sweet stuff now, the bricks with the big red and green candied cherry thingies in 'em - yuck.

Anyway, I thought this column from radio commentator Tom Morgan was pretty funny. Hope you like it:

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Tom...as in Morgan

Tears stream down my cheeks, splatter upon the keyboard as I write this. Yes, I have descended into the goop of sentiment. Tis the season, you see. Christmas past, and all that. I wallow in the memories of the yuletides of my childhood.

One memory stands out as clearly as that angel that glitters atop your Christmas tree. I see us lugging home packages of my favorite things. Dried cherries and prunes. Shrivelled plums and oranges. Dehydrated berries and grapes. Pickled lemon rinds. There is lil' Tommy dragging the sacks of walnuts to the hearthstone where he flails at them with his trusty hammer.

Yes, friend, ours was a blessed fruitcake house.. While other childies were nestled in their beds, we were stuffing fruits and nuts down the mouth of our meat grinder.

Handling with care, we blended the entrails from the grinder with sugar, molasses, treacle, rum, motor oil, cement, tar dipped raisins. Ever so gently we tumbled them in our concrete mixer. We dumped the glorious result, still throbbing, onto our oversized kitchen table.

Machete to hand, we hacked off chunks from this corpus delectable. Next, our tiny finners' mashed the chunks into small rectangular pans. Mother would slip these into the commercial oven that took up half the garage and turn up the heat.

Every few minutes, it seemed, we pestered her. ''Are they done yet, Mom? Are they?'' After what seemed like a month - it was really only a week - she would fling open the oven door and proclaim the fruit cakes ready for wrapping.

Out would come the rolls of aluminum foil and ribbon, the mailing cartons so sturdy. Did we sneak a few nibbles while we wrapped? Did we hide the odd fruitcake 'neath our pillows for late night snacks? Only our orthodontists knew for sure. We were the only kids in our class who had full dentures by fifth grade. For years, our dad wrote out his mortgage checks to good ol' Dr. Laraway, DDS.

Having bundled up our wee packets of cheer for mailing we then fork-lifted them to the Post Office. When she paid the postage, Mother always included a discreet contribution to the Mail Deliverer's Hernia Fund. It was her little Christmas gift to the men and women in blue.

We tootled home, warmed with the knowledge we had brightened the Christmas of friends and relatives across the fruited plain. As my head sank into its pillow it danced with visions of folks unwrapping our efforts. ''Oh look, Sam. Why it's a....it's a....a fruitcake from the Morgans!''

In a twinkling, our mailbox was stuffed with cards and notes of gratitude. Looking back on these memories I am heartened that my mother so loved making these fruit cakes. And that she so thoughtfully involved us kids. It made a difference in my life. Even then, girls would stroke my biceps, would eye the rippling of muscles under my shirt.

''Fruit cakes,'' I would confide. ''Two hundred fruit cakes, that's all it takes.'' The relatives felt blest by my mother's thoughtfulness, of that I have no doubt. There was Uncle Fred. He wrote to ask for extras every year. Until he had finished re-bricking his front walk.

Aunt Hattie shored up her foundation with our little efforts. Not HER foundation. I'm not that old, silly. Her HOUSE foundation. Cousin Max credited us with saving his yacht in the typhoon. ''Best anchor a boat ever saw,'' he boasted.

And in Watertown, which is the city nearest to where most of our relatives lived, dentists were able to take early retirement. One of them glued a plaque to his wall as a tribute to my mother's fruit cakes. That was such a thoughtul gesture.

I know, I know, you want her recipe. Sorry, not from me. My dentures are clamped tight. I am not allowed to divulge her recipe. Those are the conditions of the contract the family signed. With the concrete block firm.

From Tom...as in Morgan.

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