The Pick-up

When my late husband, Mark, found out he had terminal cancer, he decided to do a few of those bucket list things he hadn't done.  One of them was to own an old pick-up.  He had read The Bridges of Madison County and, being a bit of a romantic, thought it would be cool to have an old rig to tool around town in.  So, he bought himself a 1957 Ford pick-up.  Since it was white, we called it "Whitey Ford" after the old baseball player.  It was in pretty good shape and ran well.  Mark loved it.  Trouble was, he only drove it a few times.  Then it became mine.  I drove it to the Farmer's Market on Saturdays, a distance of about 1 mile, but that was about it. 

Six years ago, when I to moved up here to marry Paul, I decided to bring the pick-up along.  After all, now I would be in a more rural setting and a pick-up might come in handy.  So, Whitey came to Palouse.  Most of the time, it sat in the barn gathering dust and bird poop.  We would charge up the battery and take it out every fall to haul logs for the winter fire and then back to the barn it would go.  Not a very exciting life for a pick-up.  Finally, about a year ago, we decided it really should be with someone who would fix it up and take care of it.  Someone who would give it a life more befitting a wonderful old pick-up.  But other things kept taking precedence over selling it.  

Then, about a month ago, Whitey had a chance for  fifteen minutes of fame.  Bookpeople, our favorite bookstore over in Moscow, ID, was having a book reading/concert for Josh Ritter and wanted an old pick-up to use as a stage.  We volunteered and Whitey made the front page of the paper!  It also had a blow-out on the way to town though, which is how we discovered that the tires were no longer safe.  So we bought four new tires and made the decision that we really needed to sell that pick-up.







So, this weekend we took it downtown in Palouse and parked it on the street right on the way to the Palouse Days Car Show in the park.  People come from all around the state to this car show.  We put a sign in the window and hoped for the best.  And it happened.  A gentleman called on Saturday, came to drive it today and loaded it up and took it home.  He is someone who fixes up old cars and trucks and takes them to car shows.  He just loved Whitey which confirmed what we already thought, that it really was a cool old pick-up.

I have mixed emotions today.  I'm really glad that someone bought the truck that appreciates it and will take good care of it.  On the other hand, I'm a little sad to see it go.  But it was time to turn that page.  So long old pal.

Birthday Cake

I don't know about you but I think that when you're a kid, your birthday cake is a big deal.  I remember a doll cake made by Mom that was beautiful, or so I thought.  My Mom is a professional cake decorator.  She's been doing it for over 40 years!  She's made some gorgeous cakes in that time.  So cakes were always kind of a thing when I was growing up.  And there were always scraps of cake to be slathered with a bit of icing to eat!  Funny thing is I don't even like cake that much but I can't resist it that way.  

This week was Peter's tenth birthday...double digits for the boy now.  Because he is into all things related to airplanes, especially WWII airplanes, I suggested an airplane cake for his birthday.  He was very excited about the idea.  I think I made a few stepmom points for that one.

Paul has a great artist's eye so he started designing the structure.  After the pirate ship cake fiasco a few years ago, he's now more aware of the limitations of the medium.  (The back end of the ship collapsed at about midnight the night before!)  He decided on the appropriate plane and sketched out a pattern for getting all the pieces out of two 9"x13" cakes.  Here is the beginning of the cake structure.

Once the basic structure was figured out, I crumb iced the cake.  Crumb icing gives the cake a thinnish layer of icing to catch the crumbs and keep them from getting into the decorated cake. 









Next we had to create just the right color for the airplane.  Something drab green without being unappetizing!  I iced the cake and then worked on smoothing out the icing and adding the details.

 

Finally, Paul added the propeller and tail, red for the Tuskegee Airmen, and the P-51B was finished.  (Click on the photo for better detail.)

Thanks to Mom for all the cake decorating skills-by-osmosis.  By the way, Peter was absolutely thrilled!  That's a good thing to be on your 10th birthday.