A. I was in the kitchen, eating ice cream out of the container while searching the internet for someone who would sell me a case of Cricket Cola, to send to a friend who regularly mourns its disappearance.
In the kitchen with me was a small yellow dog belonging to my sister. The dog had just woken up from a nap and, looking for mischief, snatched a sneaker from under my chair and retreated to the far corner of the kitchen to gnaw on it. She looked very pleased with herself. I pretended not to see, hoping that if the attention she clearly desired was not forthcoming she would desist.
This was a silly strategy and after a few minutes I got up and engaged the dog in a game of gimme. We eyed each other from opposite sides of the kitchen island, my sneaker dangling from her grinning mouth. She moves fast and can turn on a dime, but I am bigger and in the end I wrested the shoe away from her.
As I put the shoe out of the dog’s reach, I saw a bookcase on the opposite wall shaking slightly. I watched it for maybe 10 seconds. The workmen next door, I figured, or a low flyover, or maybe a truck drove by and I didn’t notice. I went back to the kitchen and my laptop to see several messages from friends working in Washington and Manhattan saying their buildings were being evacuated due to mysterious shaking. And there on the Times homepage it said: Earthquake strikes entire East Coast; epicenter in Mineral, VA.
Mineral: I’d been through there before, I thought, on a long drive across Virginia, climbing out of the coastal plain and up and over the mountains. The route left I-95 and followed two-lane roads that zipped through little towns with interesting names: Zion Crossroads, Bumpass, Bitterman’s Church, Cuckoo. Mineral is in actuality a very, very small town (pop. roughly 450), but after the towns that precede it – a crossroads with a house on 3 out of 4 corners counts as a town in this part of the world – it makes an impression. There is an abandoned-looking railroad station and a busy Exxon, and all the stores and businesses cluster along the main street. Sagging houses with graceful details – gingerbread trim along the roofline, wraparound porches – line the cross streets, but give way quickly to open fields. Mineral is about an hour from Charlottesville, a decidedly worldly small city, home of the University of Virginia, and an hour and a bit from Richmond, the state capital. It is not, geographically, terribly remote. But it felt silent, forgotten by time, as if it were set much deeper in the countryside than it is. It’s the kind of town country singers write about, the kind of town that dies when the railroad stops coming or the highway is built too far away.
It was gone in the rearview mirror quickly, until it reappeared yesterday. I imagined the rumblings breaking the deep silence of a summer afternoon. CNN visited with Mineral residents and examined broken china and fallen propane tanks. People in Washington and New York went back to work. People in California smirked at all the fuss. People in Mineral, I presume, will glue the china back together, and the town will sink back into quiet.
Q. Where were you during the great Eastern quake of 2011?
Every time I walk through Astoria Park I’m struck by the diversity of activities and people pursuing them. There are dads in t-shirts with the sleeves cut off huffing and puffing and doing that dad-getting-back-in-shape type of jogging where the motion is largely up and down rather than forward. Dad is usually being outstripped by his three-year-old on a tricycle.
A young blond mom in yoga pants powerwalks with aggressive swinging of the hips, accompanied by her small daughter on a scooter in a Barbie helmet who is in the middle of saying “See when you scream at me I just get angry” and the mom is responding “See I scream at you because” and I really want to hear the end of that exchange but they are powerwalking and scootering too fast.
A group of kids are monopolizing the water fountain, filling balloon after balloon with water as a line of sweaty adults hold back their desire for a slurp of water and/or inability to see someone cut a line without barking “hey! you see this line?” because the kids are cute in their excitement about the water balloon project. The project turns out not to be a water balloon fight; they are using the balloons as vessels, filling them, carefully carrying them to a nearby bench, and emptying them into a plastic container, its purpose endlessly absorbing to these girls and completely inaccessible to the waiting adults. Eventually a smiling South Asian man rides by on a bike, assesses the situation, doubles back and asks the girls to let others have a turn.
Hot young things who walk in pairs, their leggings and skintight tops showing off hourglass shapes that would make Kim Kardashian jealous, their ponytails sleek, and their conversations along the lines of “but then Tyler came to her party, and he showed up totally drunk, and” but again we’ve walked past and we’ll never know if Tyler is a boyfriend, cousin, or what, and if his behavior is a serious continuing issue, or not that big of a deal.
50s-ish women with visors and fanny packs walk-and-talk, discussing the rise and fall of neighborhoods. 70s-ish men sit on the benches at the brow of the park, faces to the setting sun.
Inside the track, people do calisthenics and crunches. Some of them work in pairs. You can always borrow someone else’s partner’s encouragement if you need help getting to that 10th sit-up. “Ya feeling this, right? Ya always feel the sit-ups. How ya know they’re good for you.”
Inside the track, on the field, the “No Ball Games” sign is being disregarded with joyous abandon. There are at least five soccer games going on. To my delight I recognize a group of older men playing SPUD and I’m immediately transported to the field behind my grandmother’s house, my cousins and I spelling out giant steps, S-P-U-D SPUD, stretching one leg out until our shorts threatened to rip, pegging each other as hard as we could.
Mainly it’s soccer though, and there’s always some guys in striped cook’s pants, and some guys in undershirts, gym shorts and dark dress socks, their belt, suit jacket and pants folded neatly on the edge of the field. The ball games add a hazard to jogging around the track, because at any moment you could take a ball to the face, or to the stomach, or worse, to the behind, and then all the kids shriek with laughter and you hear “She got hit in the butt!” in four different languages.
But the hazard is worth it because the players kick the balls high high high, since they don’t have much lateral space to work with, and they arc beautifully, moving more slowly than would seem possible, and the evening light is so soft and clear that you can see the pattern of stitches turning over and over as the ball traces an elegant curve against the angles of the Triborough Bridge, gathers speed on the way down, and thwomps a helpless jogger. “Sorry, sorry!” all the players call out, and you can tell they are, but they can’t stop playing because they are having so much fun, this is so wonderful, the fresh air blowing off the river, the aforementioned evening light, the day ending with some light competition and vigorous moving about and camaraderie.
People of all shapes, sizes, races, income levels, are out of doors and breaking a sweat together. I have profound thoughts about America and melting pots, about neighborhoods, about community, about diversity, about fitness and fresh air, to the point that I think I should start taking a tape recorder with me to the park to preserve these observations, because they never sound as profound by the time I get home and write them down.
I feel a surge of affection for Astoria and for New York as I trot around the track, watching. This leads me to another profound thought, this one about New York’s boundless capacity for new life, new stories, its endless ability to absorb and embrace and make you its own.
Every family has their secret, and this is ours.
Fudge-bottom pie is my family’s signature dessert. The recipe is not casually shared. Within the family, that is. It is not shared at all with others. You learn it through an in-person, hands-on tutorial first; only then can you have your own hard copy of the recipe. I recall being told at one point that my grandmother had coaxed the recipe out of a diner owner in Madison, Wisconsin. So even if my ancestors didn’t create the recipe from scratch, at least we were part of a very small, very exclusive group of people who had access to it (nothing a child who moves a lot likes more than being in with the cool crowd).
Fudge-bottom pie makes its annual appearances at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and you better savor it then because the next time you’ll see it is the following November. Heresy of heresies, I think it would make an excellent summer dessert, since it’s served chilled. My dad once made my mom a miniature one for her birthday, which I believe was allowed to pass because my mom’s birthday falls between Thanksgiving and Christmas.There are Rules in our family, supported by Strong Opinions about how Things Should Be. This is one of many things I love about my family (nothing a child who moves a lot likes more than certainty). Breaking the pie rule to give my mom a dessert she adores but wouldn’t usually make for herself – time-consuming, also see above re: Rules – strikes me as a delicious example of true love.
To my great disappointment I discovered recently that the recipe, or a version of it, is available to any casual Googler. Generations of University of Wisconsin students have evidently enjoyed fudge-bottom pie, which originated in either the UW student union or the dining hall.
Since the secret is already out I figured there was no betrayal in sharing it further. But alas, as with many treasured family recipes, it’s a bit vague. The original copy is on an index card in my grandmother’s elegant spider-crawl handwriting, with no quantities given for the ingredients and only the gentlest suggestions as to how they might be combined. In the 90s a more precise version was typed up for those pie-makers requiring more instruction, with an addendum in my uncle’s neat block capitals: “Consume one or three Manhattans before beginning.”
That solid advice in hand, I asked my mom to send me the recipe, with plans to tweak and test the crust, fudge, and custard layers to make it easier to turn out the best version every time, since one of the pie’s charms is that it is never the same. Even two baked on the same day by the same person will differ.
The potential pitfalls are many: the fudge layer, poured hot onto a chilled graham cracker crust, can seep into the crust and work its way into the nooks and crannies between the cracker crumbs and undermine the pie’s structural integrity. Alternatively, the fudge can set up like concrete and become impervious to your attempts to serve and eat it, unless you are willing to use a hacksaw at the table, which I believe is also against the Rules. Custard is notoriously fickle, demanding a sure hand and a watchful eye. Get lazy with the whisking and it will break or curdle. Pour it on too soon and it will melt the fudge layer, creating an unappetizing oozing mess. Pour it on too late and it won’t spread properly. I presume the preparatory Manhattans are for girding yourself to do battle with custard. Whipping cream, fortunately, is easy. Just don’t overdo it and make butter.
A fudge-bottom pie that retains its shape when sliced, with the requisite layers, none of them curdled or concrete-like, is thus an achievement.
“Sure, play around with the recipe,” my mom said, “just don’t put it online.” “But it’s already out there!” “If it’s online it’s online, but you can’t put it online,” Mom clarified. “It would upset your grandmother,” she added, and that settled it.
And so I will say only that a graham cracker crust, chocolate fudge, and vanilla custard are a very good combination. The secret lives on. Unless, of course, you care to Google.
Mary Kate Aylward 