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This Is The Place - Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Author

3:22 PM Posted by MAC

 
xcerpt from This is the Place
 
“Today was July 24th, the day Brigham Young had entered the Salt Lake Valley more than one hundred years before.  He knew that his followers would wring this desert to green like the rains bring the Indian Paint Brush and Sego Lilies to bloom.  He had said, “This is the place.”  And it was.
The Garret and Stella Eccles family--Sky’s family--would have gathered on their shady lawn on the East side of the house for this reason alone, but as it happened it was also Sky and Venetia’s birthdays.  They celebrated with sparklers instead of candles for that was how the holiday itself was celebrated.  These two native Utah women were tied to the state and to each other by accident of birth, place, and timing.
There was potato salad made with red potatoes with the skins left on.  There were hot dogs.  Cokes were chilling in their bottles in a galvanized steel washtub.  It was filled with ice cubes made in little segregated trays. The twin cakes, frosted by hand with seven-minute icing, were on an umbrella table protected from flies with waxed paper.  TV trays had been set up next to chairs to handle pop, ashtrays, and bowls of party mix, a recipe that Stella had found in the Ladies Home Journal.
       Neesha knew that in a while--it was as sure to happen as the cutting of the cakes--the family would begin to discuss politics, which in Utah is the same as discussing religion.  They would bash Mormon beliefs as foolish, the Mormon’s intensity about converting them as insulting.  Sky would fade into another place with practiced ease and Garret—the lone Mormon-- would take his broad-toothed grin into the garage to putter with his rock collection or sharpen his tools.”
 

Chocolate Cherry Nut Cake

  A Carolyn Howard-Johnson Favorite

 

1 C. sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 ¾ C. cake flour
¼ C. walnuts or pecans, chopped
2 squares semisweet chocolate
½ C. butter, softened
1 C. sour milk
1 tsp. baking soda
5 oz. bottle maraschino cherries, sliced
1 pinch salt
1 tsp. vanilla
 
Sift together the sugar, flour, salt, and soda.  Melt the chocolate in some of the maraschino juice.  Add butter, milk, melted chocolate, egg, and vanilla.  Mix thoroughly.  Add the maraschino cherries and nuts.  Dust two 9-10 inch cake pans with a mixture of flour and chocolate.  Divide the batter between the two pans.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.  Use a toothpick to test doneness.  The toothpick should come out clean.  Remove from pans and let cool on rack or waxed paper.  
 
50s Seven-Minute Frosting
 
Double Boiler
1 ½ C. sugar
1/3 C. water
1 pinch salt
1 Tbsp. white corn syrup
2 unbeaten egg whites
1 tsp vanilla
2 Twenty-fourth of July sparklers (fireworks)
3 drops blue food coloring if you want a red, white and blue theme
 
Fill the bottom part of the double boiler with water and bring to a simmer.  Combine the sugar, water, corn syrup and egg whites in the top of the double boiler.  Place the top portion of the double boiler over the bottom and beat the mixture with a rotary beater for 7-10 minutes or until peaks form.  Remove the double boiler from the heat. Blend the vanilla and food coloring into the mixture. Place one layer of the cooled cake onto a pedestal cake stand.  Cover with icing. Place the other layer on top of that and anchor with toothpicks.  Ice it using all the frosting.  Make little peaks in the frosting on top by pushing the icing with a knife and quickly pulling it upward.  Just before serving put two or three sparklers in the cake and light them.
 
This is the Place is fiction but real events were my inspiration.  So, when I needed recipes for this cook book, I called my 84-year-old mother in Salt Lake City and had her raid her file box for the original  recipes mentioned in it.  She sent them to me typed in a ragged, red typeface.  The typewriter was old—even back in the 50s —and refused to allow the fan of lead keys to reach for the black ink on the ribbon.  This family party--where intolerance was passed around as freely as the slices of birthday cake—happened just after I became a staff writer at the Salt Lake Tribune.  I also worked as a writer for Good Housekeeping Magazine and Eleanor Lambert Agency, a famous fashion publicist in New York.  Learn more at http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com
 

This Is The Place – Review by Martha A. Cheves, Author of Stir, Laugh, Repeat
 
‘UTAH 1959’  Sky Eccles sat in the old ’49 Buick convertible she shared with her mother, its fenders riveted with salt decay from the Utah roads…. She sat in silence looking at her grandparents’ house at the edge of Holladay, a small farming community turning suburb at the edge of Salt Lake City…. Located at what was once the dead-end of Meander Lane, the little house had been built by her grandfather, Brock Eccles, and her polygamist great-grandfather, Hart Eccles.  The house and land was in Sky’s soul, both sweet and scary, like finding a dark spot in the core of a sugar apple.
 
Sky is in love with Archer Benson and expects him to pop the question any day.  It could be a beneficial marriage but Sky isn’t sure what her answer will be.  The Benson name is as strong as the Eccles name in the Salt Lake area as well as through the Mormon religion.  Sky’s problem is that she’s a half-breed, half Mormon and half Protestant, just as her Grandmother Harriet had been and just as her own mother Stella had been.  Her Gram Harriet solved her problem by joining the Church, Sky on the other hand was brought up to make her own choices and with that came her decision to become an Episcopalian.  The decision to marry could tear both families apart.  Archer’s father is running for political office and his marrying outside the church is simply not acceptable.  Archer has just been accepted to Harvard but without help from his father, he can't afford a wife plus education.  

Gram Harriet has turned her back on Sky since the ceremony won't be taking place in the Temple.  If Sky and Archer marry, she will have no choice but to give up her journalism education and work to help pay for Archer's education.  Being a journalist has been her dream forever.  Would her dream ever be fulfilled or would she be expected to be a wife and have children.

So what choices do these two young people really have in deciding their own futures?  And what will Sky’s answer to Archer’s proposal be?  Will he even ask?
 
Following Sky as she drops back into the past with hopes of finding answers, made me aware of just how hard times really were, not just with religious differences, but also with nationalities differences, especially when it came to marriage.  I can remember people being outcasts if they went outside their own “kind” for marriage and even socializing.  

Times have changed tremendously over the last 50 years, I feel for the better, but they still have a way to go.  “Mixed marriages” are being accepted more and more every day and the children of these marriages are being given the chance to make their own decisions, not just about religion but about life in general.  And as this happens the pressures of following in our parent’s footsteps are being lifted.
 
Now, for a personal note on this book.  As a child I lived in Utah twice.  My mother’s family is still there and I have a trip planned to revisit the beautiful state of Utah in September of this year.  This is the Place reminded me of the beauty of the mountains, the fields and the cities.  This will be a trip to revitalize my childhood memories.
 
2001
292 Pages
Available Through Amazon www.budurl.com/ThisIsThePlace
ISBN 1588513521
 

Review Stir, Laugh, Repeat at Amazon.com Stir, Laugh, Repeat

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1 comments:

  1. Carolyn Howard-Johnson said...
    July 27, 2010 9:40 PM

    Martha, I am so honored that you liked my book. It is inspired by my own life so it holds a warm spot in my heart. It is now out of print, though available on Amazon (www.budurl.com/ThisIsThePlace still for only about a dollar. And I'll soon be republishing it on my own.

    Hope your readers love the recipe, too. Thank you for including me in this fun blog.
    Best,
    Carolyn Howard-Johnson

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