I call us girls because that’s what Mother called us: “You girls . . . ” This is what we were looking for last summer and I think Glenda really  may have found something  like it, and because I probably just glanced, I  agreed it was the real thing.

But this is it. This is THE cookbook – the one I tore the pictures out of when I was one and stacked them beside myself. Those pictures are stuffed back in there along with notes and gosh, I don’t know what. I haven’t opened it yet. I imagine Glenda should be the archeologist. I took a picture of it from the side also because I think that view captures the years of use more accurately.

Oh, on one sheet of paper that fell out I saw a list of names – Woodrow, Drake, Alexander. Sound familiar? And first names such as Parke and Trell and Al and Glen. I shoved it back in before I thought I should look at it more closely. Maybe it was a list of people who would be at a dinner and she was thinking of something they especially liked. I know Robert Allen was a cherry pie fan. In fact, I remember one Thanksgiving in Indianapolis Robert Allen was looming over the pie as it was brought it and the housekeeper shooed him away.

I don’t know why I remember that – maybe because I was pretty young and he was looking at that pie so intently it made me think perhaps the wolf in Red Riding Hood was real.