Cinnamon Cookie Cure All

Cinnamon Cookie Cure All

I remember Granny, my mom's mom, being about as round as she was tall. She was a fireball of energy carrying a big stick. Usually a yard stick she wasn't afraid to use on your backside if you didn't stick to the straight and narrow. She mostly aimed it at my younger brother, 'the Little Scheister'. He especially would get in trouble for hiding her yard stick.

Granny lived with us on and off throughout my childhood. Most of the time she lived in our house where ever that was, in Texas when I was very young, or later in junior or high school in Northern Illinois. But for a few years we were in her house in Southern Illinois. That's where I remember her doing the most baking. Mostly it was bread she baked. We so seldom had store bought bread we thought it was a treat. However, we loved the aroma of the freshly baked bread emanating from the kitchen.

Sometimes it was pies she baked. Usually apple pies made from the apples of the orchard between the house and her Airstream-wanna-be trailer she had moved into while my family of eight occupied her two bedroom house. Whenever she did pies she always had a little left over pie crust she would roll out, spread with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and give it to us kids warm out of the oven while we were drooling for the pies which were off limits until deemed otherwise. It was one such occasion that I remember helping her...

“Hey, Sweetie, go into the pantry and bring me a jar of apple preserves and the big can of cinnamon for me, please. Maybe I'll have enough dough left over to make some pie dough cookies but my cinnamon shaker is almost empty.”

“Be happy to, Granny.”

Well, 'happy' may not have been the right terminology to use. 'Willing to' for the promise of sprinkle cookies may be more accurate. Her kitchen space was very limited so going 'into the pantry' meant going to the glass-enclosed back porch and down into the cellar. The cellar with extremely steep, narrow concrete steps and dungeon-type ambiance.

Granny climbed up and down those steps all the time on wash day to use the wringer style washing machine down there. With us six kids and Mom and Dad living there her wash day was nearly every day. I helped her hang clothes on the line outside but usually avoided that cellar as much as possible. That cellar also swallowed the coal used for heating the house through a small side window chute. It was a dark, dank, deplorable and daunting hole under the house.

So as I was happily going after apples and cinnamon I was praying with each precarious step downward that the light switch would work. Please let there be light, please let there be light.

Of course, no such luck. The God of Light did not see things my way. It must have been His day of rest. I flicked, it faulted.

I knew the washer was straight ahead a few paces and the 'pantry' room or more commonly referred to as the 'root cellar' where produce and excess kitchen supplies were stored was over to the left. Behind that room would be the coal storage room next to the furnace.

Oh, how I wished I had asked my statuesque sister to come along on this expedition. What if the light inside the pantry won't work either or I couldn't reach the string to pull in the middle of the room? I should have brought a flashlight. Think cinnamon-ly thoughts. This will all be worth it soon. I can almost taste and smell the apple pies baking. Like Pavlov's dogs my mouth is watering.

Ooph! Yep, there is the winger to the washer. Right where I knew it should be. In the middle of my path. “Ouch!” That is gonna leave a mark. Oh, Cinnamon, where are you?

“It's okay, Granny, I am halfway there...” I shout back to her questioning call.

A few steps to the left and there is the guardian door to the riches of the household. Of course, being so damp-ish down here it does not give up its duty easily. I have to put my shoulder into it and “Ouch!” again.

That hurt! But at least I am inside. Right where we keep our abundant supply of spider webs. I frantically brush through the curtain of them inside the doorway searching for the hanging cord for the light. The pain and suffering I am enduring will surely all be worth it in the end. How does Granny manage this so effortlessly? Oh, right. She sends unsuspecting children into her dungeon to retrieve essential treasures. How many has she already sacrificed? Where are my two older sisters anyway?

As I bounce up and down hoping to miraculously snag the light cord my foot glances off something below me and my twisted ankle sends me crashing to the floor. Ow! Insult to injury! What is all over the floor? I feel around me and it feels like gravel. Am I in a gravel pit? I swipe my forehead in wonder.

Oh, no! I floundered into the wrong room. This is the coal bin as I can make out by the weak light barely filtering in through the grimy window once my eyes adjust. I better get out of here before someone decides now would be the perfect time to deliver a yard of coal. I scamper out as fast as a twisted ankle and sore rump allows and struggle to yank the door shut behind me.

Feeling along the wall I locate the other door and get it open much easier. A step or two inside and the light cord hits me on the nose. Searing white light blinds me when I pull on it. Ah, at last I have found what I have been looking for. Rows and rows of neatly stored canned preserves and boxed goods. I find what I need and carefully map my way out again before switching off the light.

Back in the welcoming kitchen Granny surveys my uneven gimp, bruised hand, cobweb veil and blackened face and asks if there was any trouble.

“Nothing a little cinnamon cookie couldn't cure, Granny.”