Mama Atwood's World's Fair Cake

I found my grandmother's cook book yesterday.  This recipe was written inside the back page.

Mama Atwood made this light brown cake with a boiled white sugar frosting on special occasions.
Everybody in the Atwood family raved about it.  I don't think she ever wrote this recipe the same way twice.  She was such an experienced cook, she never put assembly instructions down.

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 cups flour sifted
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 eggs


Frosting

2 tablespoons chocolate or cocoa
2 tablespoons hot water (melt over double boiler)

2 cups sugar
3/4 cup milk
butter the size of a walnut

boil about six minutes. Needs to come to soft ball stage.

This always was garnished an sometimes filled with pecan halves.  They were usually arranged on the top of the cake.

There is a page on the web about a hundred-pound cake made for the 1939 World's Fair here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shookphotos/4251872771/  It seems to be a fruitcake made in California by the baker's association.
That is the only reference to a cake named World's Fair Cake that I could find online.

A special wall hanging from 1980 by Pat Reese

A wall hanging of mixed media

detail from the wall piece above

Anne Reese worked in the shop right up until her first baby was born.
(The baby was Margaret Ellen Harrison. Born Feb. 13, 1980.)
Anne was a great help and made it possible for me to have time for art work 

The Van Cliburn keyboard, 1977

In September of 1977 the Van Cliburn competition was held at the Landreth Auditorium on the TCU campus.  I wanted to create a soft sculptured piano keyboard to be mounted on the wall which was 19 feet long.  I raised money for the project by offering small scale models of an octave which were made of canvas, and in some cases, satin.

The Cliburn keyboard, a site-specific installation 

This was  a valentine keyboard made of velvet and satin.
 It was actually a study for the larger ones.

A satin keyboard scaled the same as the finished project keys

One of the octaves from the finished keyboard

After the competition the keyboard went to the Cliburn Foundation, where it hung on their wall for a long time.  I don't know what finally happened to it.  Strings that went up from the keys on the wall were lost after the first installation and never found.

In the back yard at 6633 Campana, later that same year

Margaret Ellen Reese, her cooking

Margaret loved to cook and still does to this day.  She made Christmas cookies and decorated them every year.  They were always beautiful.

She made our Thanksgiving turkey dinner when she was 16.  I got lucky and snapped her taking it out of the oven. MMMMM……

We had a feast at 6633 Campana that day!!!

Aunt Alma Atwood Denny

My father's sister Alma was the second eldest of Mama and Manning Atwood's children that lived.  She lived in Comanche, Texas all of her life.  She was very smart and attended Texas Wesleyan College in Fort Worth for two years.  

She taught school in Comanche before she married Harold Denny in 1926. She and Uncle Harold had one child, Cleve B. Denny; he is shown as an infant in the photo with his mother. In the large family photo from Christmas she is on the far right, standing.

Aunt Alma was particularly active in the Comanche Garden Club and became a judge for flower shows. She researched and wrote a genealogical survey of the George Atwood descendants including Manning Atwood's family.  This project took many years and she traveled extensively gathering data and meeting other relatives through the years. Every one of her generation of the Atwoods and their children all have copies of her book.

Aunt Alma was an amazing housekeeper.  Not only was her house always clean and tidy but it always smelled fresh.  She and Uncle Harold always had a big vegetable garden behind their house and grew their own vegetables and fruit.  They had pecan, peach and apricot trees as well.  She grew roses that were absolutely beautiful. Late in their lives, when her sister Aunt  Ernestine was in the hospital I remember she cut her most beautiful rose from beside her back door to take to Ernestine that day.  

The guest bedroom in their house was the one that had been Cleve's room when he was a boy and lived at home.  She had a particular picture of a little girl in a rocking chair on the wall in that room.  I loved that picture and when I asked her about it she said it was "just a magazine picture" that she had always liked and she had cut it out and put it in a frame.

After she passed away it must have been sold at her estate sale.  But in 2010 it turned up in an antique store in Fort Worth still in the same frame.  Of course I bought it and now it hangs in my house.

Hayne and Patsy wedding rehearsal August 23, 1957

walking down the aisle.  My brother Bill was acolyte.  When he saw me he burst into hysterical laughter.  I WAS wearing high-heeled shoes. 

On the left are birdesmaids Frances Evelyn Atwood, Kay Vanderpool and maid of honor Quay Williams. On right beside Hayne is his best man, Gene Lewis, and his brothers John and Tommy Reese.

On the left seated is my mother Ann Atwood.  Seated on the right are Tom F. and Marian Reese, Hayne's parents.

Hayne's brothers, Tommy and John Reese on the right.

Father John Salberg on the right, lovely lady facing us is  Linda Simpson, my college room mate

who came all the way from Harlingen.

Quay, Hayne, Patsy and Gene Lewis

I think Daddy was speaking when this was made.  How about those CURTAINS?

photos of Patsy, Bill and Bob in 1954

One day a friend took these pictures in our back yard in Comanche.  I believe the Episcopal priest Father John Salberg took these.  They were slides which have now been digitized. I don't know that anyone else had a camera that made slides in those days.

Bob would have been 4 and Bill would have been 12 about this time.  I think it was Easter Sunday.