Yesterday, I posted a tribute to my father on what would have been his 100th birthday. To commemorate the occasion, I also made three mini-quilts to fit on a tri-stand that I got for Mother’s Day.
The pictures represent his childhood, his family and his beloved horses.
I had the perfect backing using scraps from a previous quilt for my horse-loving grandson.
My daughter bought the stand at the April Cincinnati quilt show and it is the 4×9 Scroll Tri-Stand available through www.ackfeldwire.com.
This is a tribute to my father who was born 100 years ago today. Some of the notes in this post are from a tape my mother made when she was 72 years old in 1989.
John Alonzo Applegate was born on May 19, 1912, in Lerado, Jackson Twp., Brown County, Ohio. His mother was Lillian Frances Illie Applegate and his father was John Black Applegate. The place of birth on his certificate is Lerado, but there’s a little discrepancy here because family legend is that he was born on the kitchen table in his Uncle Jim Applegate’s home – the old Applegate homestead – and that house is not located in Lerado, but nearby. According to my mother’s account, possibly John B. and Lillian were visiting Uncle Jim at the time:
On her tape, Mother said, “If it wouldn’t be for Uncle Jim, none of you children, great-grandchildren or any of you would be here today. He saved Johnny’s life when Grandma was about to have him. Two of the Applegate brothers got into a fight and she got in the middle of them and she got pushed out a window backwards and she came near losing the baby. They called Dr. Forman in and he said, ‘Oh, the baby’s breech – he’s going to be a breech birth’, he said, ‘I’m going to have to cut the baby in two to save the mother’ and Uncle Jim said, ‘No baby gets cut in two in my house’ and with that she went ahead and had him and that’s the only reason any of you are here today. Johnny always had a very bad temper and his brother, Frank, told him the reason he had a bad temper was because he came in back side first and from that time on he always had his backside up in the air over something.”
Uncle Jim – a very pleasant man unless he was riled.
John Alonzo was always small, serious, intelligent, with a fiery temper. He used to tell stories of moving around so much and changing schools so often as a boy and how he would have to fight his way into each of the schools, He also had the job of fighting the boys his younger brother, Frank, would antagonize with threats of “I’ll tell my big brother!“
Frank and Johnny, ca. 1917. Johnny always had a firm grip on Frank.
Mother said, “One day Johnny was playing in the sand and he didn’t have too many toys back in those days and he was playing in the sand and he had a big chain and he was pulling it around through the sand in the road like a big train – playing like it was a train – and two boys from the city, Cincinnati, came up and they said, ‘Oh, look at the little boy playing choo-choo in the sand’ and he just kept on playing, never paid any attention, and they just kept that up – ‘Aw, look at the little boy’ and finally he got up and he took that chain and he beat them over the head and like to killed them.”
When I was transcribing Mother’s tape and listening to her telling about the boys continuing to aggravate my father, I actually felt a chill going up the back of my neck, knowing too well what he would do in such a circumstance.
The family never had an easy life – John B. was a blacksmith and traveled around the fair circuit to make a living.
John B. and Johnny at their shop in Marathon, Ohio, ca. 1914
The family traveled along with him and we can get a good picture of life on the fairground from this picture of Lillian at the washboard and little son, Frank, in the foreground, ca. 1916.
My father’s major passion all his life was harness horses. Mother said, “Johnny started driving horses when he was real young. He and Frank (his younger brother) both took care of horses from the time they could remember. They’d each have to stand on a chair to harness them – they were that little – but one day up at Owensville (Ohio) they were making a big deal out of a boy that was 16 years old that was driving and they were just carrying on how big he was and how great he was and Doc Parsons was sitting on the fence alongside of Johnny and he turned to him and said, “How old were you when you started driving horses?” And Johnny said, “Twelve” and Doc said, “Yeah, I thought so.”
In 1931, while the Applegates were at the fairgrounds in Lebanon, Ohio, brother Frank visited a small diner owned by my Grandma Helen and my mother who was 15 years old at the time. Frank was a great talker and would go on and on about his big brother, Johnny – how good he was with horses, how good looking he was, how smart he was – and finally one day he brought along his big brother to the restaurant. Mother used to laugh when she told the story, thinking she was going to see this big, rough guy from the fairgrounds and in walked this young dark haired boy who was about 5’7” tall – not nearly as big as Frank described, but just as handsome.
Photo booth picture of Johnny and his mother, 1932. When Grandma saw this picture, she said, “Oh, he looks just like a movie actress!”
Mother fell for him immediately and they were married in 1932.
I always thought my parents were the most handsome couple and so young compared to the parents of my friends. I considered my father particularly good-looking, probably accentuated by his brooding, quiet manner. He spoke little but his words were absolute law not only in our house but with anybody he came in contact with. He started out as a laborer on the WPA but quickly was made a timekeeper and then moved on to other jobs where he always wound up in a position of authority. After World War II and the advent of television, he did television repair for several shops and for a time had his own shop in the front room of our little red brick house. He built our first television set and we were one of the first families in Cincinnati to own one.
Snapshot of Johnny, Martha, Lillian and Shirley, 1941
My father had dark, wavy hair and deep brown eyes. I loved it when people said I looked just like him. He was a very small man but had tremendous strength in the shoulders and arms from handling horses. On one arm was a small tattoo of a horse head which fascinated me. He was a chain smoker and seemed to always have a cigarette in his hand. He also loved baseball and was a very good softball pitcher and manager.
When I was very young, people would ask me what I was going to do when I grew up. I always said I was going to get a job and help Daddy buy a horse. Within months after graduation and getting my first job @ $30.00/week, my father told me he had a horse in mind and was ready for my contribution. This is one of our early horses winning a race in 1955. I made the jacket and cap my father is wearing.
I owned shares of my father’s horses off and on for many years until he was better established and my own expenses with four children didn’t leave enough to support a horse. My father continued to be a top driver/trainer in the southwestern Ohio area for over 25 years. In 1978, at age 66, he was driving a horse called Peter Horn at a track in northern Kentucky. Just after finishing second in a photo finish, he died on the track of a heart attack. Our family said they knew if he died on a track, he died happy except that he would have wanted to be the winner. This is a winning photo of my father and Peter Horn in 1975.
The following notes are from my journal dated August 20, 1957, when I was 25 years old. We had just gotten word that my father had been in a serious accident in a race and were waiting on word from the hospital.
“I’m thinking of Daddy when we were both 20 years younger and he was the very ultimate in my life – always right, always strong and unemotional, very intelligent and very strict. He was the supreme authority in all things and the one I strove hardest to please. I liked pancakes and chili because Daddy did; I love peanuts and chocolate drops because he did; I was thrilled at harness races and baseball games because they were thrilling to him. I tried to emulate him, too. He was quiet and sober so I thought it giddy to talk or laugh too much. He was always tops in school so I tried to make perfect grades because less was unacceptable.”
Today – 100 years after he was born – I remember my father, the most influential person in my life.
Johnny and Lillian, 1933
Deanna at Wedding Dress Blue posts wonderful tutorials and her latest is a charm quilt that uses 846 charms (by Deanna’s count – I took her word for it). The pattern is written for 2-½, 2, and 1-½ inch charms. Click on the link below to see the tutorial.
http://weddingdressblue.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/tutorial-fading-charms-quilt/
I decided to make the quilt of 1-½ inch charms to use the scraps from 10 years of sewing and quilting, stored rather haphazardly in 6 large dresser drawers. I spent a lot of time cutting the squares and then enlisted the help of my granddaughter to sort them according to color and to count them. She spent several Sunday afternoons helping me out.
It was nostalgic for me to cut the squares and then sew them one by one into the quilt, remembering the projects and where/when I bought the fabric. In most cases, I remembered each square very clearly. There was fabric from the quilt that started my quilting – a baby quilt for my helper granddaughter….
….pieces from my husband’s flannel shirts that he could no longer wear but wanted made into a quilt the year before he passed away; material used in full-sized quilts for my daughters and grandchildren and in baby quilts for my two great-grandchildren; fabric from a 25th anniversary wall hanging for my youngest son and his wife; lots of squares from the countless charity quilts I made for the Linus Project for hospitalized children. There were pieces from queen-size quilts (two of which won ribbons at the county fair), and quilted jackets (one of them a 2nd prize winner at the Ohio State Fair).
There were squares from potholders, placemats, wall hangings, tablecloths, curtains, clothing for the family, costumes for the grandchildren, holiday and birthday projects,
I also used scraps to piece the backing and for the binding. The only fabric I bought was for the background. My label is in the form of a pocket so I can print out this post and keep it with the quilt to describe how special it is.
So many hours of sometimes pleasant and sometimes frustrating sewing over the past 10 years! Making this memory-filled quilt made me realize I’d like to do something like this every January, using a piece from each project of the preceding year. It may be a small project like a table runner or pillow cover, depending on how many items I made in a year, but it will be a nice reminder.
My Fading Charms Quilt measures 36×36 inches and there are a few repeats of charms because I wanted to use only fabric that had been in a previous project. It is a nice size as a topper for my loveseat in a bedroom. The scrappy quilt goes well with the red walls and lodge theme.
The quilt is also a perfect size for hanging over the loveseat.
This is a good quilt to make whether you’re rummaging through drawers of old scraps or cutting nice, fresh fabric. I like it very much.
The granddaughter and quilt that started it all
On Friday, I pause and remember a single, wordless moment from the past week – inspired by The Warden’s Log.
I wasn’t going to buy another building to add to my crowded village, but who could resist a barn with horses looking out?
All the years when I was growing up, Labor Day meant a two-hour trip in the back seat of a rumbling old car (or what we called a “machine”) to the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio. When we passed a little road sign that said “VANDALIA” and saw a big billboard, we knew the next right hand turn on a country road led back to Grandma’s house. There were just a few other houses on the road and lovely country scenery on both sides – something foreign to us, coming from Cincinnati’s inner city. Finally, we got back to the little cottage with the screened-in porch, the big flagpole with the stars and stripes patriotically flying, and the dirt area that served as a driveway.
Sleeping arrangements were creative – people slept on couches or big chairs or sometimes on an ironing board between two kitchen chairs. We always seemed to sleep well, listening to the crickets chirping and feeling a breeze blowing in the open windows.
We would be awakened in the morning by Grandma starting a fire in the kitchen stove so breakfast could be prepared. There would be a trip down to the outhouse – along a path and far from the house. The chickens were chased out and we used the smelly hole-in-the-board toilet before walking up through the chickens and wild flowers to have our breakfast. We all took turns pouring very small amounts of cold water into an enamelware basin and washing up the best we could.
Breakfasts were hearty – bacon, ham, eggs, toast and real creamery butter, plus Grandma’s delicious blackberry preserves. There was a glass bottle of milk – not the evaporated variety in a can which we usually had at home – rich milk with a layer of cream at the top. In those days, the bottle was shaken vigorously before using to distribute the cream, but since I was undeniably the favorite granddaughter (mainly because I was named after Grandma), she would pour me a little glass of pure cream right out of the top, leaving milk for the rest of the group that was more like 1%.
Grandma Lillian
After breakfast it was time to get spruced up for the big Labor Day Montgomery County Fair. The fair was an important event back then – we wore our best dresses and had our hair curled to perfection before starting out, crowded into the car with Grandma and any assorted relatives who were there at the time.
My parents – ready for the fair
We drove to the fairgrounds and each time it was a thrill to see the ferris wheel loom in front of us as we approached the gate and drove into the huge centerfield in front of the grandstand. In that 1930s-40s era, Dayton, Ohio, was very prosperous and the fair was considered one of the best in the area. Everything seemed large and modern and clean.
One year it poured down rain not long after we arrived and we had to huddle in the car for what seemed like hours. My father had gone to the horse barns to wait out the storm, but Mother, Grandma, my little sister, my cousin and I were stuck in the car, dressed in our finery, waiting to go out and see the sights. We were told to sit quietly and not get dirty which my cousin and I did, but my sister, Shirley, got down on the floor and got herself all tousled and grimy (at least in Mother’s eyes) so that when the rain finally stopped she wasn’t allowed to go on the grounds and had to stay in the car with Mother.
Grandma set out with my cousin, Dixie, and me and we looked around the exhibits and walked gingerly through the water-soaked midway. Grandma had bought all three of us identical yellow silk dresses with brown bows and accordion pleated skirts. She stopped at a a dime photo booth to have pictures made of Dixie and me and later Mother got Shirley straightened up, went out on the grounds and had her picture taken, too.
Lillian
Dixie
Shirley
I liked walking around the fairgrounds and looking at the canned goods, baked items and various needlework exhibits. I didn’t care for the rides at all. My sister lived for the rides and I can remember her sitting in one of the little cars going around in circles and calling out to Mother, “Look, Mommy – I can let go and scratch!”.
What I loved was going to the grandstands and sitting by my father watching the harness races. Just the sight of the horses and sulkies with the drivers in bright-colored caps and coats was exciting.
We started back home late in the evening, riding along in the dark, looking forward to passing through Lebanon because I knew that was the halfway point. I just prayed I wouldn’t get carsick on the way home because my father was in a hurry and in no mood to stop. He had to go to work the next day and it was our first day of school.
The fair on Labor Day was a glorious ending to summer and a new beginning to the school year.
I started making zucchini dishes in 1982 when my husband, 12-year-old daughter and I were living in Blue Jay, Ohio, on the Indiana border. We had two acres which my husband had filled with every kind of plant, tree and bush that would produce something edible – barely leaving room for a small house in the center. He loved to grow zucchini because he was rewarded with basket after basket of them and as a novice country dweller, I tried to make use of every single piece of fruit or vegetable he brought in the house.
By 1987, I had tried a lot of zucchini recipes and was looking for something different to take to our Hamilton County Fair (Cincinnati). I decided to take a favorite recipe from the Bear Wallow Zucchini cookbook and change it from a spicy zucchini bread to a chocolate one. The bread not only won the blue ribbon at the fair, but also won the Best of Show rosette. It’s a delicious zucchini treat.
BEST OF SHOW CHOCOLATE ZUCCHINI BREAD
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease and flour loaf pans of your choice
In a large mixing bowl, whisk eggs; add cocoa and whisk until smooth. Whisk in oil, sugar and vanilla.
Stir in zucchini.
In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, soda and salt. Stir into zucchini mixture. Stir in walnuts.
Pour into greased/floured pans, filling about 3/4 full, and bake @ 350 degrees F.
Loaves are done when a tester inserted in the center of a loaf comes out clean
Allow bread to cool in pans for 5 minutes, then remove to cool completely on a rack.
This is one quick bread that could easily be a dessert. It’s rich, chocolatey, moist and full of crunchy nuts. But the most important thing to me in 1987 was that it used 2 cups of zucchini.
My picture was taken for the fair’s publication, “The 132nd Annual Hamilton County Fair Salutes its 1987 Best of Show Winners”. (I had won Best of Show with three different items that year.)
I have a large collection of county and state fair cookbooks, and this recipe came from an Indiana county fair book, 100 Blue Ribbon Cookies. The cookies are baked in a large jellyroll pan, 15x10x1, so you get a lot of thin, delicious bars with apricots and nuts plus a tart lemon glaze.
APRICOT SPICE BARS WITH LEMON GLAZE
Bar cookies:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 15x10x1 jellyroll pan.
Cream together shortening, sugar and honey – beat in eggs. Sift together dry ingredients and add to creamed mixture – stir well. Fold in apricots and nuts. Spread in greased 15x10x1 (jelly roll) pan.
Bake @ 350 degrees F for about 20 minutes until cookies are golden brown. Cool in pan on wire rack for 10-15 minutes.
LEMON GLAZE
Mix sugar and lemon juice together to make a glaze.
Brush warm cookies with lemon glaze.
Cut into squares and continue to cool on wire rack.
In my recipe binder, I have a note: First made June 10, 1995 to take to a picnic on Brookville Lake in Brookville, Indiana. Everybody loved them.
I’ve been going through my big collection of cookbooks and recipes to find any that might have been enjoyed years ago and then forgotten. This one is a good example.
In December of 1988, I had clipped a recipe for Brown Velvet Cake but didn’t get around to making it until the summer of 1990. The family enjoyed the cake so I made it again to enter in our local Harvest Home Festival, an annual Labor Day event. There were always a lot of wonderful entries and I felt lucky to win a third place ribbon. Then, I forgot all about the cake until the recipe surfaced last week in one of my binders. I have a note, “My favorite chocolate cake”.
BROWN VELVET CAKE
The Cake:
To Make the Cake:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease well and lightly flour two 9″ round cake pans.
Combine the chocolate chips and boiling water. Let stand, stir and cool.
Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, cream the butter and peanut butter. Gradually add brown sugar and granulated sugar, creaming well.
Add 2 unbeaten eggs and 2 unbeaten egg whites, plus vanilla and cooled chocolate mixture, mixing well.
Add dry ingredients to this batter alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Blend well after each addition.
Turn into the two greased and floured 9″ cake pans. Bake @ 350 degrees F for 35-40 minutes until a tester inserted in the center of a cake comes out clean.
Let cakes rest in pans on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then remove from pans and let cool on the rack.
The Filling:
To Make the Filling:
In a medium pan, combine the brown sugar and cornstarch. Add evaporated milk, water and egg yolks. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thick and mixture begins to bubble. Remove from heat, stir in all but 2 Tblsp. of the chopped peanuts, the peanut butter and the vanilla. Set aside to cool.
The Frosting:
To Make the Frosting:
Cream together the butter and peanut butter. Add the melted chocolate chips and vanilla. Blend in the confectioners’ sugar alternately with the evaporated milk to spreading consistency.
To Assemble the Cake
Place one cooled cake layer on a plate and spread the top with the filling.
Place the second layer on top of the filling and frost the top and sides of the cake.
Sprinkle the reserved 2 tablespoons of chopped peanuts over the top of the frosted cake.
This makes a tall (3-1/2 inches) impressive cake …. and it’s delicious.
In 1984, I participated in a recipe exchange by mail and this is one of the recipes I received. There are a lot of versions of this dessert with a lot of names, but since Robert Redford still looks good to me, I’m keeping it. This is an easy dessert to assemble, should be made ahead of time and chilled, and is very rich and delicious.
THE NEXT BEST THING TO ROBERT REDFORD
Crust:
Filling:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
To Make the Crust:
Mix the flour, butter and pecans well. Press mixture in a 9×9 baking pan. Bake @ 350 degrees F for 15 minutes until lightly brown. Cool
To Make Filling and Assemble:
Layer 1: Beat cream cheese and sugar until fluffy. Fold in 4 ounces (half of an 8-oz. carton) of whipped topping. Spread over cooled crust.
Layer 2: Mix vanilla pudding and 3/4 cup of milk until thickened. Spread over Layer 1.
Layer 3: Mix chocolate pudding and 3/4 cup of milk until thickened. Spread over Layer 2.
Layer 4: Spread remaining 4 oz. of whipped topping over Layer 3.
Grate the block of milk chocolate over the top of the dessert and garnish with whole toasted pecans.
Refrigerate for at least one hour before serving.
This dessert won a ribbon at the Hamilton County Fair (Cincinnati) in 1984 and has been a favorite dessert in our family ever since.
I’m so glad I took part in that chain mail recipe exchange.
“Redford”, as we call it, was our dessert today when my daughters and grandchildren returned from swimming at Boomerang Bay (Kings Island, Mason OH). We had another old favorite for lunch - Mom’s Tuna Melts.
In 1983, I had won our big County Fair Pie Contest (Hamilton County/Cincinnati) and really didn’t want to push my luck by entering the following year, but my oldest daughter insisted it was my duty to defend my title. So, I looked around my country kitchen, crowded with fresh produce, and decided to make a Raspberry Cherry Pie, using our home-grown black raspberries and tart red cherries. I baked it on a hot Saturday morning, took it to the fairgrounds and when the contest was over, was told I was the first one in the history of the contest to win two years in a row. I got a blue ribbon, best of show rosette, an engraved silver bowl and a half-bushel of apples.
The years went by and I was always baking something new for our Sunday dinner – never got around to making the prize-winning pie again. Then, my husband was ill with Alzheimer’s and we had to leave our country home and the raspberry bushes and the cherry trees, so it has been over 25 years since I first made this pie.
A month or so ago, my online friend, Darlene, blogged about a dessert she had made using frozen tart cherries from Meijer. I hurried to the store, picked up a bag of cherries and some red raspberries, and came home to bake an old favorite. It was just as good as I remembered it.
BEST OF SHOW RASPBERRY CHERRY PIE
Preheat oven @ 375 degrees F
Measure one cup of cherries into a large bowl. If cherries are frozen, they will thaw by the time the pie is completed.
To the cherries, add the raspberries, sugar, salt, tapioca and vanilla. Toss to mix well and let stand for 10-15 minutes.
Stir fruit to distribute sugar and turn into a pastry-lined 9″ pie pan. Dot with butter, add top crust and crimp to seal. Cut vents and brush with milk.
Place on a flat pan to catch spills and bake @ 375 degrees F for 45-50 minutes until top crust is golden brown.
Cool on a wire rack.
I probably took a little more care in preparing a fair entry, but not much. To me, the idea was that it should be one of my normal Sunday pies – with all its little rough spots and bubbling over.
In 1987, when we went to the fair, my daughter told me that one of her entries was going to be my birthday present. When we got to the Hobbies & Crafts Department, I found she had made a miniature model of the Hamilton County Fair Pie Contest, correct down to the tiniest detail with ribbons, trophies, a table full of pies and baskets of apples. It won a Best of Show Rosette for her.
Every year, I display the model during the county fair season and remember all the good – and hectic – times we had at the pie contests.
