Bundt Cake

When I was a kid I was stupefied and obsessed with Bundt cakes. A cake with a hole in it was a special kind of magic. Every year I’d request a vanilla one with a chocolate stripe running through with powdered sugar glaze. And it’s not like I was all that fond of the cake. My mother wasn’t the greatest baker and it was usually dry and stiff, but my mind was transfixed upon the idea of a cake ring. It was special.

As I got older I moved on to angel food which has a less amazing hole but a unique texture and tart flavor, and pineapple-upside-down cake, moist and cloyingly sweet. 

Now that I’m older, I don’t even own a Bundt pan, much less possess a hunger for pan-shaped sweets, and it’s just another oddity from way back. I mean I can count on one hand the number of good Bundt cakes I’ve eaten. Usually dark chocolate with fudgy frosting, but then that was always one of my favorites.

In Cars.

My earliest memories regarding cars was a Yellow Hornet my family drove. It had wide plastic bench seats and smelled sweetly of leaded-gasoline, but all the cars of that era did. We would drive around, my sister in the back and me in my mother’s lap, except when I was sleepy and we would fall asleep in our prospective corners all without seatbelts.

After that I remember the 80s Ford Fairlane. Any factory shine long since passed, faded baby blue. Terrible box of a car that it was, and then my Dad’s red Escort and the numerous Dodge K-Cars. 

My first car was a copper colored 1973 Ford Galaxy. It was over 17 feet long and had a 351 Windsor. It was indestructible. There was no good reason for me to have such a fun ride at 20 years old. Lots of bad reasons.

Weighing somewhere around 3 tons it would spin the tires before takeoff and cutting a corner out of the Taco Bell parking lot it would fish-tail and then take off, squealing and smoking. 

In Tucson, there were no express-ways across the large valley hence the major thoroughfares were drag strips. I rarely traveled along at anything less than 80 miles per hour. 

Once driving through the foothills to Mt. Lemmon I hit 135 up and over the hills and around the bends. My girlfriend was terrified, but then that was the point. Something about being surrounded by a sturdy steel suit of armor  stirred up the worst in me. I’m just glad to have survived.

I had to leave it behind. Well, I didn’t have to. It just seemed the sane thing to do rather than drive it back to Michigan. On a good day it got 13 mpg. I learned how to service my own car on that beast. 

Now I wish I had that experience.

Pandemic Memories

I remember how odd it felt stepping outside, even to pick up groceries off the porch, and being afraid of getting too close to anyone to the point of me losing it to an 7 year old. Not my proudest moment. Or not knowing what to do with your hands when greeting someone, or the family meetings outside in January around a bonfire thickly layered behind clothing. 

I remember the family that didn’t take it seriously until their neighbor down the street or their friend that used to laugh it off got real sick and were hospitalized. 

Mostly I remember being depressed, feeling nothing except fear that often came out as rage towards strangers.