Stephenson Tales

What would a wedding be without the cake? Well, we had two, and both are featured in our book of wedding pictures. One cake picture has also been enlarged and framed, a gift from our kids for our 50^th wedding anniversary. That is the cake which is the subject of this tale.

If you are old enough (or have been told) you remember that, during the warn, sugar, along with butter, bacon gasoline, and some other essential things was rationed: only a few pounds a month. When David and Mary Libby were married in December, neighbors, friends and relations all pitched in their rations of sugar so the baker could make a wedding cake for them. Over the next several months the loans were repaid of course. So when, only eight months later, sugar was needed for OUR cake, the call went out again and our baker was supplied with a sufficient amount. One of Lucy Chase's best friends at the University was a girl named Blanche Holpar. Her Hungarian grandmother, in appreciation for the hospitality Blanche had experienced at 2101, wanted to make a cake for us. The cake in the picture (show on the brass-topped table bought at the Indian Shop in Ann Arbor) was the result. Using the little sugar that the Holpar family had saved, she made the cake of ground walnuts, with enough flour and eggs to hold it together. We have never had a more delicious and unique cake than that was! Three years later Blanche became the godmother of our first child.

Composed 31 August 2009; Transcribed by Robin

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