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She was not a stern, straight-laced woman. She was just grandma. But as with a lot of pioneer women, she carried over the hard days of both her youth and her life with my grandfather for nearly sixty years throughout her life. What my grandmother did bake, however, were "cakes." Apparently, that term was used in the days when frivolity was at a lower ebb than now. My grandmother's cakes were one-of-a-kind. I don't mean there was only one, but every batch was the same. I could always count on the same texture, the same sugar on top and the same warm feeling, whether the cakes/cookies were warm or cold. If Mrs. Fields had the recipe for my grandma's cakes, she wouldn't be in bankruptcy now. When I went off to college at Brigham Young University, my grandma always made sure I had a sack of her cakes/cookies to take back to get me through the week. She didn't make a big fuss, because being fussy was also frivolous. But every weekend I was home (which was every weekend), I would go back with clean clothes, $12 or $14 I would earn from playing a couple of dance jobs, and a sack of grandma's cakes. My grandma was born Ida Victoria Jensen, January 20, 1867, in Gunnison. Her parents, Rasmus and Ingar Hansen Jensen were immigrants, he from Denmark and she from Sweden. They didn't come to America together, but met later. When they married, they lived in several southern Utah towns, but finally moved to Gunnison where they resided until their deaths. My grandmother was the oldest of four children, and in those days it meant that she took on much of the responsibility of helping to run the house. When she was sixteen years old, both parents died within two months of each other, in 1883. This left my grandma with the responsibility of being mother and father to her two younger sisters and younger brother. 145 |
