My journalism journey part 11
I took some time on this rainy afternoon to make zucchini bread. I've always loved to bake, something I got from my dad, I think. He liked to take a recipe and tweak it, adding a little something extra. I do the same thing.
I bring up the baking love because I had a mini baking assembly line in my little house in Anaconda, manned by the neighbor kids. How this happened, I was never quite sure. But somehow all these kids were drawn to me.
Wally and Margie were quite involved in Big Brothers Big Sisters and encouraged me to get involved, too. They didn't have a kid they sponsored, but they participated in a lot of the activities. At some point, I decided I would get a little sister, because I missed the closeness I had with my nephew, Christopher, and the fun we had doing things together when I lived with him.
So after I passed the background check, I was paired with a young girl named Patty. I don't know all the problems she had in her life, but she was awfully quiet. It was difficult to know what to do with her. I had planned to take my "little" to games and such because I was always going to ballgames as a part of my job. She went, of course, but wasn't interested. We did go to movies and swimming but I didn't know we had any real connection.
I also started a business of sort with my camera. I had been taken scenic photos wherever I went, and many people liked them and wanted to buy them. So I decided to go to arts and crafts fairs during the summer and try to sell these framed photos. I put out smaller ones, too, and note cards I had made with the photos, to get people who didn't want to spend as much.
Early on, I could see these items weren't making quite as much as I had hoped. I decided to add on giant cookies. I figured I could make two or three different kinds and that could make enough to cover my booth fee.
So I started with simple chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin. And I was right, people loved them. Patty helped me make them, too, and a couple of kids from her apartment complex came around with her to help us.
The next fair, I decided to add a peanut butter cookie on a stick with a candy bar in the middle. I found the recipe in one of my cookie cookbooks. This involved a little more assembly. Patty and the girls from her apartment complex came again, and we began to make chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter with Mars bars and peanut butter with Snickers.
The cookies on a stick were a big hit. Eventually, Patty backed out of the little sister arrangement and I got a "little brother" named Earl, who joined the cookie baking and helped me at the craft fairs. He was able to help set up and carry, too.
So during the week when I had time we were baking. I swear I had flour under my fingernails most of the time. One year, it rained so hard, the Anaconda Art in the Park was forced indoors to the industrial park. The t-shirts were changed to say "Art in the Industrial Park." The good thing about that arrangement was we didn't have to set up and break down every day.
I can't tell you how much I made from my photo-cookie business during the four years I ran it. I certainly helped supplement my income (small-town journalists don't make a lot of money). I felt like the pied piper of the neighborhood kids, drawing them into my house with promises of cookies.
Earl eventually changed his name to Ray when his mom remarried. He came out with me when I moved to South Dakota, helped me settle in and then went back with the person who moved my furniture out to Aberdeen, South Dakota. The young man and I had some interesting trips along the way. We were the only Big Sister-Little Brother pairing in the state at the time. He liked going to the ballgames with me, watching sports and doing other things I liked to do. It turned out to be a good match.
I don't know why I attracted all these kids back then, but maybe it was the cookies. I'm certainly not the motherly type.
