The Minnesota Farm Woman

 I have always loved summer reading.  To me, winter reading is the comfort food of the soul, but summer reading is the spice.  As a kid I would ride my bike to our small-town library and check out all the Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames books that I could find, and believe me, there were lots of them. I would pedal all the way home with my bike basket filled and couldn’t wait to open that first book.  I used to read them over and over, but don’t do that any more with the exception of one author.  I know I will make more than one person smile when I tell you that my favorite book is “The Egg and I” by Betty MacDonald. If you can get past a few stereotypical descriptions, which were unfortunately acceptable in those days, it is hilarious!  I read it at least once a year. I discovered this book on a shelf at our summer cabin and I started reading it as a teenager one rainy weekend when I ran out of my own reading material. It belonged to my mother and even has her maiden name pencilled inside the front cover and orange crayon marks drawn on some of the inside pages by a very bad little girl, and I am quite certain the culprit was my sister.  Betty is an educated, well-read woman who marries a man who decides to purchase a chicken farm and move to the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Northwest. This was before men included their wives in life-altering decisions such as purchasing 300 chickens and moving to a house with no indoor plumbing or electricity.  If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend adding it to your summer or winter reading list. Betty’s descriptions are fantastic and her characters so brilliantly portrayed that you know they were probably based on real people.  While you’re searching eBay or amazon.com, you might as well save on shipping and purchase another of Betty’s books, “Onions in the Stew”, which is about raising teenagers on Vashon Island in Washington. It was written in the early 50’s, but could have been written today, except for the fact that everyone, even the teenagers,  smoked all the time. After reading this, I was ready to move to Vashon Island even if it meant I had to take the ferry into work every day, as Betty did.  “The Plague and I” is about the year Betty spent in a TB sanatorium, and it is both funny and sad at the same time. It is a little harder to find than the others. Did you notice that I am on a first name basis with Betty? Sadly, we never met. She died at a fairly young age in 1958, two months before I was born. If I were to pick one person living or dead to have dinner with one evening, it would be Betty MacDonald. Why? Because she makes me smile every time I read one of her books, even if I am reading it for the umpteenth time.  I would like for the dinner to be at her house, though, the one on Vashon Island, not the one without indoor plumbing.  From reading the descriptions of her food, she was one fantastic cook.  I’m sure she would keep me laughing throughout the cocktail hour (Betty enjoyed lots of those) and dinner.  I think we would have had a lot in common, Betty and I, except for one thing:  Chickens.  Strangly enough, Betty hated the one thing that made her famous.