A butterfly flits through the generations and a little pink house is revealed
with a message of love. Plus, there's pie.
I found a $20 bill.
I was looking through some desk drawers in search of a photo I took down from the kitchen wall in December in order to put up some Christmas finery. I couldn’t remember where I put it but thought a desk drawer seemed like a logical spot, so that’s where my quest began.
We have two desks: one that has been steadfast in the living room since the early years of my parents’ marriage, and one at the end of the hallway. That one originally belonged to my great-aunt and found its way to me after stops at many other family homes. Although I’m sure in previous eras letters were written, lessons studied and bills paid at these desks, they mostly just house photos now, scraps of wrapping paper and treasures from long gone days.
(We also have another desk — a computer desk — covered in equipment and grammar books, but that’s a boring story.)
In the bottom drawer of the living room desk, there’s a leather wallet that used to belong to my grandfather. My dad tells me his father never used a wallet, that he carried his money loose in his pocket, the bills folded and secured by a money clip. But someone must have thought he needed it because his name is stamped in gold on an inside pocket — Dr. L.E. Stephenson.
Inside the wallet I found a photo of my grandmother when she was an old lady, long after her husband had died, a thank-you note my brother wrote to her when he was about 14 and that $20 bill.
Issued in 1778, it’s about half the size of today’s bills. It has a serial number in the upper right hand corner — 270350 — that looks like it was written by hand. There’s a maple leaf on the front, the name of the country on the top and this: “This Bill entitles the Bearer to receive TWENTY Spanish milled DOLLARS, or the value thereof in Gold or Silver, according to a Resolution passed by Congress at Philadelphia, Sept. 26th, 1778.”
I don’t know where that bill came from, how it came to be in the bottom drawer of our living room desk or why I’d never noticed it before. I have no idea how much its “value thereof” is today, if anything at all, but I somehow doubt it’s worth as much as the other treasures I exhumed:
● Not in a desk drawer, but on the top shelf of a closet, I found a framed picture of a child with a sled. The white wood frame is kind of worn and a little fragile, and the backing was already missing, so it was easy to take the picture apart. Which I did.
On the back of the snow picture, in my Grandma Clara’s (my dad’s mother) handwriting, a message: “To the family I love so much.” Behind the picture was a needlepoint sampler of a little pink house in a grove of green trees. My mom was a great cook, an accomplished seamstress and a serial hobbyist, beginning a new and likely trendy hobby with a big project and then moving on to something else — knitting, counted cross-stitch, ribbon embroidery, soap making, rug hooking, needlepoint. She made a needlepoint picture commemorating their wedding that’s had a place of prominence in the Stephenson houses since 1956. I always assumed that was the only needlepoint project she ever completed until I found the little house hidden behind a message of love.
● A pay stub from a check my mother earned in 1952 from Hardy’s Furniture Store in downtown Lincoln, Neb. She started there after graduating from high school, working five days a week as a switchboard operator and half a day on Saturday as a bookkeeper. The pay stub says she earned $80 for two weeks work, taking home $65.10 and paying $1.20 for Social Security, $3.10 for insurance and $10.60 in taxes. By today’s standards, it’s a paltry sum, shockingly so, but according to the “1952 Handbook of Facts on Women Workers” by the U.S. Department of Labor, she made what everyone else was making — just a dollar a week less than the average salary, $2,175 annually, for professional women and slightly more than clerical workers who averaged $2,074 per year. (An interesting aside, when my dad first went to work in Lincoln, so about 1954, he made $400 a month — more than twice what my mom was making four years into her job at Hardy’s.) That check paid the rent on a string of little apartments that my mom shared with her girlfriends, bought pretty dresses and high-heel pumps, and allowed her to take some memorable vacations to Seattle and Denver. She loved that job — and even more the independence it afforded her — but she left it shortly after she got married so she could travel with my dad when he went on business trips for the Red Poll Cattle Club.
● And … the other night, I decided to put a folder of stationary in the top drawer of the little desk my aunt Janet gave me, but the folder wouldn’t fit — even though I knew it should. So I ran my hand along the back of the drawer and found a little box, taped closed with masking tape, my name written on the tape. I peeled the tape off, scooted the top off, and found, nestled on a bed of cotton, a butterfly brooch catching the light. I assume it was Janet’s — since the desk came from her; but based on the colors and the shape of the gems, it looks more like it came from my grandmother who often wore big, sparkly pins.
It was a sweet surprise during one of the dark winter days in this interminable pandemic, touched by generations and made sweeter by the mysterious but ordinary circumstances that led it to me at an ideal time.
The Pie
My mother was born on or about Valentine’s Day. The story is that she was born around midnight; and when asked about the time, the doctor who delivered her in a ranch house in Potter, Neb., said: “I think she should be a Valentine’s baby.” For all of her life she got cards that said, “For your Valentine’s birthday,” which, as a kid, I always thought were lovely; but after 81 years, my mom was kind of over them. When we were young, my dad always made a steak dinner and a heart-shaped cake for her birthday, and they gave each of the four of us kids a little box of chocolate candy. Later, when restaurant dining had become more common, the joke was that so many people were celebrating her birthday that even the birthday girl herself couldn’t get a reservation.
This pie is a nod to those heart-shaped, red foil boxes of chocolate delights. I made it before as a traditional slab pie, and it was delicious, but I wanted something a little more special this time. I used a chocolate crust and decorated it with regular and strawberry-flavored cutouts and braids. Instead of chocolate chips, I used ruby chocolate to line the crust. It made a nice contrast to the dark brown crust, but once covered with strawberries it didn’t stand out all that much. I think maybe white chocolate would be a better choice.
The recipe
Chocolate-Strawberry Pie
2 pie crusts (The original recipe called for store-bought pie crusts, but I wouldn’t recommend that. I made my pie with a chocolate crust, recipe below, but any good pie crust would work.)
4 cups strawberries, sliced (more if you’re making a slab pie)
½ cup granulated sugar
½ cup tapioca flour, aka tapioca starch
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1½ cups chocolate chips (I used a “ruby chocolate” bar, crumbled up. It would also be delicious and pretty with white chocolate chips.)
For a slab pie, roll out the 2 pie crusts until they are thin and can cover a baking sheet, aka jelly roll pan, (10.5" x15.5"). I decided to make a traditional round pie, instead.
Place sliced strawberries into a bowl. Combine the sugar and tapioca flour in a separate bowl. Sprinkle the sugar mixture over the strawberries and mix gently.
Place one rolled-out pie crust on the baking sheet or pie plate. Sprinkle chocolate chips (or chocolate crumbles from the candy bar) on top of the crust. Spread strawberries on top of the chocolate. Place the top layer of pie crust on top of everything. Cut air vents in the top crust. (If you want to decorate your top crust with cookie cutters, it is best to do this before putting the crust on the pie.) Fold in the edges so the pie is sealed.
To make the pie shiny, brush a thin coating of milk or heavy cream on the top of the pie's surface and sprinkle with sanding sugar.
Bake at 375 F for 30-40 minutes or until the crust is golden brown and the filling is cooked through and bubbling.
Chocolate pie dough
1¼ cup all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon espresso powder
1 to 3 tablespoons brown sugar (depending on how bitter the coffee is)
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
6 tablespoons cold espresso or cold coffee; and more as needed
Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Cut in the cold butter until small clumps form. Add half the coffee and mix for one minute; then add the rest of the coffee and mix until a ball forms. If the dry ingredients are slow to come together, add extra coffee a tablespoon at a time. Refrigerate for at least an hour or freeze wrapped in plastic and stored in an air-tight container.
Makes enough dough for one crust. If you need dough for two 9-inch crusts, simply double the recipe.
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