My last year of college I declared my independence by living 30 miles down the road from my parents. It was my first apartment (a fourth floor walk-up) that I shared with my friend Jeannie . We were both broke and struggling nursing students.

The school of Nursing was located in the Technology Building which also housed the Science Department, Chemistry Department, and Engineering Departments. All of these departments were male dominated areas and we quickly found out that "the guys" were a soft touch for a bake sale. Consequently SNAV (Student Nurses Association of Virginia) would hold a bake sale fund raiser at least once a month .

When I lived at home and commuted the ingredients were always on hand . However, we quickly discovered that it cost money for the ingredients and they weren't items we necessarily stocked. Jeannie and I lived in an apartment with mostly senior citizens that were retired. They were always home and always excited to have company.
When you are poor, you have to be creative. So Jeannie and I came up with the "Neighbor Cake" idea. The rules were simple. We would split the list of ingredients into the number of neighbors we had. We would go visit the neighbors and borrow twice as much ingredients as we needed. We would bake two cakes. One we took to the bake sale, the other we divided among the neighbors and took back to them. We figured the older adults would eat a slice or two of cake but would not make a whole cake for themselves.

The cakes were a big success. So more rules evolved. Each trip for ingredients had to be at least 15 minutes. We asked about their kids and heard all the stories about grandchildren. We "oohed and aahed" over pets and pictures. We also ended up taking blood pressures and checking on the relative health of "our extended apartment family." No one ever complained about our"mooching" off the neighbors and we got the biggest smiles of surprise when we would bring back home baked caked. They would always say, "Well, you didn't have to do that, I enjoyed the visit."

After graduation, I got a full time job and eventually a husband. Mr. Wonderful and I both worked and had more money than we had time. I still remember going into the building and being asked, "When are you going to bake a neighbor cake?"

Labels: Monday memories