2017/2018
Vol. 13

Where’s the Cake?

1985; Winterville, North Carolina, USA

When members of a large family get together, funny things are going to happen. A funny thing happened one Thanksgiving at my great-grandma’s house in Winterville, North Carolina. My mom was five years old. She and her siblings called this grandma “Mama Vera.” She passed away when I was two years old, so I don’t remember her at all. However, my mom said Mama Vera could make a great Thanksgiving feast.

For dessert that year Mama Vera had a beautiful coconut cake baked by a friend of hers. My mom says the cake cost twenty dollars, which was a lot of money for a cake in 1985. This cake was special, because it was made with fresh coconut, not with coconut from a can. The baker had to crack the coconut open, grate the fruit out, and save the juice. Each layer of the cake was soaked in coconut juice.

After everyone finished eating the delicious feast and dessert, all of the ladies spent an hour cleaning up. The stacks of china and silver had to be washed, dried, and put away for the next year. Then Mama Vera began looking for the coconut cake, because several people wanted another slice.

Everyone got up from the table and started looking for the cake, but no one could find the cake. Even Uncle Linwood, my great-great-uncle, started looking for the cake. Now he didn’t actually get up to look for it. He just looked across the room from his seat and kept saying, “Where’s the cake? Where’s the cake?” Finally Uncle Linwood gave up on the others trying to find the cake. He slowly pulled himself up from the table to join the hunt.

That’s when my mom spotted the cake. There it was in the chair, as flat as a pancake and twice as big around as before. Uncle Linwood had been sitting on the cake the whole time! He had fluffy white icing and coconut bits stuck to his pants. The funniest thing was he was still looking up and down for the cake. He just didn’t look behind him! Everyone started chuckling, and by the time Uncle Linwood realized where the cake was, he was laughing, too.

Lucy Abbott Fader; North Carolina, USA

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