Quiet Corner Days by rosiep

At tables in two rooms, we conversed and commiserated over plunger pots of exotic coffees, i5-bean soup, scones and low-cholesterol chicken salad and listened to music, poetry, plays and monthly evening lectures. ***There's No Quiet Corner to hide in any more when spring overpowers. My favorite hangout after school, a humdinger of a little teashop, plus gallery plus boukstore, closed its doors for good. That spring the blooms seemed to fall off the apple and cherry trees faster than usual. CD. Nelsen

Quiet Corner Days by Eve Lewis Perera

~ Quiet Corner Teashop & Bookstore

on Main Street in Lenox, Massachusetts

1984- 199 1

Quiet Corner Days by Eve Lewis Perera

~ Quiet Corner Teashop & Bookstore

on Main Street in Lenox, Massachusetts

1984- 199 1

.......

Dedicated to the memory of Peggy Shaftoe ÂŠ 1998 by Eve Lewis Perera

"Selma's Best Oaoneal Cookies"

recipe from The I Hate To Cook Book,

reprinted by permission of Harcoun Brace & Company.

.......

Dedicated to the memory of Peggy Shaftoe ÂŠ 1998 by Eve Lewis Perera

"Selma's Best Oaoneal Cookies"

recipe from The I Hate To Cook Book,

reprinted by permission of Harcoun Brace & Company.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Dick Perera, Carole Yuille, Gale Crane and Barbieo Gizzi,

without whom there would have been

no Quiet Comer: lasting thanks

for your generous hearts and faithful work.

To the rest of the wonderful staff,

who will long be remembered

with thanksgiving and occasional bursts of laughter:

how marvelous it was to have your help.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Dick Perera, Carole Yuille, Gale Crane and Barbieo Gizzi,

without whom there would have been

no Quiet Comer: lasting thanks

for your generous hearts and faithful work.

To the rest of the wonderful staff,

who will long be remembered

with thanksgiving and occasional bursts of laughter:

how marvelous it was to have your help.

CONTENTS

I. THE NAME II. 104 MAIN STREET

UI..TRA VELING TABLES AND ALL THAT

IV. CUSTOMERS! THE STAFF MEETS THE PUBLIC

V. THE STAFF: GOODIES AND SWINGING DOORS

VI. THE YOUOUGHT AS

vn. THE PORCH AND THE FRONT YARD

VIll. FOOD ISN'T EVERYTHING: EXHIBITS AND PROGRAMS

IX. DISHES AND OTHER STAFF PLEASURES

X. MEMORABLE CUSTOMERS

XI . WORD FROM THE REGULARS

XII. VALEDICTORY DA YS

RECIPES FROM THE QUIET CORNER

CONTENTS

I. THE NAME II. 104 MAIN STREET

UI..TRA VELING TABLES AND ALL THAT

IV. CUSTOMERS! THE STAFF MEETS THE PUBLIC

V. THE STAFF: GOODIES AND SWINGING DOORS

VI. THE YOUOUGHT AS

vn. THE PORCH AND THE FRONT YARD

VIll. FOOD ISN'T EVERYTHING: EXHIBITS AND PROGRAMS

IX. DISHES AND OTHER STAFF PLEASURES

X. MEMORABLE CUSTOMERS

XI . WORD FROM THE REGULARS

XII. VALEDICTORY DA YS

RECIPES FROM THE QUIET CORNER

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I. THE NAME

The Quiet Comer was probably a faint longing for years, but in the fall of 1982 it gently invaded my life. I had spent a day poking around in Boston and started for home on the Massachusetts Turnpike. Somewhere near Sturbridge, the name "Quiet Comer" stood in my mind. I forgot about it, and the miles rolled by, but every now and then it came back. I tried to think about what it could mean, and the words "teashop" and "bookstore" came faintly to my attention. When I got home, I had supper with my husband Dick, but by the time we went to bed I still had not told him about the words I had heard in my mind, having nearly forgotten them. The next morning at church, a young businessman who had moved away to Washington, DC, was visiting. He asked, "What have you been thinking about?" Embarrassed, I blurted out what had been coming to me in the car, then shrank back: "But that's silly." "No, I don't think it is silly," he said. "Why don't you talk to other people and learn more about it?" He spoke as if it were a real thing that one could learn about. I did remember seeing a combination bookstore and teashop in Oxford, England, about a year and a half before. It was a sweet place belonging to a church, and very, very small. One had to walk almost sideways to get through the bookstore and into the teashop, and might have to stand in line for a good while to get a table. English people don't mind standing in "queues," but few Americans like it. I didn't think the "Quiet Comer" would be anything like that English teashop--but what would it be like? In great need of encouragement, I finally told Dick, who was surprisingly willing to help explore the idea and remained loyally interested in it. Then I told my dear friend Peggy Shaftoe, a librarian at the beautiful Lenox Library. She got very excited about this "Quiet Comer" and was full of suggestions. She began praying for it to come into existence at the right time and in the right way. Peggy and I were in a group which read books aloud together: The Co nfessions of St. Augustine, the Divine Comedy, Faust, The Odyssey, Antigone. Then we would talk, curled up in comfortable chairs, while a huge teakettle steamed away on top of our friend Linda Ferren's kitchen woodstove. The next time the group got together, Peggy and I started them talking about "The Quiet Comer." Everybody had something to say, but what sticks in my mind is Marcia Canning's remark: "Dick is going to be more involved in it than he knows." Not long afterward, Dick asked me to think about financing. I made a list of needed items--underestimating startup costs! I hoped to persuade local professionals, and the businessman from Washington, to put up money for us. Having only a small amount of dividend income, I sold my gold charm bracelet

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I. THE NAME

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to get some cash. I rented a post office box in Lenox so I could set up accounts with publishers. Then I could sell books to a birvonthly luncheon group. Dick suggested that I go to a bank official he knew and take out a loan . .The man said he would lend the money based on Dick's good name and reliability, not on the strength of the Quiet Corner's earning prospects. In view of that, Dick decided to finance it instead of bothering with a loan. Marcia was right--he was getting very involved. Peggy started investigating possible locations. She was sure the shop should be in Lenox, her home town and the home of Tanglewood, where the Boston Symphony Orchestra spends its summers. A while later, running into a news store to get a Sunday paper, I saw our generous friend Carole Yuille. When she asked "What are you up to?" I told her about this strange notion that was becoming a reality. "Well, I want to be your firs t employee!" she insisted. (Employee ? The idea had not crossed my mind!) Carole was with the Quiet Corner fro m the beginning, and was one of the last three employees, although at times she wasn't free to work there. Still feeling unreal, I began thinking about the books, and sent a letter to some 60 friends and acquaintances asking for suggestions. The response propelled me into a search through publishers' catalogues, and the Berkshire Athenaeum let me look through its distributors' microfiches. The people who had replied were the nucleus of a mailing list, and among our earliest customers. I had urged them to recommend books of enduring value, for if we really were doing this strange thing, we needed a specialty bookstore, not steamy bestsellers or how-to books, however lucrative they might be. I prepared lists under various categories. One, "Ideas and Enjoyment," brought shelves of books on art, music, cooking, gardening and history together in one large bookcase. I kept thinking someone would complain about this catchall title, but nobody ever did. In fact, I later saw an "Ideas and Enjoyment" case in an out-of-town bookstore. Amid the serious books, we did have some humor. People enjoyed Edward Koren's cartoon books of fuzzy creatures with urban predicaments, and various other laughter-filled volumes on remainder from Daedalus Books. James Thurber had his place, too, since many of us had our school years enlivened by his stories and cartoons. My Life and Hard Times was available, and Walter Mitty too--but not, unfortunately, the once-anthologized groceryÂ store romp called "The Figgerin' of Aunt Wilma," an old lady who couldn't add but thought she was the only one who could. Another favorite was David Macaulay, who has used his marvelous line drawings to show how things are made, from cathedrals to sewers. His Great Moments in Architecture was always a favorite . It pokes fun at ugly trends in modern architecture with such exaggerations as a cathedral wrapped in vinyl siding and the "Arc de Defeat," an upside-down Arc de Triomphe. We 2

were thrilled one afternoon when Mr. Macaulay's mother came into the shop. Our choices were, I suppose, rather idiosyncratic compared to the "normal" book world. A friend once stopped in to see the place and, after looking around, exclaimed: "Wow ! A whole roomful of books, and no Danielle Steele!" I held a meeting with a few wise people, hoping they would help put structure into the plans. Mter giving much practical advice, they prayed with us to launch the endeavor. One, Elizabeth Barbour, soon realized that I was naIve enough not to know that a business should have a logo. She asked me if we had a coffee cup or some other object she could use as the basis of a drawing. My son and I had already bought Prussian blue and white Dansk Bistro mugs and saucers for the "QC," as we began to call it, so Elizabeth drew a handsome antique book next to a mug and saucer for our logo. We sold used books, some quite distinguished-looking, so the drawing was appropriate. Elizabeth's design went on our letter paper, envelopes, postcards, newspaper ads, flyers and menus. She drew it twice, once small and once large, for different purposes. There were also business cards for me--a heady acquisition, useful on many occasions. When we were about to open, sign-maker Denny Forshee reproduced the logo for our sign. We ordered bookmarks with the logo and a verse, Proverbs 16:16: "How much better to acquire wisdom than gold; To acquire understanding is preferable to silver." [from The Tanakh Jewish Bible, JPS]. A thoughtful friend and loyal customer recently gave me a QC bookmark that I treasure. In the early days of our planning, Jim Trefry of Pittsfield had a tiny restaurant called Fine and Dandy which sold children's books . I decided to keep out of his hair by not carrying them myself. Then road construction prevented Jim's customers from crossing Pittsfield's North Street to get to Fine and Dandy, and it had to close. Jim sold me most of his books at cost. (A minister and youth leader, he died in 1996.) When we found our location, it was a perfect place for children's books, and it would have been a shame to leave them out. Young readers enjoyed sitting on the rug or the small chairs on our indoor sunporch as they decided which books to pick out. Among our familiar titles was Pat the Bunny, a toddler's joy. Another was The Very Hungry Caterpillar. (Its author, Eric Carle, once came in and had a faSCinating talk with Barbieo Gizzi, who became my "right hand woman" at the QC and will be introduced later.) I insisted on carrying The Story About Ping, a naughty lost duckling in China, beloved in my childhood. Older children found such things as A Little Princess, The Railway Children, the Chronicles of Namia, Lloyd Alexander and Beverly Cleary books, and many lesser-known treasures; it was fun to see them delighting even in books that were not mass-market powerhouses. For adults, in addition to classics of thought and reflection, I hoped to have foreign language books and a section for mysteries. Peggy, knowing what

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the quieter library patrons liked, helped me select large print books, which are seldom on bookstore shelves. I remember she insisted on Betty Bao Lord's Spring Moon, a fascinating novel about China iii the waning days of empire. She found the classic "think mystery" writers, as opposed to specialists in violence and kinky sex. We kept a nearly-complete stock of Dorothy Sayers mysteries and enj oyed talking to other fans of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. (A psychologist had recommended reading Sayers mysteries in this order: Strong Poison, Murder Must Advertise, Hangman's Holiday, The Nine Tailors, Gaudy Night and Busman 's Honeymoon. The italicized ones, if read in order, provide the best way to follo w the relationship between Lord Peter and Harriet. The Nine Tailors, which makes use of change-ringing on English church bells, was a delightful challenge for older children who were good readers. Amanda Cross mysteries were popular, as were those in the Rabbi Small series. Customers suggested other writers, such as Ellis Peters. I ordered Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, so somebody else could be wonderfully frightened by it, as I had been in my youth. We had a copy in Hebrew too, and someone bought it. It was part of a series for practicing the language, put out by the Hebrew Publishing Company. I had help with the initial selection of foreign language books from Dan Cianfarini, a foreign-language specialist at Schoenhofs in Cambridge. He had family in the Berkshires, and came to help me decide on a beginning list. We ordered George Simenon's "Maigret" mysteries, Simone Weil's Attente de Dieu, Asterix books, and many other French titles (including, at Schoenhofs recommendation, the charming books of children's songs illustrated by Boutet de Monvel). The Spanish books included Isabel Allende's La Casa de Los Espiritus; Don Quixote (Cervantes), and the life and poetry of San Juan de fa Cruz. I remember that Erich Maria Remarque's 1m Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) started off our German books. A year or so later, one customer kept taking a German novel off the shelf at each visit and reading it at her table while drinking tea. She would tum it upside down, mashing the spine, unable to understand that she was forcing someone to buy it in a maimed condition. We had a few glorious foreign language dictionaries, some of them purchased as graduation prizes by teachers. As for our own English language, we insisted on carrying the large-format American Heritage Dictionary. With excellent engravings and inset photos, and a fuller explanation of meanings and roots than in an ordinary dictionary, it made quite a few people happy. Because it took up extra space, the large edition was seldom sold in other places, and may now be unavailable. Small phrase books, in Dutch, Arabic, Turkish, Swedish, and more, as well as more familiar languages, went with people on their travels. The teachers of a Polish course in Pittsfield ordered their texts through us. We also ordered storybooks for Magda Hotchkiss, who was 4

teaching elementary Russian. They were nicely illustrated, and the pictured horses looked so appealing that I wished I could understood the Russian story. I delighted to play French songs on our sound system, including a wonderful tape of Edith Piaf, which I managed to put on several times when Michel, a French-Canadian, came into the store. When he heard the tape he guessed right away it was Piaf, and was thrilled to hear his own language. For other languages, we had no parallel to Piaf--except possibly our tape of Handel chof!lses in German. Mark Miller, then editor of the Berkshire Eagle, convinced us to carry foreign language Bibles. Besides French, German and Spanish, which sold well, Russian, Japanese, Portuguese, Italian, Hindi, Tamil, Arabic, and many others came to fill our shelves. Romance languages sold best, of course. Some Bibles that remained when the Quiet Comer closed, such as the Korean ones, I was able to give away locally. A Chinese-English New Testament went along when my mother brought my sister and me on a visit to China. We met a young Chinese calligraphy teacher who had been praying to have a dual-language Bible! Other Bibles went to new members of his house church. (The government is probably treating them worse than ever nowadays.) The QC's last 10 or I I foreign Bibles went to the International Bible Society for people who had requested Bibles in those languages and couldn't afford to pay. We sought Christian books that were enduring and readable--some intellectually challenging, some of a quieter spirit--resisting trivial bestsellers. A good selection of books on music was essential, especially since we would be near Tanglewood. Mary Ann Knight of the Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield gave me a basic list. After that I kept my eyes open with the aid of family and friends. Sometimes musicians or people involved with the Tanglewood broadcasts commented favorably on the music bookshelf. A copy of Nicholas Slonirnsky's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians was left over when we closed. Besides all the many composers and players we have looked up, we were almost hysterical with laughter over Slonimsky's biography of himself. (He died in late 1995, I think--at the age of about 100.) Nearby were history, philosophical essays and natural history, and a few sports books on remainders. One was about intrepid women mountaineers, another about a famous Harvard crew race. Our years with an obedient black Labrador also led us to carry Family Dog, by Richard Wolters. For some time I had been meeting with a group of women in the Pittsfield Council for Soviet Jewry, to write letters to and on behalf of Russian "refuseniks," people who had applied for exit visas from the then USSR, and had been refused, usually for trumped-up reasons. It was this growing identification with the Jewish people that started me thinking I should carry Jewish books. I did not tell anyone about this, but thought about it more and

more. One night at the supper table, Dick suddenly said to me, "You should have Jewish books in your store. " This wonderfully f onfirmed my impression. At a gathering of the local medical community (my husband is one of the internists) I ran across a Jewish friend, Ellen Masters, who was at that time President of Pittsfield's chapter of Hadassah, the international women's Zionist organization. I blurted out to her a brief summary of my plans. She wanted to help, and invited me to her house to see and write down the names and publishers of her favorite Jewish books. (She later invited me to join Hadassah, and her daughter Rachel became a faithful QC worker, to be introduced in another chapter.) Abba Eban's My People was the first book Ellen showed me, and it received an eager response in the Quiet Corner. Elie Wiesel and Chaim Potok were of course on the list. For students, teaching books about the Jewish holidays from Kar-Ben were joined by Hebrew language books from Hebrew Publishing Co., which later supplied us with attractive and inexpensive psalm books. Ellen stressed that it is dangerous when Gentiles are ignorant about Jewish beliefs and experience. She said every Christian should read Elie Wiesel's Night, which is fiction, but searingly true to life (many Christians did buy it from us), and every Jew should read Corrie Ten Boom's The Hiding Place, about a Dutch family that aided and sheltered Jews. They were arrested for this, and all but Corrie died in the camps. Rabbi Arthur Rulnick also gave me advice about books. He had challenged me to read Night some years before, to my lasting benefit. He told me about the Good News Bible's separately printed Old Testament volume. This was the only version of the Jewish scriptures in simplified English, invaluable to a foreigner or a child; he recommended it even though the Biblical books are not arranged in the traditional Jewish order. He also told me about an illustrated children's Old Testament put out by Paulist. With attractive illustrations, bright and modern, it was designed for young children and did not give the complete text. Rabbi Rulnick was disappointed that it contained so little about the sacrificial system of worship in Leviticus. I wonder whether these two Bibles, popular in our shop, are still available. Two other advisors who furnished me with lists of Jewish books were Augusta Leibowitz, a fellow School Committee member, and Rhoda Kaminstein, then President of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires-Â otherwise I might have missed out on such treasured classics as The Carp in the Bathtub. I also learned that the Jewish Publication Society has an excellent order department as well as books of high qUality--some of which I gave people as presents. When I asked a JPS order taker to help me choose books which implied that the Bible was true, she did so with wisdom and kindness. I had been afraid she would be angry because I was a Christian. The JPS contemporary Jewish Bible was much appreciated by our customers. Called the Tanakh [Torah, the Law; Neviim, the Prophets; and Kethubim, the Writings] it 6

is accurate and very readable. JPS then started bringing out a new commentary, a fe w volumes of which we were able to supply to various customers, including a rabbi; we closed before the series was completed. Perhaps because of having ordered from Jewish publishers, we received catalogues early on from an excellent Jewish music distributor on Long Island. Eventually I decided to try it. I would telephone, and the owner, Velvel Pasternak, would help me decide what to order. His suggestions were wise, and the music sold well. In the beginning we had mostly records, including some by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. Our family had heard him sing in Pittsfield. He got everyone marching around the room, shyness to the winds, singing "Yerushaliyim" over and over again with exuberance. Another time, he sang a song based on Amos 8: 11: "Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will send a famine in the land, not a famine for bread, nor a thirst for water, but for hearing the words of the Lord. " Then, as technology chased us along, we had cassettes, some by the wonderful group "Safam" (meaning "mustache," worn by one of the group's members) and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. If you don't know what Klezmer music is, try to hear some at the next available opportunity. Even Itzhak Perlman has played Klezmer at Tanglewood (August 1, 1997). Sometimes sentimental, it is often roistering fun, with a quacking clarinet sounding forth among a bevy of instruments including, probably, violin or guitar and trumpet. A brilliant Klezmer singer, Rosalie Gerut, came into our shop with her husband one afternoon. We had tea together and she gave me a tape of her singing. I passed out a few flyers about her extraordinary music, and I hope some people did send for tapes. My son later gave me a fine tape of the Klezmer Conservatory Band. In addition to songs, it explained the story of Hanukkah: the filthy blasphemy of Antiochus Epiphanes, sacrificing a pig in the Temple, and the brave Judas Maccabeus and his brothers restoring the Jewish worship. I purchased a couple of Safam cassettes for us through the QC. One was "Sons of Safam," which includes lovely blessings for their sons. It also had "Halleluyah," a popular song in Israel, full of delight in the creation, that I have cherished from the first moment I heard it. I was thrilled when it turned up in a filmed introduction to Israel as our EI AI flight was approaching Tel Aviv in 1990. The other Safam cassette we have is "The Greater Scheme of Things." I gave one of these to a brilliant Jewish student at Oxford who had never heard of Safam. He was delighted to hear the verses he knew so well from public worship sung in a lively but dignified way. The QC also carried some fine children's cassettes, such as "Shalom, Yeladim" ("Hello, children"), and Mr. Pasternak helped us with orders for special occasions. A book publisher, Ktav, sent a gift catalog with one of our orders. I discovered that they had a very reasonably priced Noah's Ark set with Noah, his 7

wife [Shem, Ham, Japheth and their wives were not represented!], some bushes and trees, and one bag each of domestic animals and wild animals--all in plastic, a non-favorite of mine, but forgivably attractive. I was pleased to have something both Jewish and Christian children could enjoy so much. We sold many arks, and loved to watch children playing on the floor with them. I will digress to tell my Noah's Ark stories here, though they all happened a while later, and will spare children now grown older by not giving their names. One ark came with two bags of wild animals and no domestic animals. I called Ktav to tell them about the problem. The man on the phone laughed. I explained that I would send the extra wild animals back so the missing domestic ones could be sent. "No, no, dear," he said, "just keep them and enj oy! Your domestic animals will be in the mail right away. " And they were. The extra wild animals played a role too. Sometimes our young employees enjoyed perching a deer or an alligator on top of a history book to surprise a serious browser. One of them set up an incongruous little scene, a crazy mixture of animals and pale green plastic trees, on the edge of a bookshelf in the children's sunporch. A father came in one afternoon with his little boy. While they were playing with our demonstration Noah's Ark set, planning to buy another one to take home, the father accidentally stepped on the removable roof of the ark. The little boy watched this and then stomped on another piece of the ark. He evidently thought that what Daddies do is stomp on things, and therefore little boys need to copy them. The father explained to his son that the facts were otherwise! He offered to purchase the broken demo instead of a new one for the same price, but instead I asked him to mend the broken one and bring it back to us, so he could purchase a new one as originally intended. He did a beautiful job and the mended ark still holds together, occasionally entertaining a friend's child in need of a pastime. Another father, an Englishman, used to come in for tea and scones with his very young son. The little boy's tea had extra water, sugar and milk. One afternoon he decided he would like to have a Noah's Ark. His father asked him to save up the money that he would earn doing small chores for his family that summer, and there would be enough to buy the ark. (The cost was about $8.00.) They came several other times for tea. Then the end of the summer arrived, and they entered in triumph, the little boy holding a plastic food storage bag filled with pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters. Counted out in little piles, these did produce enough to send a beaming new owner home with his ark. Having finished the ark digression, I return to the regular order of the narrative. Peggy and I talked often about the Quiet Comer in the confusing period before it opened, by no means certain it really would open. The food, we thought at that time, would be nice baked goods prepared by women from

different ethnic groups: Greek pastries on Wednesday, Jewish pastries on Thursday, Italian pastries on Friday, that kind of thing. These would be served with coffee or tea made behind a little counter. There would be no wait staff, people would just come up to the counter and get their trays. I was a little worried about old ladies and about teapots falling and breaking, though. Peggy was still giving intense thought to the location. She and I looked allover town an~ in the newspapers for a shop space to rent. We spoke with a man who was developing the downstairs section of an old hotel into shops, and we put our names in to wait for a space when the project should be finished. It encountered so many delays that we finally gave up, although it did open later on. Another landlord, with a number of small shops, thought we might want to locate there. We could get a lot of business by serving breakfast to people from buses, he said. Peggy was appalled and dragged me away. "Preparing breakfast for 40 people at a time when you're trying to run a place for quiet conversation-Â that's nutso!" Later, in the center of Lenox, I saw a shop space half underground that needed lots of renovation. She gave it a disdainful glance. "That place is disgusting!" she declared uncompromisingly. Then I went to see several retired businessmen from SCORE, the Service Corps of Retired Executives, which gives free advice to small businesses. They listened to my plans for a while. They did not think I could get a loan from the Small Business Administration, their parent organization, and were relieved that I was not planning to seek one. Nonetheless, they did like the concept. These were their words after they discussed it privately together: "We think it will fly ." They did not expect it to make a lot of money, but said that it is helpful to have two compatible businesses together, so that the customers for one part of a business may also try the other part. To my consternation, they ended the session by declaring flatly: "We think this business should be in Great Barrington." Great Barrington is 20 minutes south of Lenox. Peggy would not hear of it, and I too was reluctant, especially since I did not know people there. We gritted our teeth and stuck with Lenox. But we were getting nowhere in the real estate search, and my confidence was waning. My son helped me look too. One day he and I were walking up and down Lenox's attractive Church Street looking for empty stores. My watch fell off, although I didn't realize it. By the time we knew it was missing and went back to Church Street, the watch had been run over by a truck! Pressed into the warm, soft macadam, it was still running. Nothing had been broken but the crystal--but it made me feel foolish and inept.

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II. 104 MAIN STREET One day Peggy and I went swimming together, as we did .twice a week, and back to her house for lunch. We loved to talk about people and ideas, but of course the Quiet Comer was the main focus of our talk. When we prayed about our longing for it to come into reality, we came across this line from Psalm 90: "Establish thou the work of our hands; the work of our hands establish thou it." We were impressed; it seemed compelling. For a few weeks we kept on praying, with growing confidence. Then one day Peggy called me up. "I fo und it! I've found the Quiet Comer!" We went to look at it together-Â 104 Main Street, right next to the popular Cimini's Market (by the Mobil station).' Peggy had asked the building's owner, Charles Flint, to meet us there. I was skeptical, because the rent was more than I had ever dreamed of spending. It was a charming old house with hardwood floors. The upstairs was rented out as an apartment, the rear to another business. Available to us were two large rooms suitable for dining, each with a handsome fireplace, a small, rectangular room with a huge old window2 for a kitchen, a square pine-paneled room for our bookstore, a small winterized porch, and a bathroom, as well as a somewhat crumbling basement with two furnaces and plenty of space to pile our cases of j uices and sodas. I did find it attractive but said with misgivings that I thought the rent was too high. Peggy wouldn't take my foot-dragging, certain as she was that we would never fi nd anything as nice for less. "Get Dick to come down here and look at it, as soon as possible." He actually agreed to this peremptory request, and he did like the space, but he wanted to be sure someone he trusted found it suitable. He suggested I ask our architect friend, Terry Hallock, to meet me there and take a look, so I called and set up an appointment. We had already told Terry and his wife Bev about the Quiet Comer idea. He walked around the rooms for a little while, evaluating and measuring things. Finally he said, "Yup, this is it! This is the Quiet Comer." I will long remember that exciting moment: we were going to be real! We had other problems, though. At the urging of our SCORE advisers, we checked into food service laws and town permits. We discovered that our idea of home-baked pastries would not work. They had to be cooked on the premises or in a licensed kitchen, said the Tri-Town health department. (Max Bookless, an inspector from Tri-Town, who with his family had managed the Berkshire Community College food service, would descend on us a couple of times a year, sometimes right at lunch time, and look over our shoulders for 'Now Semolina restaurant, 80 Main St., next to O'Brien's Market. 2It proved invaluable in 1988's steamy summer. 10

potential violations while teasing the daylights out of us.) A licensed kitchen has to have a separate entrance, not shared with a dwelling. That meant we had to buy from a commercial bakery (too expensive!) or bake for ourselves, but what? Jiffy drop cookies wouldn't do! Since the teashop idea was English, we decided we should make scones and crumpets. Not that we knew how--we had to learn. We started learning from our favorite cookbooks and then gained some courage to adapt and invent. There was no Quiet Comer kitchen yet, of course, so we taste-tested them by making them at home. Peggy, a lover of tea--though she never had a teapot more than a few months without breaking its lid--was a discerning judge of tea time goodies. We oven-baked the scones; the crumpet mixture was poured into rings on a buttery pan. They could be heated in a convection oven. No microwaves at the QC! Most chefs 3 don't like them either, because they can affect the taste and consistency of foods in unpredictable ways, as I had learned once by watching a microwaved restaurant roll harden and shrivel. Better to be a couple of minutes slower, with a nice crunchy-soft scone as the result, instead of risking disaster. With such high rent, we realized we were going to have to serve lunch, not just tea and coffee with little baked things. So one day Peggy and I sat down with a pile of cookbooks and our imaginations to choose sandwiches for the menu: low-cholesterol chicken salad; tomato slices with melted Havarti cheese; tuna melt with Jarlsberg; a hot chopped mushroom sandwich with a spicy sauce. That last one was delicious, but time-consuming to make. It worked out fine in the winter, but eventually we substituted a popular guacamole sandwich in the summer (and later sliced turkey as well). Some customers ordered our guacamole as a dip, making a mad rush next door to Cimini's for taco chips. Being admirers of France, where Peggy had lived for a couple of years, we appreciated the frugal, tasty meal an omelet could provide. Our styles were: plain omelet; omelet with melted Jarlsberg cheese; and a western with onion, green pepper and tomato. The omission of ham made the place more welcoming to our observant Jewish or vegetarian customers. (In our last couple of years we also had to learn how to make egg-white omelets for people who were avoiding cholesterol.) We planned to have home-made soups rather than buying them from a restaurant supply finn. At first many of them were prepared by a caterer friend, Diane Israelite Weinstein, because we were inexperienced. They were made with vegetable stock and contained no meat; one, "Zuppa di Tonno," contained

3Lee's Cactus Cafe says: "Don't ask us to nuke it, we don't have a microwave. " 11

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3Lee's Cactus Cafe says: "Don't ask us to nuke it, we don't have a microwave. " 11

a little tuna. Diane got busier with other work, but eventually we got quite confident at making those soups and inventing others: Tamari Mushroom, or Green and Yellow Split Pea with Kale; or adding our own twist .to recipes we had found such as Cream of Cauliflower with Cheddar or Fifteen Bean . Peggy made some soups in our early days, or washed a batch of dishes if she saw we were behind with them. She loved to come in and sit with me for a pot of tea after she finished work at the library, riding up on the sturdy green bike her daughters had given her. But this sweet friend who had fo und our place and so many of our books and recipes died of leukemia on Thanksgiving Eve, 1987, and her ardent presence was gone from our midst. Peggy and I had agreed that the Quiet Comer's sandwiches were not to be made from commercial bread. Plans started with a buttermilk bread recipe that I had cut out of the Berkshire Eagle in the 60's or 70's. For variety, we also bought the delicious sunflower oatmeal bread first begun by Geny's Bakery, on Pittsfield's Italian-populated Fenn Street, and continued by several successors, ending with "Special T's. "4 Later, a nutritionist who sometimes ate at the QC suggested that we add a homemade whole wheat bread, which we did. We found a great one made with molasses, and it became Dick's favorite bread at home. We had a dessert of the day and a pastry tray filled with goodies like Linzer cookies and truffles. The idea first came from Scott, a pastry chef who had brought a sample tray j ust before we opened, to see if we wanted to try it. We decided we did, so we began to keep a supply of his little goodies for our tray, some in the refrigerator and some in the freezer. But Emily Mattina, one of our earliest employees and the daughter of friends, happened to be an ardent baker. "Mrs. Perera, we've got to get rid of Scott! We should make our own pastry tray things!" This was greeted by foot-dragging from me (characteristic), but then we learned that Scott was moving away. Emily was triumphant. We both, with the help of others, poked around in cookbooks until we had a glorious assortment: nut bars, mint bars, coconut macaroons, Linzer cookies, Scotch shortbread, meringues, and other items that changed from time to time. It took an intense search of cookbooks in libraries and at home to come up with a recipe for truffles, which customers had learned to expect during Scott's tenure. Being slow to learn restraint, I tried a fe w rare and intimidating dishes for the Quiet Comer. I found a recipe for chestnut cake, and customers liked it, but it was stiff work and took ages. (I should have been wary enough to remember the time Dick and I stayed up most of the night stuffing our Thanksgiving turkey with chestnut dressing, after having nearly destroyed our

fingernails peeling the chestnuts!) In an airline magazine, on my way back from visiting my sister in Oxford, I had fo und a recipe for Bakewell Tarts which I saved. This very British concoction started with a shortcrust pastry spread with strawberry jam, covered with a beaten mixture of eggs, butter and ground almonds, and baked 20-25 minutes. The tarts looked and tasted good, but the procedure was complicated. I did make them for several First Thursday evening programs, but it was hard to get them finished before people came in. Carole said we should have pies. We both made them often at home, but I thought pies were too plebeian for the Quiet Comer. Finally she wore me down, and of course she had been right all along. We had some rare and original dessert recipes, but surely those pies--apple, blueberry, lemon meringue, pecan and others--were among the best-remembered things at the QC. One summer I went to early church services in the hilltown of Otis, and afterward stopped at the Otis Poultry Farm (where there are "Custom Laid Eggs" !) to get raspberry pies for Sunday dessert. But a customer called me over to her table the second week of this. "This pie tastes good, but it is a commercial pie with a commercial crust. People know the difference between your own homemade pies and these, and I really don't think you should compromise." So her displeasure caused us to have extra desserts prepared ahead of time for Sundays. At least the reason for her complaint was that she liked our own baking!

4For a while our bread was delivered by Kobi, now of "Just a Second. " 12

Ill. TRA YEUNG TABLES AND ALL THAT Of course the customers weren't going to elu standing up, s9 here is the story of the furnishing of the QC. Carole accompanied me to Albany, where we hunted in restaurant supply stores and got a bit depressed with greasy-looking pizza parlor tables and chairs. In a fancier place, we admired a line of square wooden tables with black pedestals and Formica tops, as well as some attractive bentwood chairs. Although they were j ust right for our needs, we thought they were too expensive, so we prepared to leave, thanking the nice co-owner (Tom?) who had been showing them to us. He realized that we were not trying to deceive him but could not spend that much. Amazingly, he cut the price until it was manageable, and set a timely completion date. Tom said that when the tables had come into his shop and were assembled, I should rent a truck and drive to Albany to pick them up. I tried to energize myself for this task. I have always dreaded tasks that seem too large for my skills. "Aargh! What if I had to drive that horrible huge tractor-trailer?" I ask myself at intersections. But one day Tom called with an apology: the tables had come in missing their levelers, and there would be a delay while they were sent for and installed. Levelers go at the ends of table legs so you can make adjustments to keep them straight on an uneven floor. Carole knew all about them, but I didn't. (I had many such areas of ignorance, and many resc uers.) Levelers were a necessity in an old house such as 104 Main Street. Because of the delay, which Tom fo und troubling, he decided that his finn should deliver the tables for us! I cannot think of a delay with more delightful results. Carole accompanied me to the excellent fabric outlet in Belchertown, Mass., where we purchased light blue and darker blue fabrics with simple white patterns, for our two different rooms. Carole took fabric home and cut tablecloths from it, stitching the hems neatly on her sewing machine. (I hope I made some too!) As I remember, we had 13 tables, some to be covered with cloths, others set with white woven place mats. Our bentwood chairs could seat 28 people. We had a nice wooden high chair, and a few unglamorous metal folding chairs for emergencies. The late great England Brothers department store produced a huge soup pot, other cooking pots, mixing bowls and large spoons. Carole and I found simple but dignified stainless steel tableware in Albany. Seeking a fe w items at a restaurant supply store in Lee, I also came away with "bussing trays" and a tray stand. Like most restaurant-goers, I had not realized how crucial those things would be for handling dirty dishes . Of course we had the Prussian blue and white Dansk china. My son, who had chosen it, also helped me find a clock, which he considered a necessity. We got a handsome Korean reproduction of a wooden "regulator." A customer told us those clocks were 14

very good. It cost so much to make them that the Koreans only did it for a couple of years. People loved hearing our clock's quiet ticking in the front room, except when I forgot to wind it! Dick checked up whenever he came in, and I am sure he would agree with me that I was close to incorrigible. We also went to an antique/used furniture shop and found a small mahogany sideboard with strong drawers, which held our silverware, tablecloths and place mats. ~ter, Dick suggested that I get a glass top made for the sideboard and use it, with an ice bucket, as a place for pouring iced tea and making lemonade (we added lemon juice, just before serving, to pre-chilled sugar syrup water). I dragged my feet, lest we damage the mahogany, but finally gave in. Despite some superficial damage, the time we saved was worth it. I stopped in at "Your Kitchen" in Pittsfield to ask its owner, Susan Gordon: "How should I make coffee? Do I have to have one of those huge stands with round carafes and filters and pouring water and stuff?" "No, I wouldn't do that! It might not even taste good," Susan said. She showed me some "French press" coffee makers, or "plunger pots, " explaining that someoneÂ (I think it was her sister) made the coffee that way at a restaurant in Connecticut. So I got plunger pots, tea pots, a coffee grinder, and an electric teakettle, which takes only a few minutes to boil and has an automatic shutoff. Susan kindly gave me the phone number of her coffee supplier, so I could order large bags at wholesale and keep the unused coffee frozen. She was right; the Quiet Corner became known for excellent coffee--and for its tea, which was loose and steeped in infusers, except for the herbal teas in bags. I thought "Your Kitchen" would last forever, but in 1996 it closed. By then Susan had her popular "Bagels Too" next door, and wanted to do something different with her remaining time. I got an electronic cash register and brought it home. There, on Thanksgiving break, our son Rick had a glorious time learning how to program it and ring up imaginary sales. Then he taught me to use it. It made a highÂ pitched squeal if you punched the wrong button. Emily Mattina was devastated by this when she tried to enter a sale, and would beg one of the other workers to come and stop the horrible sound. With a 24-hour battery memory, the machine could not be hanned by a brief power outage. When we lost power for a slightly longer time, I was able to telephone a repair place where a man read out to me the numbers to punch for reprogramming. Our machine could keep track of book and food sales separately, a great help since those were subject to two different taxes in the state--both 5%, but paid to different offices. I will do you a favor and not tell you all about the state and federal tax fonns I had to learn to deal with! W-2, 941, Mass. WR-l and so on, they spun in my mind. I'm glad I was able to learn, and doubly glad I don't have to do them any more. When we closed, we sold the register to a man with a new business in the small building 15

5Later, daffodils and tulips that had been paved under managed to poke their leaves through the macadam and bloom triumphantly!

shovel, too. It's blue, and it still cheers me to see it in our garage. My snow shovel! We had some huge snowstorms in our early years, and I was responsible for digging alone through huge drifts in order to get home. Fortunately, the area was kept lighted, and Charles usually made sure a barrel of sand was put on our front porch to keep the walkways safe. The truck from Albany arrived on time, and the tables were put into their places in the rooms. Jim, a new employee, made a map of each room, with numbers for the tables; some were pushed together to seat larger groups. "Table 1" in the back room was often used for exhausted employees to sit down with a cup of tea or coffee. "Table Number 8," in the front window, was a favorite. Dick and I often sat there for lunch, hoping we might attract customers. On several hot days we watched from that window as a yellow Labrador retriever, out for a stroll by himself, climbed into the low fountain across the street and splashed himself to coolness. (It had been donated to the town by animal lovers, so who would dare shoo him away?) On the shelf in the front window we placed magazines that customers could bring to their tables: American Heritage, National Geographic, Biblical Archaeology Review, First Things, Vermont Life, Tikkun, etc., some raided from our house when only half read. A customer might borrow a magazine, or dash over to Cimini's to photocopy an article. The fireplace in the front room sported a beautiful brass fender (a family heirloom that wouldn't fit on our own fireplace) and a set of fire tools from a tag sale. We were not really able to light fires, but it looked welcoming. On the walls of the dining rooms we hung a series of attractive French posters, lent by our friend Laurie (Gagnon) Kincaid. The tables were set with the white woven Chinese place mats and with the tablecloths Carole had made. The Dansk cups and saucers, sugar bowls and salt and pepper shakers were on the tables, and when we welcomed the first customers bittersweet was in our vases. This is so plentiful in our back yard that someone used to come every year to gather it for the Harvest Festival in Stockbridge. We had saved some in our cool basement for the Quiet Comer, since I had been reading about complementary colors, and bittersweet orange was said to be a good complement for blue. Our menus were photocopied from a calligraphy layout by Elizabeth Barbour's sister Sarah Novak, bearing the cup and book logo. We kept ivory copy paper on hand so we could quickly make clean menus. During our "last hurrahs, " 1990-91 , we used a printed menu. Newly listed were "Becky's Friend's Bran Muffins." Becky Faitsch had passed a friend's recipe to Jo Ann Kulberg. It changed a little whenever somebody new played with it. Nadine Kulberg called her mother's version "Mommy's Marvelous Muffins. " Barbieo fine-tuned the recipe and really enjoyed turning out these much-appreciated muffins, substantial and chewy. We also added an "Old Fashioned Vanilla

behind us. I was glad, because he had gotten himself a very nice machine at a bargain rate, but it's not the sort of thing you need around the house. We learned from state regulations that 'we were required to have two bathrooms, so Charles Hint had a second one installed. I was very grateful for that gesture. A year or two later, he fulfilled another of my requests: a gentle macadam slope going toward the back door.5 Then, with the aid of a large plywood ramp that he lent us, two or three people could guide a wheelchair in. This feature was needed on a number of occasions. Now, of course, there are precise requirements for wheelchair access, and Semolina, the next restaurant to use the space, built a long, gradual ramp to give wheelchair customers direct access to a wide door. They decided to install two handicapped-access bathrooms. Our bathrooms had disappeared completely; in fact the town officials did not believe there had ever been any bathrooms there. In preparation for our opening, we painted the walls in the back dining room and the sunporch a comfortable off-white. The front room already had its distinguished apricot-colored Schumacher wallpaper. The book room had wood-paneled walls. Dan Haling, who had worked for Habit for Humanity in Kenya and had done a good deal of construction and remodeling at home, made our bookshelves, kitchen shelves, and Formica-covered kitchen counter. John and Smitty Pignatelli, local Lenox electricians, put in more outlets and higher voltage in the kitchen. Some of the piping work required the aid of a licensed plumber. Steve Lay, who responded to our request when a friend recommended him, is our household plumber to this day--a very well-read one. He and his wife Nancy were also QC customers. For the back room, which had almost no light, Charles Hint had given us a 24-paned picture window, which Dan installed. It gave us a much more English appearance. I think Dan also put polyurethane on our wooden floors. We had to do that two or three other times--foot traffic in a restaurant makes a major assault on the floors. Dick was nimble with the polyurethane when he had the time. I crawled across the floors more than once on a late Saturday afternoon, slapping polyurethane on the worn spots so I could go home with a clear conscience. The floor could dry on Sunday, when we were closed. (Later, Charles requested us to open on Sunday afternoons during the high tourist season, feeling that his tenants should help each other attract customers.) There was so much we didn't know, not being professionals. Somebody came along just in time to tell us about the long mats with rubber bottoms that we could put near the doors--a great help when snow and sand got tracked in each winter. Some wise soul probably reminded me to buy a snow

5Later, daffodils and tulips that had been paved under managed to poke their leaves through the macadam and bloom triumphantly!

Malted Milk Shake," pleasing many a weary customer, including a teenager with anorexia. On the back of the menu we told how tile Quiet Comer got its name, summarizing the history of the building: "This old house, with itsÂˇ rare beehive oven, was built for Harriet. R. Hicock, 1835. In Greek Revival style, it is one of the oldest houses in Lenox village. Called the Cowhig house, it was purchased by Theodore Cowhig in 1887; many of his relatives and descendants still live in the area." 6 Our neighbor, Annemarie Cowhig Farrell, came in for lunch with her daughter Margaret, who said, pointing into a comer of the room, "That's where I used to play with my toy vacuum cleaner!" The Farrells had not known about the beehive oven until the Sorokens, owners of Yamato House gift shop, the previous occupant of 104 Main St., decided to break into the extraordinarily thick wall between the rooms.

6Nancy Marasco of the Lenox Historical Society found this infonnation. 18

IV. CUSTOMERS! THE STAFF MEETS THE PUBLIC Our opening day was December 7, 1984--not because we wanted to call attention to Pearl Harbor Day, but because that was the day when everything was ready. We had sent out flyers, tacked posters to bulletin boards in Lenox and Pittsfield, and announced our opening with the first of a weekly series of ads in the Berkshire Eagle. Our daughter Jane joined Carole and other.s to wait on table. (Rosie and Rick were away at college, but they helped on other occasions.) We also had volunteer help from two young Brazilians, Flavio and Keila. Flavio had started our little garden in the fall. A surprising number of people came to lunch that day, most of them pronouncing their meals very good. We learned better ways of doing things when a few of our original ideas turned out poorly. We had planned to allow customers to choose a sunflower-oatmeal roll instead of bread for a sandwich, if desired. My first glance at a friend's sandwich showed me what a bad idea that was. Her tiny roll looked ridiculous compared to the substantial pieces of just-baked bread on her friend's sandwich. Carole, who had offered to be our first employee, certainly did the right thing when waiting on customers. She would take their orders and then say, "Perhaps you'd like to look around in our bookstore while your meal is being prepared." I had a hard time doing that without sounding fake, but Carole's friendly suggestion acquainted people with the books, and increased their sales. Besides, it made the food preparation time go faster. Carole also talked at length with customers who were searching for faith and truth. One businessman who came a number of times was especially glad if she was there to continue their conversation. Finally she lent him a book which dealt with some of the things they had discussed. Some weeks later, he still had not brought it in, and Carole had to stop working for a while. As she requested, I watched continually for him, but for some reason he never came back. Let us hope Carole's book, which he seems to have kept, helped him in some way. The first new acquaintance to be employed at the Quiet Comer was David Ekstrom of Pittsfield, whose parents had given him one of our flyers. David already had a part-time job, but he had enough hours left in his week to do quite a bit for us. Bright, capable and experienced at restaurant work, he set up efficient systems for storage, sandwich-making and so forth. He told me that we had to have garnishes on our plates, which had never occurred to me. He cut a slit in an orange slice, twisting it so it would stand up on the plate, then slid a sprig of parsley under it. People often complimented this garnish, and many ate the orange or the parsley or both. David, of all our employees, flatly refused to make omelets the regular French way, with a tablespoon of water beaten into the eggs. All David's omelets had half-and-half in them instead. They were tasty that way too, and David was sure they "puffed up more. " No 19

6Nancy Marasco of the Lenox Historical Society found this infonnation. 18

French chefs came in to scold us for making our omelets two different ways, either. One September afternoon it was very; very quiet. My mother had come over to have tea with me. She had never seen Naumkeag, a nearby historic house with famous gardens, so I asked David if he would mind keeping the sleepy little restaurant by himself for a short while. He was most agreeable to that. My mother and I completed our tour and came back. The place was full of people, and David was rushing around exhausted with a tray full of food on his shoulder. I would say he was the only person who could have handled so much so well, but I took care not to make simple assumptions about the number of likely customers in the future . You can see how many things we learned "by the seat of our pants"! Before I opened the place I was very worried about how to do things. I was fussing about this to a friend, but she said: "Don't you see? After a few days, the way you do things will become the way it's done." That was very comforting, and usually proved to be true. We were open until nine on Thursday nights, as were many of the stores in Pittsfield and an occasional one in Lenox. On our first Thursday evening we served a group of skiers in their twenties, thereby learning that cocoa shouldn't be made from scratch after the person has ordered it, no matter how good it is! The poor young man did think his cocoa was delicious, but he had to wait endlessly after his coffee-drinking friends had been served. After that we tried leaving pre made syrup in the refrigerator, but that harmed the taste. Finally we learned to keep our mixed powder of cocoa and sugar in a jar; then we could quickly add boiling water to a few tablespoons of it, heat some milk in the liquid cocoa, and top with whipped cream and a little cinnamon. It was not very wise to beat the cream after the customer had ordered it, but there were customers who were greatly honored when we had to do that for them on occasion! We did not start to use commercial spray-on whipped cream, but kept whipped cream, lightly sweetened, in the fridge, where it stayed fresh for several days. Reno Cimini, who then owned the small market next door,? gave us the whipped cream recipe and keeping instructions. We were always flying into Reno's shop wearing our Quiet Comer aprons, grabbing a dozen eggs ("Oh, somebody just ordered an omelet?" the clerk might ask knowingly), or some crackers or half-and-half. Felicity Young, a friend who worked at the QC for a while, describes it this way: "The Quiet Comer was a cozy, friendl y place to work. It could also be chaotic when really busy. I remember how Eve was always eager to please the customers. As a result, when a customer asked for something we didn't carry, e.g. a different type of soda, or if we had just run out of cream, one of the staff

?He sold it, saying: "Enough 13-hour days--I want some time with my son."

would walk (or run!) next door to the market to purchase the item. The people sitting in the front window had the best view of this occurrence. "One time I thought I was being discreet, and I ran next door to get some honey. On the way back I glanced up at the picture window and saw the customers laughing as I hurried back to the QC with the honey." Felicity's daughter Celeste remembered more of these adventures. "Running over to Cimini's was always fun. Usually I went there for half and half. Loeb's8 runs were usually for chicken for that great-tasting pain-in-theÂ butt-to-make-stain-your-hands-yellow-Bright-Day chicken salad." She said "I hope that you manage to gather enough stories and memories to make your final project as funny, amusing, and interesting as all of our memories !" The yellow color she mentioned was put on her hands by curry powder. Like Celeste, I have a lasting memory of running back from Loeb's with chicken. It fe lt quite exhilarating, and it's amazing how fast you can boil a boneless chicken breast and chill it under cold running water if you know you may have to make a sandwich very soon! All of Felicity's children except Patrick, the youngest, worked at the Quiet Comer at some time. Susanna, next after Celeste, was cheerful and efficient at waiting on customers, so when I needed help with a gathering for Pittsfield library staff and trustees I asked her to come and bring a frie nd. The two were so perfect that my guests kept asking "Where did you get those wonderful girls?" Alex Young made innumerable trips to Loeb's Market for us, and later went to work there. After graduation from Lenox High, he went to the University of Arizona, and still lives in the Southwest. As you can gather from Felicity's and Celeste's stories, it would be impossible to imagine the Quiet Comer too far from a market. But ours was not the only restaurant that did a little creative coping. Once Dick and I were having dinner with friends at Cafe Lucia, also in Lenox. One of us ordered a dessert made with berries. After a few minutes, the waitress came back. "We're out of those berries," she said. "Want us to call the Church Street Cafe and see if they have any?" Amused, we agreed, and the nice dessert arrived at the table without much delay. Once, encountering Julia Britell (best friend and QC coÂ worker with Beth Rod) on the street, I told her about this berry-borrowing. She said she was not surprised, for at that time she was working at Cafe Lucia, and they had to borrow champagne glasses from another place because they did not have enough. One waitress felt uneasy about borrowing yet another item, but a friend said "Don't worry! They already owe us three limes." In spite of the scrapes we got into while we were learning, quite a few people became regulars at the Quiet Comer. Friends who wanted to talk to each

8Earl and Lesley Albert's full-se rvice market a block and a half away. 21

?He sold it, saying: "Enough 13-hour days--I want some time with my son."

8Earl and Lesley Albert's full-se rvice market a block and a half away. 21

other would come for lunch or tea. Some people had favorite tables. Linda Anne Strite's was "Tabls #2," in the comer of the back dining room. She said she intended to glare at anyone who was sitting atl "her" table when she came in. One Monday, when I was serving alone because Mondays had been very quiet, the place was mobbed and Linda had come in to eat lunch. Suddenly she jumped up from "her" table, took an order pad, and rushed around to the other customers to take their orders. I got the food prepared reasonably fast with that part taken care of--what a wonderful customer! (This amusing friend, sad to say, died in 1994.) Although Linda had fun with her impromptu waitress shtick, she thought I had better arrange for someone else to come in on Mondays--and there, at another table, was my warm-hearted friend Marlene Bergendahl, who agreed to work on Mondays and did so for many months. Judi Loeb, whom I fIrst met when she was helping with the Robbins Zust marionette shows and teaching crafts to our children, was never officially on our staff. But she seemed to have an uncanny way of knowing when Barbieo and I were in trouble--a sudden wave of customers and nobody else to help. She would wander in, hoping to buy a bowl of soup for herself, but would end up putting on an apron and working hard for a while before having a chance to sit down for that soup (no charge, of course). You can see that we had nontraditional ways of obtaining employees. We never placed newspaper ads for them. They came along on their own accord or were recommended by friends or relatives. Peggy's daughter Sally worked for us for a while near the beginning. A classics major at Skidmore, she later obtained her MFA from Columbia, went on to be Registrar at the Williams College Museum and then studied film in Iowa (she said museum personnel nowadays have to know about the new ways of using film as a museum art). Sally may have been the best person we ever had for selling the books. She knew where to find them, and I often saw her talking animatedly with someone who was looking for a present. Sylvia Stokes, my "cousin-in-law" (her first cousin married my sister), came on board to help in the kitchen in 1985, and later brought in her friend Jerry Wiater. By 1986 Sylvia and Jerry had introduced us to Margaret Maynard (Cimini), who got to be very good at cooking for us. One day Margaret's friend Barbieo Gizzi, an artist, came in for coffee. She said she wanted help in finding a little part-time work, so I was poring through the want ads. "How about doing drawings for an advertising agency? How about doing layout for a printer?" I asked as I turned the pages. "Actually," she said, "I would kind of like to work in this cafe!" I was surprised, but that was what happened. Barbieo became an essential part of our Quiet Comer life in 1987, and stayed until our last spring, 1991. Making beautiful soups, salads and omelets, she also became an expert baker, a gift she had not known she had. Her Linzertortes were superior, as were the small Linzer 22

cookies she made for the pastry tray. A major Linzer fan, I often made them myself, but Barbieo's were neater and classier. She worked with the scone recipe and got a much flakier, higher-risen type of scone. Customers praised these so much that Berkshire Magazine (no longer publishing, alas) asked for the recipe and for a batch of scones to use in a photograph of breakfast breads from area restaurants. Barbieo's own personal memory from the Quiet Comer is the most lyrical I received: STRAWBERRIES AND HOLLYHOCKS The soup was simmering on the stove, the aroma of scones filled the room, I had just finished kneading the bread, it was rising at one end of the kitchen counter. Having just cleared an area to start on the day's dessert I pondered what it would be. It was a day much like any other day at the Quiet Comer, it was still very early and none of the wait staff had arrived. Eve had just arrived with a flat of the most delectable strawberries I had seen that season, and declared, "Today let us have strawberry shortcake!" Now they say that the sense of smell can trigger your memory but I myself had never experienced so profound a vision. I was transported back in time to my uncle's farm on the Cape. My family had spent every summer of my childhood there and uncle Tony was quite famous for his cultivation of strawberries. Some of the greatest moments of my childhood are woven in the landscape of that place. So how could it be that I had forgotten aunt Merina's flower gardens? The aroma of hollyhocks9 was as predominant as the scent of the strawberries and together they spelled my youth. On that day at the QC standing at the window looking at the hollyhocks, holding that basket of strawberries, in the blink of an eye I remembered something wonderful, I remembered what it fel t like to be a little girl again. Many of the employees became friends of Barbieo's, among them Rachel Masters, a Berkshire County resident who worked with us from 1988 90. She grew visibly in wisdom, humor and sophistication while keeping an open and friendly personality. Her conversations with Barbieo must have been among the high points of her time at the QC. Rachel, who also loved working at the Chesterwood museum, studied Renaissance art in Italy while at Brandeis. After graduation she worked in New York for Gene Shalit; an Israeli video

9Along the wall of Cimini's market, across from our kitchen window.

producer; the Fox network; then for CBS News as an associate producer. Melanie Carroll of Ohid was another who couldI remember with gratitude her talks with Barbieo. "One time we discussed Paul Simon and the album 'Graceland' and analyzed 'Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,'" Melanie wrote. I admire Paul Simon, but don't know much about him, so from me Melanie would only have gotten a few sentences. But what a pleasure it was for me and Barbieo to talk with many workers like these--ardent, serious, amusing, sympathetic--whom we might never have known had it not been for their summer job quests. Melanie had come to Lenox looking for work during spring vacation of 1989 with Hawley Abelow, Risa Diemond, and Alden Faulkner. The fo ur girls, who were about to graduate from the Millbrook School , wanted to live together for their last summer before college. They had not had much success looking for work until they came upon the Quiet Corner and Cheesecake Charlie's, whose back door looked across a parking lot toward us. As the summer began, Melanie and Alden ended up at the QC. The other two were at Cheesecake Charlie's, who realized they had promised a job to another young woman before Risa had applied, so Risa joined us at the Quiet Corner too. I greatly enjoyed talking with Risa about books and ideas (I am sure she shined at Columbia, where she was headed), and she was a valued employee, so at least from our point of view the change worked out for the best. "One of the highlights of the summer," Melanie said, "was the presence of a few famous people. I remember the fIrst time Keanu Reeves came in. He was sitting near the kitchen, his hair was a big mess and he was slouching. I hardly paid any attention to him. Then, when he was ready to pay he handed over his AMEXIO card. Alden told me, after he had left on his motorcycle, who he was. I had not seen 'Bill and Ted's' so I wasn't terribly impressed. He came in again, and I waited on him; he was with a really tall woman. He ordered a sandwich, and perhaps because now I knew he was famous, and was nervous, I produced a lopsided sandwich. He did not look really thrilled with the sandwich, and I almost took it back. In the end, he gobbled it up." Melanie especially liked picking flowers from the flower bed next to our porch and putting them in the vases on the tables. We had peonies in June, with cosmos, phlOX, petunias and more to follow, not to mention mint for our iced tea, in our amateur-designed garden. Neighboring shops had profe ssionally prepared flower beds, but ours for some reason was not given that benefIt; several subsequent renters continued with the perennials we left behind. I took home the little primroses we had planted in the last couple of years, and they

lOr hope it was Mastercard or Visa; we weren't signed up for AMEX! 24

have bloomed and multiplied wonderfully, supplying both our garden and my mother's. I'm glad I took them, because Semolina removed that side flower bed in order to make room for a new and larger porch. Melanie and Alden enjoyed making our Saturday morning bank deposits, so they could arrive early and start the pancake breakfasts by themselves. Others who enjoyed pancake responsibilities were Celeste Young, Kirsten Hekler and John Philp. They prepared dry ingredients ahead of time for efficiency, and gave much thought to making the pancakes just right. The recipe was invented by Nicholas Roosevelt, a grandson of Teddy Roosevelt; the plates were garnished with mint and strawberries, and maple syrup and cranberry syrup were supplied. We also served fresh-squeezed orange juice. Once an employee lost the top of the squeezer in the trash while throwing away some spent oranges. We had to go through our dumpster--fortunately a small one and not very full at the time--until we found it and scrubbed the daylights out of it. We enjoyed the pancake breakfasts a lot more when we stopped putting flyers about them allover the place. A smaller, more patient clientele learned about the breakfasts by reading about them on the menu or on a tiny notice next to our front door. Perhaps we made less money by limiting ourselves to quiet publicity, but the atmosphere was calmer and sweeter. Celeste, for whom I had to provide transportation at times, remembers those pancake Saturdays well. "I liked stepping into the fresh, calm morning air when you came to pick me up. I remember the fIrst batch of pancakes I made were lumpy! I couldn't stand lumps and I thought they were ruined, but in the end everything worked out OK." She became an expert teacher of other pancake-makers, and stirred up many delicious soups on Saturdays. She was very orderly about all of these tasks and about putting things away. Celeste went to the University of New Hampshire, spending her junior year abroad in France. QC staff members made many suggestions, to which I usually said yes. (Some say that women run organizations in a collegial way rather than in a directorial way.) Daisy Rockwell was a good judge of people, wisely helping her crankier customers stay calm as their food was being prepared. One day in 1990 she decided to help me with the card system by which we kept track of book sales. We were out of some of the me card colors we needed, and Daisy insisted on driving right off to "PaperdilIy" in Lee, a store I had never heard of. About 20 minutes later she came back with a lovely rainbow of cards, and briskly fInished updating the record. I have used that tiny, surprisingly wellÂ stocked stationery store a couple of other times. An able student at the University of Chicago, Daisy also suggested a number of good books to order, including my oid friend, Henry James's Aspem Papers. Of course we had some less helpful staff plans. Even Nate Weiss and Matt Gershoff, best friends who were always generous and hard-working, once

lOr hope it was Mastercard or Visa; we weren't signed up for AMEX! 24

committed a clinker. On a very hot day, they decided to cover the front of the air conditioner because it' was dripping water onto the porch. After a while there was a terrible smell in the dining room. I called the air conditioner service people, terrified at the thought that I would have to purchase' a new air conditioner for several hundred dollars (which I didn't have). It turned out, however, that the only problem was Nate and Matt's cover-up! I hasten to add that virtually every other suggestion of theirs was wise, thoughtful, and, whenever appropriate, funny.

V. THE STAFF: GOODIES AND SWINGING DOORS need to tell you a little more about our bright and enthusiastic workers, their memories of the QC, and their subsequent activities. Emily Mattina, the inspiration for our pastry tray, became just as versatile in her professional life as she was at the Quiet Corner. Having maj ored in drama at the University of New Hampshire, she worked for a year at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. The next year she wrote: "I am living in Auburn, New York, and I am working as a resident actor (a full year's contract) with a wonderful company." She is probably working somewhere else by the time you read this. As her father assured me: "She can act, direct, teach, do acrobatics-Â anything, so long as she doesn't have to sing!" About the Quiet Corner, Emily said, "My most vivid memories are those crazy summer afternoons when the lines of people went out the door, they all wanted ice tea NOW, and we ran out of everything in the world and ran, gasping and out of breath in our QC aprons, up to Loeb's Market! I also remember our baking forays, Thursday nights ll when a guest would come in and we'd listen to the poetry or music, or whatever the artist had to offer." On Thursday nights, and many other times as well, Emily produced delicious scones and brownies, discovered new ideas for the pastry tray (such as "apricot pastries" and small molasses cookies), and of course made more than her share of truffles. After all, it was Emily who had inspired the very existence of our own pastry tray. Alexandra Sterlin, who came on board in the summer of 1986, later helped with ideas and baking. A friend of our daughter Jane's from the Pittsfield Community Music School, Alexandra had played her cello in the Haitian National Orchestra. She and Emily, having been close friends some years before, were thrilled to find one another again. Emily's younger sister Jenny signed our guest book every time she came in, and we used to wait eagerly for her to be old enough to work there. But we closed before we ever had Jenny as a worker. I am sure she would have been a superlative baker like her sister, so it is too bad. (After Lenox High School, Jenny went on to Cornell to major in biology.) The making of truffles revealed surprising things about our staff. Once the heated chocolaty mixture was made, it had to be chilled. Then we shaped the balls with clean fingers and rolled them in cocoa. Amy Bergendahl, who worked for us in 1986, '87 and '89, was always bandbox-neat and kept cleaning up after herself and other people in the kitchen. Nonetheless, Amy loved to roll truffles, unfazed by her mudpie hands. Nate Weiss, though less fastidious in some respects than Amy, was comically and resolutely unwilling to roll truffles.

II "First Thursdays"

are described in Chapter 8. 27

II "First Thursdays"

are described in Chapter 8. 27

12Later he baked many for our children at college. 13We had gone to Rosie's graduation at Brown, leaving Emily in charge. Sure that there were not enough workers, she wisely asked David to help.

much time with customers but was mainly in the kitchen. You allowed me much freedom to browse through cookbooks and bake what I felt was appropriate. I recall one 'experiment' I did when the boss wasn't there. It wasn't meant to be an experiment but it felt like one when I was in the middle of it. It was a walnut torte from one of your cookbooks. First you throw a cup of sugar in the frying pan and turn heat on low. I had never cooked sugar before, and was surprised to see it tum brown and melt. Yes, I know, so naiVe. Then in goes a cup of cream. The cookbook said it would smoke and bubble. Boy, did it ever. The frypan looked like a boiling tar pit with enough smoke to make anyone think the kitchen was on fIre. I thought, 1f Mrs. P. were here she'd faint for sure.' In the end that torte met with great success and you even asked me to make it again. (Would you happen to have that recipe)?" I hurried to write it out after reading that, and put it on my desk so that I would remember to send it to David. The name of the dessert is Engadine Torte, from the Swiss canton by that name. We had many adventures at the Quiet Comer with that fascinating torte. Like "Mocha Macaroon Pie," it came from the Bakery Lane Soup Bowl, a restaurant in Middlebury, Vermont, that no longer exists. How thankful I am that I bought their excellent cookbook on one of the few occasions that we ate there. David had fIrst gone to Japan for two years while a student at Cornell, and had moved back there after graduation. He and his wife, who is Japanese, were expecting their fIrst child when he wrote. Since time has gone by, I called his mother to get myself updated. Christopher James Stomski was born in September of 1994, and his sister, Meg, was born on November 18, 1996. David is Vice President of CS First Boston in Tokyo, dealing with Futures and Options operations. They eventually bought a house, a very big event in Japan, and moved into it in the fall of 1997. The kitchen in which David, Emily, Beth and so many others reigned was a tiny space to one side of a house previously occupied by families and then by several retail stores. The house had never been used as a restaurant nor possessed a restaurant kitchen, although our book room had at one time been used as a family's kitchen. But in that small room with the huge old window, our sinks, counters, used gas stove and refrigerator, cash register, dishes, glasses, etc. somehow fIt! It had a wide doorway but no door. My husband's solution for that was to buy two louvered panels about four feet high, and some hinges. He stained the panels and made them into a pair of swinging doors, ready for a Wyatt Earp to come striding out of the kitchen. These doors turned up in the reminiscences of Anni Crofut, who worked the fIrst part of the summer of 1986 with her friend Amelia Gerlin: "I remember: delicious chicken curry sandwiches; eagerness for lunch break so we (Amelia and I) could eat them instead of serve them; classical music playing, soothing atmosphere; the swinging doors; giggling behind them and having to put on a straight face

We also had regular brownies, which were not on the pastry tray. They had their own story. When Dick was bicycling in the Josh Billings RunAground triathlon in 1984 (he was in it for its fIrst 10 years), he wanted .to have some home-baked brownies waiting for him at the fInish. Absorbed in my preliminary plans for the Quiet Comer, I listened vaguely to him but did nothing about it. Finally he took Jane's cookbook, found a recipe for brownies, and made some. After tasting one, he declared, "THIS is the brownie recipe for the Quiet Comer!" And indeed it was. 12 Almost all of the young people who ever worked for the Quiet Comer made these frequently; some also made mint bars and layered nut bars, which were a little trickier to handle. Often somebody would say "OOPS! Oh, Mrs. Perera, I just broke this mint bar when I was trying to take it out of the pan. I'm afraid it's a staff mint bar (Chomp, chomp)." Staff efforts to make meringues varied. One day I got a call at home from several of the high-school-aged employees. They had been struggling for 45 minutes with some egg whites, they moaned, and said "they just won't beat up. " Apparently they had let some yolk get in with the whites, not realizing it would torpedo the meringue project. I advised them to slide those egg whites down the drain. It was late for them to start over, so I made some meringues the next morning. After that, though, many of the school-aged bakers had success even with those tricky confections. Success was far more frequent than failure with these young people. Beth Rod was so gifted with baking that almost anything she tried turned out beautifully, even though she was only 14 when she started with us in 1989. We served a marvelous dessert called Mocha Macaroon Pie, and making it is a very exacting task. It has a bottom meringue crust containing grated German's sweet chocolate, graham cracker crumbs, and chopped pecans. The top is chilled whipped cream containing a little coffee, with curls of chocolate sprinkled over it. Beth, having made several of these in the restaurant, made two at home and brought them as her contribution to a QC party one summer at our house. They were flawless! Both pies got eaten up that evening--except for the piece Beth's father had her promise to bring home to him. After high school, Beth went on to Emory University in Atlanta, graduating in 1996. When we went to visit our son that spring in the Atlanta area, we stayed in a bed & breakfast not far from the University. Our hosts told us the next guests to arrive would also be from PittsfIeld. Of course they were Beth's parents, Herb and Paula Rod! David Stomski, who began his work for us in 1985, 13 wrote me from Japan with a story about another of our desserts. "At the QC I didn't spend

12Later he baked many for our children at college. 13We had gone to Rosie's graduation at Brown, leaving Emily in charge. Sure that there were not enough workers, she wisely asked David to help.

before emerging." When Anni wrote she had her degree in teaching English as a second language, and Âˇhad taught in Indonesia and Central America. The classical music Anni enjoyed came'through speakers we had found already installed in our ceilings by previous shop owners. tacking fancy equipment, we played the music on an old car radio/cassette player that Dick had rescued from a "totaled" car we had once owned. He made a little wooden box for it, since most of a car radio is just a bare metal insert not meant to be looked at, and we acquired a sizable collection of cassettes. We also played the radio, a regular favorite being Karl Haas's informative music program. One day Jane, who is a violist, was playing a quartet with three friends in the large book room to the rear of the shop. A customer got up from his table and came into the kitchen. "What kind of sound system do you have here?" he asked. "It's incredible--it almost sounds like live music !" We explained that it was live music! But even recorded music sounded real through our inherited system.

VI. THE YOUOUGHTAS A patient of my husband's came to see us at the Quiet Comer in the early days and looked around for a while at its unusual features, such as the beehive oven and an ISOO-era wooden beam in the comer of the rear dining room. Suddenly he came into the kitchen and asked "Have you had the youghoutas yet?" "What's that?" I responded, dumbfounded. "Well, if you have a new business, everybody you know comes in and looks all around and points and says 'You oughta put that up there, you oughta move that in the other room, you oughta get such and such, you oughta get rid of those things,' etc. It was true--windows were added or removed, a new kind of chair substituted, new music systems or air conditioners added--a\l in imagination, as people sounded forth their advice. It would have been lovely to follow the oft-given advice to start up the antique beehive oven again and do all our baking in it. A customer who had a working one told me that she and others can definitely taste the difference when pies are baked in it. Unfortunately, our heating came from a gas furnace in the basement which had to use a flue. Even if there had been a second flue, which was apparently not the case, we would have had to get it reopened. Furthermore, the oven's large iron doors were gone. A previous business, a beautiful Japanese craft gallery called Yamato House, had painted the oven and fireplaces white and put glass display shelves above them. To get back to the plain brick, we would have had to sandblast or do something equally difficult. Not only that, but the intense heat of baking would have made it impossible for people to sit in the dining rooms until all baking was done and the oven cooled down. Some bakers in Europe make bread at four in the morning, but our habit of baking in the daytime was unlikely to change. (At least our visitor told us our pies were good and that our favorite dark pie pans were the best kind to use.) What a splendid thing it would have been, though: starting before dawn, when the oven would have been at its hottest, perhaps with buttermilk bread; then apple pies; then whole wheat bread; then Linzer cookies; then meringues (would they work in such an oven?). History buffs told us that the oven was probably used by several other houses in the vicinity. An ice business, with its horses, wagons and drivers, was run from the back part of the house. (The ice would have been cut from the Stockbridge Bowl.) There were plenty of Yououghtas about the food, too. One customer insisted that we make her favorite meringue cake, but I don't think we ever managed that, partly out of reluctance to throwaway a dozen egg yolks. On the other hand, one of our best-loved desserts was provided by a customer from Philadelphia. She said, "I'm going to mail you a wonderful recipe that's perfect for your shop." She was right, and I still make the delicious peach torte, used for receptions by Philadelphia's Barnes Foundation, with gratitude for that

particular "yououghta." A friend from India, who was familiar with crumpets, said our recipe for them was not quite right. She brought us a sample of a commercial crumpet that had the desired consistency. So we found a way to come close to that. Another woman, also from India, then came in with her son, expecting to enjoy some of the old kind of crumpet. They pronounced the new version much less satisfactory. I do not remember how we solved that impasse ! A customer asked us to substitute white albacore tuna for the yellowfin we'd been using in Diane Weinstein's "Zuppa di Tonno." Even though the yellowfin might taste a little better, she said, the dolphins were still dying because of the nets used to catch the yellowfin. We listened to her and made the change. Another time, a man haled me over to his table and said to me and the waitress: "You call this a chicken sandwich? There's hardly any chicken in it!" He was so gruff the waitress started to cry. A little while later a woman from a neighboring table came up to me with a little African violet plant she and her husband had bought for us at the florist shop next door. "We just want you to know that we love your place, and we loved our chicken sandwiches!" she said. Perhaps there was less chicken in that particular sandwich than there ought to have been, but the man's temperament was greatly out of control. As was our custom, we told him there would be no charge for the sandwich. Another time, a woman who seemed to prefer MacDonald's and only MacDonald's for eating out had soup and a sandwich, growling resentfully with every bite. We said there would be no charge, but her husband said, "On the contrary. That's good food, and we're paying for it." Sometimes we had advice to turn the music up, or tum it down--the same music. People might find the same coffee too weak and too strong, or someone might ask to have the window to the sunporch closed when a different customer had j ust opened it. One summer there were a lot of flies near the back of our building. I think they came from a dumpster being used by a new restaurant. A customer advised us to use tansy, a tall herb with pale yellow button-sized flowers, but it didn't change things much. We still had to have our morning and evening patrols with the fly swatter, especially on the ceiling of the back dining room nearest the swinging kitchen doors. Many of these forays involved Nate and Matt, so at least the experience was humorous. Someone else said we should use flypaper. I couldn't find any locally, but when Dick and I were visiting Lake George, we found a small camping store that carried it. My older employees were familiar with flypaper and perfectly comfortable, but the students were appalled. So the advice flew back and forth. "Yuck! Take it down! " "Leave it up! It is helping us get rid of the flies!" Somehow we lived through that summer when the flies were in their brattiest mood. The next summer was very different. As far as I could tell, the difference was that lots of marigolds had been planted by a neighbor business at

the back end of our building. It would seem that whenever the flies from the dumpster tried to go in our direction, they had a "marigold attack" and had to retreat! There was advice about the bathrooms. We had placed square mirrors, framed in painted wood with stenciled animals on them, at what we thought was a good level. Some tall person thought the one in the ladies' room needed to go higher, so we moved it a little. Then our friend and erstwhile restaurant neighbor Judith Lerner said "Hey! What have you done? You used to have the mirror where I could see myself, and now you've gone and moved it up!" We moved it back down again. I can't remember if things ended there, or not. In the men's room I had been keeping a small watercolor of a woodcock. Dick, who was very fond of it, decided to put it in a simple frame so it would stay clean. When we took it home for a while, an older man came up to me and said, "What happened to the painting of the little bird in the men's room? I had gotten used to looking at him there, and I miss him! " So we put the bird back for the duration. Now he's where he belongs, on a wicker shelf in our downstairs bathroom, and perhaps occasionally gives cheer to a guest who had seen him at the QC.

Vll. THE PORC H AND THE FRONT YARD It may have been Charles Hint who gave us the idea of using the porch on the side of the building as part of our dining area. We ordered four small Italian tables with chairs, and used them for the fIrst couple of summers. Then a woman tipped one of the chairs over. She wasn't really hurt, but she and the others who were with her suggested we find some more substantial chairs. We responded to that "Yououghta" and obtained four large, sturdy round tables made of resin, and matching chairs. I enjoyed sitting on the porch as much as the customers did, and Dick and I often shared a meal of QC leftovers on the porch before heading to Tanglewood for a concert of the Fellows' (TMC) orchestra. The outdoor setting had an invigorating effect on conversation, and I often got to join friends at a porch table for a while . One of my college roommates, Anne Wyatt-Brown, came for the pancake breakfast while her husband Bert was doing biographical research in the area for a book. I still remember our great conversation at a porch table, with a perfect temperature and a light breeze. It made it easy for us to share intellectual ideas as well as more personal and emotional thoughts. Another time, Barbieo and I had a chance to sit with a table full of teachers from the Belvoir Terrace art and music camp. They were bright, lively and fun to talk to. The art teachers asked if we would have a show of work by their students, and we said yes. Barbieo helped them to plan the appearance of the show. We made a light punch and some cookies, so the teachers, campers and parents could have a simple reception. Although the work was unframed and on ordinary paper, many of the paintings were very good, and the display made an impressive sight. People who want to talk to each other like to sit on a porch, and we often saw couples or groups of close friends on ours. It pleased me to know that Trevor Pinnock and Christopher Hogwood, both well-known harpsichordists who conduct baroque music, each had sat there for a meal (not on the same day). I never saw Mr. Pinnock, but employees told me he was there. Mr. Hogwood bought one of our best old books, and came to the kitchen door to pay for his meal and the book, so I did see him. It was interesting that those men found the Quiet Comer. I'm inclined to think that, being English, they knew what to expect from the word "teashop" on the sign. Probably it was Kirsten, our chief classical music defender among the staff, who fIrst recognized both of them. For a while she wanted to keep the charge slip that Christopher Hogwood had signed when I was through with it, but then she decided that might be a pretty tacky idea. Most of the porch customers were particularly happy and comfortable. As a result, we enjoyed waiting on them, although it was harder to carry their food to them--we had to open the fron t door with a tray or several plates in our 34

hands. One Sunday, however, a table of seven customers on the porch, who had ordered omelets of varying kinds for their whole table, were in an extremely bad humor. They probably did not know we had only two omelet pans, and a fourÂ burner stove. They sent Nicole weeping into the kitchen with their rage. The next person who fInished serving them eventually realized they were just very, very hungry . Once served, they were remarkably content and agreeable. A couple at the back end of the porch had come for the pancake breakfast one Saturday, and seemed to be enjoying everything as they read their newspaper. My only problem with them was that they kept on reading the newspaper while they snapped their fIngers for me to come to their table so they could order something else. I really felt demeaned by the non-person status they had assigned to me. That helped me to know what table servers experience so often. One Saturday when I was away, our employee Laura asked her friend Jerry to help at the Quiet Comer, since she wasn't sure there were enough people. Jerry was glad to help, especially because he remembered one evening when he had gone to a restaurant with his brother, who was rude and insensitive those who waited on them. As a result, Jerry vowed to remember that table servers are people and should be treated accordingly. Another use for the porch was our Apple Squeeze effort. This event, a two-day Lenox festi val, featured food and merchandise from area shops, with an apple theme. Held in early September when weather is mild, the summer crowds gone and the leaf-peepers not quite there, it was designed for the enjoyment of local families. The Quiet Comer had a "Build with Apples" contest. The young winners would receive books and gift certifIcates. We put two porch tables and some chairs out on the front lawn near the sidewalk, and one or more staff members supervised the activity. I remember that David, and later Alex, Nate, Matt, and others, handled this with great aplomb. We made available a couple of paring knives, a chopping block and plenty of toothpicks. Green pepper, raisins, radishes and so on could be attached to the carved apples. Of course many people made faces on their apples; others made merry-go-rounds, helicopters, and dozens of other objects and creatures that you would not think could be made from apples. The carvings were set on paper plates with the contestants' names on them, and their phone numbers and addresses underneath for our use in awarding the prizes. I reported the winners to the Berkshire Eagle, which I believe printed the results once or twice, but there was no guarantee of it. In the third year of the contest some sleepy little bees came to join the festivities and perched on the sweet-smelling apple pieces. A man told me why the bees were behaving that way at the time, but I no longer remember what he said. Anyway, it was infuriating, and we had to move the prize-winning carvings inside the front dining room. We judged the work and called the winners, but we could

only keep the carvings for a short while, because the front room had to be back in operation for customers by Monday. On the porch itself we had our large croc'kpot 14 filled with hot, spiced Russian tea, which was especially popular when it got a little chilly. I have no idea where we got the recipe, but it called for: I tsp. whole cloves, I-inch stick cinnamon, 3 quarts water, 2Y2 tsp. black tea, the juice of 3 oranges and I Y2 lemons, and 1 cup of sugar, heated well together, then kept warm and served from a crockpot. It was available free of charge. We also had squares of apple pizza for 25Â˘ a slice. It tasted j ust about the same as apple pie with its spices, except that the crust, underneath the seasoned apple pieces, had a slightly different consistency. (I was not given permission to print the recipe, from the 1960 Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.) For two years Caroline Ollivier, a Lenox High School student, opened the shop by herself on Apple Squeeze Sunday, prepared the Russian tea, and put out hot apple pizza slices. As a result, I did not have to work on those Sundays. Caroline was busy, so she was not on our regular staff, but she did special jobs like this and frequently filled in when one of the regular workers was missing. Many other shop owners would agree with me that a rich supply of good and cheerful workers could be found by looking no further than Lenox High.

14Acquired from Judith Lerner, who had closed "Judith's Kitchen ."

VIII. FOOD ISNT EVERYTHING: EXHIBITS AND PROGRAMS We had assumed that the set of handsome French art posters lent us by our friend would be all we needed for wall decorations. One day a painter, looking at the walls and the lighting, wondered about having an exhibit of her work there. Such an idea had never occurred to us. From then on, the Quiet Comer usually had a show of paintings, photographs or ceramics, lasting a month or more at a time. Usually the artists hung their own shows, but sometimes they needed help or could not be there. Philip Klausmeyer, a temporary employee who is now an accomplished painter, helped set up one of our early shows, and other staff members had to help at various times. Most of the artists had opening receptions, and we highlighted them in our newspaper ads. We also made punch and one small hot hors d'oeuvre as a rule, shined up the floors and moved the tables and chairs to leave lots of open space. The artists and their friends and families did the rest, sending out invitations, bringing wine, vegetables and dip or whatever they wanted. Some people sold only one or two pieces, some sold four; one I think sold six. I ended up buying some of my favorites for the Quiet Comer. When we closed, I gave a few away and brought the rest home, carrying each one around the house until I found a place for it. They give us happy memories and delight our visitors. Two of our exhibitors were young students. Erin Baynes, then 9, was studying art at the Berkshire Museum with Lorraine Lauzon. Lorraine herself later had a show of her own work at the QC--lovely ink-brush paintings with a Japanese influence. Erin, a complete original, drew groups of people with distinct and memorable personalities, designing the clothes they were to wear with mature skill, yet still childlike and playful. She was given an opening reception at the QC, just like any other artist, and sold some of her work as well. She gave me one of her pictures, and I'm thankful to say I still have it. Brendan Hurley, perhaps a year older than Erin was, had been studying watercolor with Barbieo, and she decided he was ready to have a show. His parents brought flowers and delicious refreshments for his opening reception, and he too sold some of his work. I remember one painting assignment Barbieo had given him. She arranged some strawberries in various positions, and each time Brendan had to study their shapes and choose the right angle to observe them from. I do not have a detailed memory of the rest of his paintings, but they were the work of somebody who really understood what he was doing and was capable of expressing some quite sophisticated ideas. John and Primm ffrench, both artists and art teachers, liked to come for tea at the Quiet Comer, sometimes bringing packets of their excellent silkÂ screened note cards and Christmas cards that I had ordered for the shop. What a delight it was when John had an exhibit of his wall-mounted ceramics. I

14Acquired from Judith Lerner, who had closed "Judith's Kitchen ."

bought for the Quiet Comer a beautiful, cheerful scene which he called a "ceramic village," with arches and doors in playful shapes. The colors, predominately sea blue and a darker blue, orange: pale green and white, look very Italian--and well they might, for John studied ceramics in "Italy. The village, with a number of fanciful houses lined up in rows, now hangs in our upstairs hall, where house guests exclaim about it. Two other artists I already knew. Suzette (Toodie) Alsop's work at that time made use of doorways in a manner that I particularly liked. She also used chairs, and various kinds of flowers, notably peonies, with an effect both dignified and refreshingly original. Later she explored some less traditional styles. People always wait eagerly for her shows, and ready purchasers found their way to her Quiet Comer exhibit. Susan Hendrix, who works in a number of media, became an artist of real importance when she started a series of highly original collages. Made from found materials, such as bits of screen or metal, or carefully tom wedges of paper, they were both beautiful and challenging to one's thinking. The colors are flawlessly chosen, and the pieces often have a mysterious depth. Susan now shows in major New York galleries. That process began when Norman and Barbara Hirschi, art dealers, saw her QC show, bought one of the pieces, and asked her to bring some of her work to New York. Gerry (himself a painter) and Ann Catlin laVallee of Lenox remembered an art exhibit by "someone whose name was Susan," whose last name they had forgotten. "She had one of the best art exhibits we saw at the Quiet Comer. Gerry and I still recall the beautiful color and interesting compositions," said Ann. That certainly could have been Susan Hendrix ! Another Susan who comes to mind is Susan Ax, one of our employees, some of whose small, radiant paintings looked as if they had come from India, while others were designed after Russian Orthodox altar screens or icons. Susan and her husband James Van Wert, whom she met while working at the QC, now live in Kansas, where they both paint and have studios but also do teaching and other work for income. Former customers may remember Susan, six fee t tall, with long red-gold hair gathered neatly on her head. She has an ardent longing for moral regeneration in this country. We had a quick breakfast and conversation with Susan and James one morning when they were visiting here. Ann Welch, an Englishwoman living in New York, stopped by during a visit to her in-laws to see if we might want to exhibit some of her collages. We certainly did! She was going to be out of the country during the show, but she left us instructions for how and where to hang the pieces. Elizabeth Cera, herself quite experienced with batik, admired the colors and designs greatly. I bought a large piece called "Blue Crows of Bangalore," and have never regretted my extravagance for a minute as I go past it in our downstairs hall. Ann also tried to help us out with our problems regarding the crumpet recipe!

The last person to give an art exhibit at the QC was Mark Hungate, with his photography show in May of 1991; we had welcomed several other photography exhibits before, one by Mark himself. Matt Tannenbaum, owner of The Bookstore in Lenox, came to see the work and wrote on the last page of our guest book "Congratulations Mr. Mark! " I bought Mark's picture "Shadow Play," where the viewer looks out a large old factory window with the light glistening on a few spider webs in its corners. I like black-and-white photQgraphs and prints with revealing treatment of light. Another person who asked to have a show was Walter Scott, the excellent longtime photographer for Tanglewood. We already had somebody booked for the month he was thinking of, so he chose another. When he got to that month, he discovered that he had another vital commitment, so he was unable to get his show ready after all. Another phrase that had stood in my mind besides "Quiet Comer" was "First Thursdays." I couldn't figure out what that was either. Sometimes the word "Conversations" came into my mind. Eventually, by thinking and talking to others, I came up with a program called "First Thursdays," held from 7:30 to 9 on the first Thursday of each month. Some of these were "conversations," such as the one about "Hidden Gifts," led by two artists working in other occupations who had with great difficulty managed to start painting. After our friend Linda Ferren got her RN degree she started painting actively, and had put a good deal of diSCipline into her witty, symbolic pieces. The other participant, Mario Caluori, was one of my fellow English teachers at Berkshire Community College in the late sixties, and is still there. He explained to the First Thursdays audience that when he and his famil y were crammed into a three-room apartment while he was in graduate school, his desire to paint became so intense he had to do something about it. I have never forgotten his deSCription of those painful days. Mario has managed to keep painting ever since, and to grow and vary his output. He showed his watercolors at the Quiet Corner, and made several sales, including one to the Pereras. His "Primal Forms" hangs in our hall, and people remark how much they like it. Another early First Thursday person was Charles Mattina, Emily's father. A chemical engineer, he plays the ukulele (and several other instruments including the mandolin) . He caIlle twice several years apart to give us a "FIrst Thursday. " One was a 1930's sing-along which was lovely noisy fun for the audience as well as for Charles. Other musicians included Dr. Paul Graubard, a psychologist, whose office was then in the building next door. He came twice to sing ethnic folk songs, both familiar and new, accompanied by his guitar. Some of this work was funny, but Paul moved a fe w of us to tears. The LaVailees, who couldn't remember his name, said "he was a delightful person." They remembered his profession and that he lives in Lenox. Bernice Lewis, a professional singer and songwriter, often goes away on tour, but she was willing to come and sing to us twice, with her great combination of seriousness and

humor, intelligent and moving lyrics ("Paisley and Plaid" and "The Alaska Mosquito" were my favorites), and appealing tunes played on guitar. Intellectual and historical topics inoluded an examination of "Stewardship" from a Jewish point of view--cultivating an attitude at once biblical, studious and sensible toward natural resources, land and buildings. This was given by Ellen Kanner, who had been a strong presence in the local historic preservation movement--another area of stewardship. An expert on local history, Gerard Chapman, talked about William Cullen Bryant. Robert Newman, retired director of the Berkshire Athenaeum, compared the humor of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Herman Melville. Winthrop Piper, a Berkshire Community College English professor, read aloud wonderful passages from Thurber and E.B. White, and the dining rooms filled with laughter. Gerry and Ann LaVallee said "those Thurber readings were great!" Win had read "17th century metaphysical poems and modem poems" for a gathering at their house in 1978, the LaVallees said. Their group was "The Chaucer-saucer club. " With memories far more reliable than mine, they also mentioned meeting their friend and ours, Helen McClellan,15 a few times at the Quiet Comer. Ann said she found the bran muffins delicious, and brought some to take home. They also ate supper at the QC with mutual friend Tim Walter. Because it was "a special place" for them, the LaVallees wish I could consider having a Quiet Corner again. I would love to be a customer in one, but I fear the stamina and the money to start a new one are lacking. David Jacobs, a retired newspaper editor, had a regular column in the Berkshire Eagle--often beautifully written, funny and sensitive. These qualities he brought to his session at the QC. Rita Allen, a "FIrst Thursday" regular, wrote: "Eleanor Hanlon and I were stimulated and amused by David Jacobs--as was Marge Zupanec." With our foreign language emphasis we had a French evening and a Spanish evening, beautifully prepared by Emile Jalbert and Donald Herold, college language professors; a talk on "Faust and Faustus" by Steffi Aetcher, born in Germany, a teacher at Berkshire Country Day School; and a faSCinating workshop on "Eugene Onegin of Pushkin and Tchaikovsky" by Magda Hotchkiss, who does library research for Hancock Shaker Village and has studied and taught Russian. The program was rich, intellectually and musically. Magda and her husband Rollin read from Pushkin's novel in English and Russian, and played portions of a recording of the opera--a carefully and beautifully prepared evening. On another occasion Rollin, a chemist, gave a fascinating First Thursday talk, "Our Magic Medicines from the Ground Up," about his early work on antibiotics with Dr. Rene Dubos and others.

15Retired art professor at Berkshire Christian College (now closed).

There were poetry readings, including those by Michael Gizzi and Bob Jacob, who had been running a nationally-respected poetry series in the area. The LaVallees mentioned Michael's reading, having "enjoyed his warmth and enthusiasm." Unlike some writers, Michael knows how to read his own work well. Joan Goodkind of New Marlborough mentioned his "great poetry reading" when asked for reminiscences about the QC. Nicole Hoelle, a QC worker who was . only 18 years old at the time, also shared her remarkable poetry there. In addition, we had readings and analyses of the poetry of others long dead, including Yeats and Hopkins. Places were discussed, such as Israel, lovingly described by Ursula Niebuhr of Stockbridge (who died in 1996), and later shown in slides by Dick Perera. Rajasthan, a province of northern India, had been a "heart's desire" for Elizabeth Barbour ever since reading Kipling as a child. Having made three trips there, she brought along photographs as well as the pen-and-ink drawings she had done for her self-published book about Raj asthan. She also showed us beautiful fabrics, jewelry and other artifacts such as brass camel accessories (she had been on a long camel ride, sleeping on the ground in the chilly night). Magda Hotchkiss found the photographs "mind-blowingly beautiful," especially since Elizabeth had no prior experience with the medium. The "heart's desire" concept appealed to Beverle Reimann-Marcus, then director of the Lenox Chamber of Commerce. In Mendelssohn's oratorio "Elijah," there is a solo based on Psalm 37: "Rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him, and He will give you your heart's desire." Dick and I had heard someone explain the distinction between "getting the gimmes" and a "heart's desire." If a child fusses and fusses for something, the parents might suggest a few months' wait. If it was j ust a momentary whim, the pressure that had been put on the parents will be forgotten. But if it was a heart's desire, the child will keep on thinking about it for a long time, perhaps in a sad or wistful manner, and will be willing to wait to have the longing fulfilled. Our daughter Jane, who was about five at the time, came home from her friend Joy's house insisting she wanted a guitar like Joy's. We decided to see if it was a heart's desire, and asked Joy's parents where the guitar came from. Was Jane willing to save up her tiny allowance, nickel by nickel, until she had five dollars, and have us pay the rest of the price? She was, and for the next six months she diligently accumulated her savings. FInally Dick took her to the store to get the guitar. The store clerk asked, "Is she musical?" "Yes!" Dick said. "She plays the piano all the time, and even composes little tunes that she remembers, playing them again another day." "Oh, dear, " he said. "I have to explain to you that this little guitar isn't a real instrument, and it may not hold a tune very well. If she's really musical, it may bother her." "Well, do you have anything else that would keep in tune better but still wouldn't be terribly expensive ?" He showed them another guitar 41

15Retired art professor at Berkshire Christian College (now closed).

that sounded more like what Jane needed. Of course Dick didn't make her increase her share, and they brought the guitar home happily. She worked on it diligently, and kept on playing the piano too. Lat'er, he got harmonicas for both of them, and they had a glorious time playing duets, as well as caroling for nursing home patients with a group of people from our church. What finally happened was that Jane was shown a viola when she was in the fourth grade and eligible for the stringed instrument program in the public schools. Twenty years later, playing the viola became her professional occupation. Jane did have a "heart's desire"--not just for the little guitar but to be a musician. How thankful we all are that Dick and the store clerk made the right decisions!

IX. DISHES AND OTHER STAFF PLEASURES There were no "First Thursdays" in the summer, which is intensely busy in the Berkshires. After a slow increase in activity during May and June, suddenly the Fourth of July weekend comes, filling all the inns in the area and packing the stores with activity. Every year we would forget that we had to work about three times as hard after that time. For the summers, we needed many extra employees, but they always seemed to tum up, as high school and college students went out looking for jobs. Dan French, a friend of Emily's, agreed to be a dishwasher our first summer. This was hand dish washing in a big double sink, with a handwashing sink nearby. Gloves protected hands from hot water and from the sterilizing solution in the rinse water, which also had a sheeting effect, so the dishes would dry in just a couple of minutes. Another dishwasher, Larry Hunt, did a good, thorough job, although he insisted on rushing out to the driveway to ride his funny small acrobatic bike every time there was a lull! Of course dish washing was difficult work, in which all employees took some share after that fust summer. Some made helpful suggestions that had to be rejected, such as the purchase of a restaurant dishwasher, which was out of the question for lack of money and space. In any case, I would have preferred washing by hand (not that anyone could like it on a hot, crowded summer Saturday). Nicole Hoelle often chose to wash dishes, fleeing to the sink from occasional rude customers who could even make a server cry. Dick come down on many a Saturday to wash dishes. The pace was so frantic that we needed all the young people to wait tables. That job he did exactly once, and I was quite impressed with him. He waiting on a young couple. The wife was pregnant, and said it would make her feel ill to wait too long for her food. Dick was relentless, and would not allow me to make anyone else's order. "You have to get my lady's food ready firs t!" he insisted. It was hard for me to get any time off in the summer. One Saturday afternoon we wanted to go to a student concert at Tanglewood. I left thirteen young people in charge so that nobody would get caught off guard and exhausted. Everything went well and things were nice and tidy when I got back. (One sometimes forgets that one is not indispensable!) During our fust summer, it looked as if our family's traditional August vacation in Vermont could not take place. Carole decided that, although she couldn't manage two weeks, she would insist on giving us one. So my friend Gale Crane (who, like Carole, would be one of the last faithful helpers we had) helped her take charge of the place. All the normal things would have been hard enough work--Carole's husband wondered what kind of home life Dick and I could have! The situation was made somewhat easier by David's strength and experience, but all of a 43

sudden the freezer broke down, or the electricity went off: no one remembered which by the time I wanted to write this story. Carole and Gale went home to get coolers, and brought all the perishables tb their houses to keep cold, transporting them back when the Quiet Comer's equipment was working again. Everybody was glad only a little bit of the summer was left. In later years, we solved the vacation problem by going to Vermont for a week in June, before the mad tourist rush hit the QC. Oddly enough, starting around then Vermont's June got warmer, and August cooler, so we had shifted to a better vacation time anyway. One spring morning a girl with a very short haircut and braces came a bit shyly to our kitchen door, wanting a summer job. "I'll do anything--I'll wash dishes, I'll clean floors--anything." Her name was Heather Drees, aged 14 at the time, and she did do anything and everything, very cheerfully, including waiting on lots of tables and baking. She and her friend Amy Stuart called each other "Girl," so the others on the staff, especially "The Boys," would say "Where are Girl and Girl? Are Girl and Girl coming in today?" The last time I saw Heather she was much taller, with beautifully styled hair and attractively dressed. She and Amy, having graduated from college, were heading westward to look for jobs. They did not end up in the same place, but they're still close friends. It was in the fall of 1986 that "The Boys" appeared. Regan Rosenfeld, whose mother I knew, started to work for us partway through the summer. It turned out to his surprise and everyone else's that he was quite good at making bread. One afternoon he had been kneading bread and was tired, so he sat on the floor and threw large blobs of bread up and from side to side, catching them in hair-raising rescues. Regan did not want to continue with us in the fall, but one Thursday evening he brought in his friend Nate Weiss (the one who would not roll truffles) to help him. I no longer remember what Nate said on that fIrst encounter, but he growled out with a sort of wry expression that he wanted to work there. I took one look at his dark, disheveled hair. I said nothing aloud, but in my mind I said "no way." Then he began to talk--a huge vocabulary, a delightful sense of humor, a generous and considerate attitude--he was most assuredly hired. When Regan was no longer available for Thursday nights, Nate turned up with his friend Matt Gershoff--much bigger and taller, with his shock of dark hair slightly neater than Nate's. They became "The Boys" to my husband and many of the customers. They did imaginary walkie-talkie routines, complete with loud static, as they solved complex dining room disasters. They teased the customers, and knew which ones not to tease. One time I went to the fron t room to do what I thought was a gracious thing: wait on some regular customers myself. Two sisters from the area, Linda Marie and Anita Nuciforo, enjoyed eating Saturday lunch at the QC and then going to the Lenox Library. "Hey," said one of them, "Where's that wonderful young man who usually waits on us

and teases us so much?" I went into the kitchen, thoroughly humbled from my Grande Dame gesture. "Nate! Table 8 wants you!" Nate and Matt worked most Saturdays, but went to services at the Temple fIrs t. They often had to stay for quite a while after we closed (assisted on extra busy days by their frie nd Dave LaVerda, who worked at another restaurant). Late one Saturday afternoon, Matt and I were struggling to fInish washing the dishes and clean the floors. I told him to go along and I would fInish up. "Mrs. Perera," he said, "the only person here I feel sorrier for than myself is you--I'm stayin'!" I happened to tell Irene Kagan, a substitute teacher at PittsfIeld High School, that these two wonderful people, Nate and Matt, were working for me. She said, "if it weren't for those two I would be almost ready for despair about the current generation of students." Nate and Matt challenged Cheesecake Charlie's Restaurant on Church Street to a baseball game, and there was some interest on both sides, but as far as I know the event never took place. Their amusing posters in both restaurants, setting forth the challenge, were worth quite a few innings, though. They also planned a cookout for the QC in 1989. They reserved a campsite in the PittsfIeld State Forest (where they and some of the other staff members spent the night) and made a huge, efficient campfIre on which they cooked swordfIsh and chicken with delicious seasoning (they themselves eat fIsh, but not meat). I don't remember everything about that bountiful feast, but I believe there was broccoli, salad, fresh pineapple, bread or rolls, juice and soda, and dessert. The refused all offers to help pay for the event, and everyone will remember it with laughter and gratitude for a long, long time. I realized from photographs we have that Nate and Matt must have done this wonderful thing for two years. One afternoon "The Boys" began planning a more efficient arrangement of the cooling equipment: they wanted to move the huge freezer out of the kitchen and into a cul-de-sac off the back dining room. Then, they said, we would have room in the kitchen for a larger refrigerator. They whispered and plotted. "Let's tell MR. Perera!" Matt growled. "SHE hates change!" They were right--I went to great lengths to avoid change. I complained that there wasn't a proper plug in the cul-de-sac. "Then you should get one put in! " they countered. They were relentless, and they succeeded in getting my husband on their side. The change--which of course was for the better--was made. They taught us surprising things, such as the tip they had picked up from the "Mr. Wizard" show--that if you put hot water in ice trays it would freeze faster. We tried it both ways and timed it--Nate and Matt were right again! It was pretty humbling to be taught from a TV show by those two characters. Matt had many arguments with Rachel Masters about Israel. Both had been there, but Rachel tended to see Israel's point of view in its many troubles,

16Julia once played flute in a chamber ensemble at the QC; her lasting favorite is guitar.

telling everyone. "Amy sat down! Amy sat down ! Come and look, she's in the back room, she really sat down!" Most of our summer employees might be local people, but we connected with some out-of-town people who were here for the summer for interesting reasons. Laura Koehl, for example, is a cellist who was taking lessons with a member of the Boston Symphony. Later she spent two summers as a member of the TMC (Tanglewood Fellows) orchestra. The summer she came to work for us she had a j ob preparing breakfast for guests of Tanglewood at a pleasant house near the grounds, and making their beds after they had left their rooms for the day. A cheerful, diligent person, she would then walk to the QC, a distance of a mile-and-a-half, and work with us for lunch. Another time a young woman came in about a job and left her address. I thought she had implied that she was going to work. So, late in the spring, I sent her a proposed schedule of her hours--but it turned out she would not be coming. That was no problem--somebody else always turned up ! One summer Anni Crofut and Amelia Gerlin came looking for work so late that I couldn't give them a full complement of hours. Another restaurant, from which they acquired more hours, told them after a week or so that they would have to work Sundays (when they were committed to work for me) if they wanted to work at all. I called the owner up, complaining that now, as a result, I would have to work seven days a week. He was brusque. "So what! Everybody that has a business in Lenox works seven days a week in the summer!" I couldn't help being slightly pleased when the two young women he had "stolen" left his place and finished out their summer in another part of the state. "Sandwich Center," as Matt called it, was a crucial place for Quite Comer employees. David and Matt, each in his turn, had run it wonderfully well. Another strong Sandwich Center expert was Jason, brother of the tall Amy (their older sister, Suzanne, occasionally worked for us too). Jason afterward went on to the University of Massachusetts and then to MIT for his engineering degrees, so it is not surprising that among his great strengths at the QC were his thoroughness and perseverance. One afternoon, a number of sandwiches had been ordered, and he had prepared them rapidly and cheerfully. There seemed to be a lull, so he put a scone into the toasting oven for himself. No sooner had he done so than several more sandwich orders were put up on the metal clips above "Sandwich Center." We told him to let somebody else make the sandwiches, but he pulled his scone out of the oven, made the sandwiches, and tried once again to heat the scone. The hopeless process continued until the scone was a hard little nugget that had to be thrown away. This became a treasured QC anecdote. Alex Young took Jason's place at Sandwich Center. He wasn't very tall at the time, so occasionally someone had to reach something down from a shelf for him, but he was cheerful and hardworking, with neat sandwiches prepared

while Matt took the "liberal" view that Israel was too uncooperative with the other Middle Eastern nations. Matt would set up "sandwich center" on a large comer of the kitchen counter, and Rachel might Ibe cooking an omelet at the other end of the room (once Barbieo had taught her how to make them, she expected to make virtually every omelet that was ordered while she was working). Diagonally across the kitchen the Israel arguments would flash; the two were good friends but impassioned debaters as well. Barbieo, nearly twice their age, was a wonderful friend to Rachel and the other young women in their teens who joined the QC staff. Imaginative and glamorous rather than matronly, she taught them how to keep their hair pulled back in a way that would satisfy the Health Department (hair can be a sensitive issue for people in their teens), how to keep their work and their general appearance neat--not to mention other topics regarding moral behavior, boy friends, etc., that their own mothers, or I their middle-aged boss, couldn't deal with so easily. One year, Pilar Patterson, Michael Gizzi's daughter, came to stay with Michael and Barbieo for most of the summer. Barbieo asked me if I might give Pilar a chance to work while she was in Lenox. We were concerned that she might have trouble working hard and following all the rules because of the relatively privileged life she had been living in North Carolina. We needn't have worried--she was wonderful! Not only did she do her own work promptly and cheerfully, but if she noticed that another person was tired she offered to help. After the morning baking and preparations were done, Barbieo and I often sat and talked over a pot of coffee, and one scone apiece with unsweetened jam; many other QC staff members were to be seen in such conversation, each choosing the time of day when a rest would do the most good. Julia Britell 16 often worked straight through lunch time but at some point in the afternoon--maybe 3:30 or so--had to stop work for a half hour or so and regain her energy. She usually sat at the "back table," the large one nearest the kitchen, to have a littIe something. We might not be able to get her to sit down earlier, but once that exhaustion point had been reached there was no alternative. It was wonderful when Beth could be resting at the same time, which was often the case. Two tired friends sitting together are a sweet combination. Our tall Amy (Bergendahl) seemed inexhaustible, and even after everything was supposedly done she always found another little task. Once, thoroughly wiped out, she sat down, and Nate and Matt ran allover the place

16Julia once played flute in a chamber ensemble at the QC; her lasting favorite is guitar.

surprisingly fast. We had not been able to see how we could manage without David, or without Matt, or without Jason. A year later we had to wonder howwe could manage ~thout Alex. Even my rpother, who had moved to the area by that time, was concerned about Alex 's good-natured indispensability. Who would make her chicken salad sandwiches when she came for lunch? Alex had already thought of that problem, and had been asking Jeffrey Neer--even shorter than Alex, but just as cheerful and diligent--to help him make sandwiches. By the time Alex left to work at Loeb's supermarket, Jeffrey was a consummate sandwich maker. What a delightful surprise it was when I encountered Jeff, working at Bev's ice cream shop in Lenox, in 1997. He had been asked to establish several shops for Bev in Virginia, and would complete the last year of his degree in business management at UVA. Jeff said it was at the Quiet Comer that he realized he belonged in the food business. Plenty of sandwiches were made by female employees, I hasten to add. Kirsten Hekier, an ambitious student who started college before she finished high school, was one that I remember who made sandwiches very fast. She made a number of chicken salad sandwiches and glasses of iced tea with mint for Karl Held, who worked on sound engineering for the Tanglewood broadcasts. He became a friend to Kirsten and to many of us at the QC, but then his work location changed to Los Angeles. Kirsten also brought us lots of summer soup recipes, including strawberry and blueberry soups, and did all the work of making them whenever she could manage it. Her second summer she also came in early in the morning to bake bread. Then she began to bake bread at home, finding that it made wonderful presents for friends. She knew Nate and Matt fro m high school, and had a project of getting them just a tad more civilized musically. She invited them to come to Tanglewood as her guests, preparing a picnic for them. She knew that the program included Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony, of which one entire movement is pizzicato: the stringed instruments are plucked instead of bowed. As Kirsten hoped, this piece caught "The Boys'" attention and made them a bit more willing to go to a classical music concert the next time the opportunity arose. When Amy Stuart was working at Keystone Resort, Colorado, she wrote us some reminiscences about working with Nate, with her good friend Heather, and with Amy Bergendahl. "Nate always used to say W e're golden' and Amy would start giggling." She also said "Every Friday Heather and I would make it a point to go to Cheesecake Charlie's to split a piece of cheesecake at 5:30 before going home to dinner." I was unaware of that custom at the time! Amy remembered Tenley Zinke, one of our workers in 1989, with whom she corresponded for a time. Nate and Matt used to love teasing Sandra Kuhlman of Lenox (they always called her SONDdra). She enjoyed all the nonsense as much as they did. My husband and I once did a double-take at the gas station on the lower part of the Taconic Parkway. That familiar face in a

car was Sandra, who was on a visit back to Lenox from Pennsylvania where she was working. Sandra, a biology major at Gettysburg College, received her M.S. in biology from Northeastern University in 1997. Robyn Allen, who was with us in 1989 and 1990, was one of a handful of employees who preferred working in the kitchen to waiting on customers. She said "I mostly remember the countless numbers of desserts and breads that I learned to make by you, and the countless numbers of sandwiches and omelets that Barbieo showed me how to make. I also remember spending many hours 'pearl diving' at the sink washing dishes, because I was the only one who preferred it over waiting on people." I often did too, actually, as did Nicole Hoelle, who would flee gladly to the sink to be alone with her thoughts after some customer had been a little too rude. Robyn, a good seamstress, sewed and did alterations for a number of people, including a dry cleaner and a clothing store, after her Quiet Comer days. In 1997 she started work at two stores in the new Lee Outlet Village. Allison Crane, who had worked for us in 1986, had plenty of experience and a good culinary imagination. She made quite a few desserts for us, some of which she had invented. One is called "Chocolate Torte Allison," and I sometimes make it as a contribution to a holiday dinner at my sister-inÂ law's, or to serve to guests at our house. It is delicious and rich, and not hard to make. One evening Allison called me at home. It was an emergency. She was about to make her own chocolate torte, and did not seem to have the recipe for it. Then we both figured out that Allison had given Amy Bergendahl a copy of the recipe, so she quickly called Amy, who read her own recipe to her!

X. MEMORABLE CUSTOMERS

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One of the first regular customers of the Quiet Comer was a violist from the Tanglewood Fellows' (TMC) Orchestra. She talked to me' a few times, but usually she sat quietly at her table with her scones and coffee, her instrument on the floor next to the table, and read a book. She explained to me that her life was so hectic with all the rehearsals and running around that she was choosing this method to gain some quiet and privacy. It pleased me greatly that we were able to provide that for her. There were also other orchestra musicians, music broadcasters, and even an occasional composer. Pianist Alexis Weissenberg's mother came for lunch, and said she planned to bring him to the QC the following summer, but if that happened I was not aware of it. Many other readers came in, usually alone and quiet, but once I came into the front room to find a young man and woman reading Gerard Manley Hopkins aloud to each other, their eyes filling with tears. I went back to the kitchen, myself greatly moved and not wanting to disturb them. A frequent arrival, not very lucrative for us, was Richard, who most often came in for a cup of coffee and to smoke a cigarette. Our rule about smoking was that it was only allowed (and even that with a little protest from us) in one of the dining rooms at a time. Richard didn't like being made to sit in the front room, far from the staff action, but sometimes he had to if a nonÂ smoker was already ensconced in the back room. When Richard wanted a whole meal, he usually asked for a "barbarian omelet"--a Western omelet, drenched with ketchup, which I had told him I thought was a barbarian practiceÂ -and some "man bread," his name for a thick slice of our buttermilk bread. He hung around and read his paper; he teased the staff and they teased him. An orchestra tympanist, no longer able to play because of pain and weakness in his hands, Richard loved to identify music from the radio. Barbieo had been wondering what the familiar melody used as a signature on Karl Haas's classical music program might be. Richard identified it at once as the Beethoven "Pathetique" sonata. A useful resource, that Richard--even if I sometimes found him a pain in the neck when he defended his smoking by declaring that ovens and griddles put more carcinogens in the air than cigarettes do. "Not ours, Richard! We never cook with grease! The Health Department doesn't even make us have a grease trap! " (But he wouldn't listen.) One happy thing in his life was the arrival in his apartment of his cat, "Tino," who was always ready to play. Tino would jump onto Richard's chest when he wanted him to throw something a cat could fetch. The favorite object was any crumpled cigarette pack, thrown and fetched with huge delight over and over again. Richard, who had been suffering from a chronic ailment for a long time, died in 1995.

Bob Jacob, then co-owner of the Brook Farm Inn with his wife Betty, sought a little privacy from the busy hospitality business by coming at the very end of a day to the QC for a tuna melt on whole wheat bread and a cream soda, if I remember correctly. Their inn was filled with poetry books, and poetry readings were held there, so Bob and Betty were thrilled when the people to whom they sold the inn turned out to be poetry lovers as well. The Jacobs eventually moved to Connecticut, and Bob started a business doing specialized book. searches. . From time to time some man might come in alone on a Saturday morning for an omelet or pancakes, making himself at home and reading the paper. Saturday pancakes also drew couples or families who were heading for the Boston Symphony's open rehearsal. Even a musician or two might come in, but I don't think we saw any wind players, who might not want to eat pancakes just before playing. A troupe of Hawaiian dancers from the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, friendly and colorful, put away a sizable number of pancakes one Saturday, and we had a great time talking and laughing with them. Hard-working couples might come in to have a brief respite together. Marty and Mary Green, businessman and artist, often came for lunch. It was Marty who had founded the wonderful Ask Your Father toy store in Pittsfield, and I'm thankful it was still in existence when our children were young. Mary, a friend of Barbieo's, was working hard on her painting and doing well. As I remember, each of them had soup, a sandwich on one extra-thin slice of bread, and salad. Marty usually had cocoa. On very rare occasions they had dessert. Phil and Anita Heller came for a quick lunch (usually Zuppa di Tonno or Tomato Dill soup, with scones for Phil), because Phil had to rush back to his busy law office on Cliffwood Street. Milton and Barbara Kolodkin (I think they liked the mushroom sandwiches) had to juggle their bed-and-breakfast and Barbara's real estate work. Dan Harrington and Lori Dixon-Harrington, both nurses, came often on Thursday nights to eat supper and talk, until their schedules changed and they could no longer make it. I'm glad when I run across them. George and Elodie Sauer sometimes came for lunch, sometimes on Thursday nights. At the end of the meal, George usually had a fruit cup and Elodie one small item fro m the pastry tray. One quiet night, post-Quiet Corner, Dick and I went to the restaurant at Jiminy Peak. We were pleased to see the Sauers, who, like us, had come to hear their son John Sauer's gifted piano playing. Couples who had condominiums in the area would come in during their Berkshire vacation breaks. Bill and Eileen used to sit in the front window on an occasional Saturday. I don't remember what they ate, but several times we talked about a few of the best Catholic writers, whom they had been discovering. There was something I wanted to tell them, but I never got a chance, because they didn't come in again that last spring before we closed. 51

X. MEMORABLE CUSTOMERS

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Charles and Linda from New Jersey became friends, and came in to eat simple soups such as Fifteen Bean and Belgian Red Cabbage. Once, when we visited them at their condo, Bill and Eileen were there tOb--but I had forgotten what I had wanted to tell them. We were shocked to learn from Charles that Linda had died early in 1997. We will sorely miss her, and the many wonderful times we all shared. There were many other condominium owners whom I recognized, but not by name. People began coming up to the Berkshires earlier, so we would see them on April weekends, whereas for the first couple of years I did not see them until Mayor June. For some people, the nature of work and human relations in the New York metropolitan region was getting so trying that they wanted to get away to the quiet and the trees at the earliest possible moment. One freq uent visitor to our area lectured us on behalf of Berkshire County: "I hope you people know what you have here! Every town in this county has its own personality instead of a suburban sprawl. Don't let that treasure be destroyed!" Gabrielle, manager of the Evviva dress shop, sometimes came for lunch at 4:00 PM. There was no possibility of her getting away earlier from her shop. Like many who found refuge at the Quiet Corner, she was herself quiet, so we needed to give her some peace, but of course it was very enjoyable to talk with her when she wanted to. Ute Stebich had her folk art gallery upstairs from the Quiet Corner--it later moved to Church Street--and would come in with a friend for lunch or coffee. She sat in the front room, so she could see out the window if a customer was approaching her store. Several times she had to dash out and leave her friend to finish the coffee for lunch. We met Ute's family, and occasionally served them, especially her daughter Stephanie, who ordered chicken salad sandwiches to bring in the car when driving back to New York. We had a few adventures with the burglar alarm in Ute's shop. She gave us a key to her front door (we kept it in a cubbyhole in the beehive oven) in case the alarm rang in Ute's absence. It was terrifyingly loud and shrill, and as I stumbled through the instructions I was always afraid I would be too late and the police would come, or a burglar would make away with something valuable. All that ever happened with us was that the alarm was tripped a couple of times by a curtain blowing in the breeze. The only theft I heard of involved a customer taking something off the wall in the downstairs vestibule as he was leaving. Occasionally I would learn that something had been taken from another shop. Businesses in Lenox had a hotline, so we could warn each other if someone became aware of a theft. The Quiet Corner's books were mostly such as would not attract thieves. We Quiet Corner people enjoyed going upstairs in the calm times to look at Ute's gallery (which left 104 Main Street and later reopened on Church Street, where I had the privilege of seeing an exhibit of Susan Hendrix's newest collages). Along with the large, expensive works--sometimes including the

colorful naiVe paintings of "Mr. Amos Ferguson, " who frequently titled them with Biblical phrases--Ute always had a fe w inexpensive, bright things, which I found irresistible for small birthday or "hostess" presents. When visiting in Pennsylvania, I gave my host family a tinware pineapple candlestick made in Haiti and a hand-painted blown egg from Poland, which they treasured, and to Dick's brother-in-law we sent a band of tiny musicians from India. Another Lenox shop owner, Stephanie Hoadley, sells glorious handmade work in a variety of media, including the prize-winning ceramic pieces and jewelry for which her husband Tom was honored at the White House. Even though most of the work is extremely valuable and expensive, Stephanie always seems to have some of the small, attractive, useful items I seek for any friend I might be visiting. I remember having many fascinating talks with Stephanie in her shop, where I often saw the customers go out beaming with delight, and in the Quiet Comer. When we first opened, we did not know we would be asked to prepare things for takeout. Even though our coffee cost more than what people could get next door at Cimini's, quite a few people did ask for it. They had to wait a couple of minutes while it steeped. Sometimes takeout preparation was quite demanding--a group of people fro m a nearby business would order soup, sandwiches and coffee, and we would have to get them ready in the midst of other food preparation. When a group requested fo ur different kinds of soup and sandwiches, we really had to hop, but it was fun. Jason Shapiro, who at that time was managing a store, would order things by phone and drive to the QC to get them, since he did not want greasy fast food. Fortunately for him, if not for us, a healthier food shop opened near him. (When I saw Jason at a contemporary music concert in Tanglewood's Ozawa Hall, he told me that in the summer of 1996 he had helped run a clothing shop in the former QC store!) Once we had to make salad and dressing for a large party at Tanglewood. Doriot Anthony Dwyer was retiring from her landmark position as principal fl utist in the BSO in order to focus on solo work. My daughter Jane and two other teenage girls helped me wash, pat dry, and tear up the lettuce and watercress, and slice the cucumbers, which Mrs. Dwyer needed for 200 people. Guido's was kind enough to give her a wholesale rate for the salad greens. We put the dressing in a gallon soup j ug, accompanied by a big ladle, and kept the salad greens in large aluminum baking pans, covered with plastic fIlm. Every inch of refrigerator space was occupied until Mrs. Dwyer came for them. Another time, we needed to make one of our cheesecakes for an acquaintance who was giving a party at home. We often had to package oatmeal cookies or selections of pastry tray items for people to give to their guests. Artist Lindsay Smith liked to pick up one of "Becky's Friend's Bran Muffms" to go, and John Wbalan, among whose professional activities were theatrical directing and producing, liked to get a cup of cocoa to take out.

(Eagle Reporter Ellen Lahr, who became his wife and the mother of two children, chose tuna melt apd tea, not a takeout but at the front window table.) People also ordered scones or crumpets--some fon bed and breakfast houses. Others came for Tanglewood picnics, especially in our last few years--when Rachel Roth's "Moveable Feast" was no longer in the building next door. People would see me and Dick relaxing with a supper of interesting leftovers on the QC porch in the early evening, and would approach to ask if we had even a little something left to sell them, some chicken salad, some soup, some cookies, PLEASE. Parties were given at the Quiet Comer too. Among our favorites were a 90th birthday party for a wonderful frie nd, the French painter Rene Cera, who died several years later; the "Berkshire wedding reception" for Judi Loeb and Joe Maiorella, who were married in R orida but put on a second reception for local friends; and a baby shower for Erin, a regular customer who often came in with other teachers, including C. D. Nelsen, who wrote a newspaper farewell to the QC. Each New Year's Day for some years the Lloyd fanlily gathered in the shop for its traditional breakfast of Eggs Benedict, asparagus and champagne. I am unsure what else they had, because I was not on the scene. One of my younger employees with a key would meet them there, let them in, and help with cooking, serving and cleanup. Rene Cera and his wife Elizabeth were once eating lunch at the QC with a French couple. Elizabeth tells the story: "Rene was talking very candidly about Mr. Reagan--then he looked across at a stranger who was sitting at the table next to us, and said 1 hope you don't understand French!' (This genial habit of talking to strangers was a habit he had in common with my own father. It used to embarrass us when we were children, but now it is something I am proud to remember.) 'On the contrary--I am French,' the man said. It turned out that he was a painter. So I gave him directions to our house and he came that afternoon to see Rene's paintings. Three days later, we found a case of wine at our door. Twelve bottles of different types of French wine. What a gift! But it never occurred to us that it had been from our new acquaintance until he phoned later in the day. 'A typically French gesture,' said Rene, rather proudly." The French painter's name is Bernard Jarrier. He used to work at Blantyre resort. He and his wife Carole Peck, a chef, came occasionally to the Quiet Comer for good "French Press" coffee and a dessert made by someone else for a change. Carole opened a restaurant in Milford, Connecticut, and when I received a card about a show of Bernard's paintings, Elizabeth and my mother and I drove down that way. We ate lunch in Carole's restaurant (she had made everything, including basketfuls of unusual breads), and drove to a bam gallery to see Bernard's paintings. Carole, who has become famous, later

opened the "Good News Cafe" in Woodbury, where we had an even more amazing meal, reasonably priced, with my mother and some old friends. Elizabeth Cera had another memory--that a "wild sweater" she had knit "attracted comment from Helen Epstein. " Actually, Helen had come to our opening reception, with Shirley Blanchard, founder of the Either/Or Bookstore (now sadly just a memory). Helen, a distinguished author, had come to the QC's opening reception. Her books, The Companies She Keeps (about Tina Packet of Shakespeare and Company) and Mus ic Talks (interviews with Yo Yo Ma, Dorothy DeLay, et al.), were the basis of fascinating conversations at the QC. Helen's Children of the Holocaust, written earlier, is vital for all to read, but I nlight not have known about it had I not met her at the QC. She had also been doing historical research about her fanlily in Prague, and Where She Came From was published in 1997 by Little, Brown. She translated and published Under a Cruel Star by Heda Margolius KovaIy (who escaped from RussianÂ occupied Prague in 1968) through Plunkett Lake Press, a small publishing house that she and her husband, Patrick Mehr, had founded. Later, Helen wrote a fine biography of Joseph Papp. She is a skillful and disciplined writer with varied interests, and I admire her greatly. Dick and I had a number of great talks with Helen, Patrick, and their sons Daniel and Samuel. One QC story about their fanlily was the time Patrick's father, a Frenchman, came into the QC one morning for coffee while the fanlily was doing something else. Having just arrived from France, he was unfanliliar with our currency, and paid for his coffee with a hundred-dollar bill. Fortunately, the unflappable Reno Cinlini, at his market next door, was able to change the bill without destroying his day's change. As for the QC, that was the first and only hundred-dollar bill it ever received. Certain groups had meetings at the Quiet Corner--the Pittsfield College Club book group a couple of times; women's dinner groups; a group of residents from the Curtis; a Hadassah meeting and slide show; a group of local evangelical nlinisters and another of women nlinisters. (A church secretary once quietly told me that she and several other church secretaries liked to come there too.) If a large group came, we could move tables together to make one or more large tables. We could make quiches or something of that sort, so there would be less delay caused by sandwich-making. The hostess for one group asked us to make a lot of our mushroom sandwich nlix, with plenty of sauce, and serve it open-faced on toast. Friends met to talk--poets, business owners, artists. Richard, of the barbarian omelets, had many conversations about music with another Richard, also a musician. Others who came alone often talked to us or to each other. Once a woman with fascinating deep laugh came in for tea. I waited on her, and asked her about her voice when I heard that laugh. Her name was Jill, and Sure enough she was a professional singer; I had a great time talking with her.

Another time, a man arrived by bus, and his friend had asked him to wait at the

QC until she could comt( by and pick him up. He ended up giving us an excellent tape of his work, especially pleasing to Djck, who played a lot of jazz trumpet during and after college. One Friday afternoon, at j ust about five o'clock, a young Japanese man came in our door. He spoke almost no English. "Chamber of Commerce?" he said. With hand gestures we got him to understand that it was across the street but was already closed for the day. "Hotel?" All the inns were full, we tried to explain, for it was the busy Itzhak Perlman weekend at Tanglewood. He had recently arrived in Boston and had come to the Berkshires by bus. The two things he wanted to see in the U.S. were Tanglewood, for a concert of the Boston Symphony, and the Grand Canyon. We had a book for sale in the store that had a U.S. map in it, so we showed him how far away the Grand Canyon was. He was still cheerful. Okay, he implied, then I'll just go to the Boston Symphony and I'll be satisfied. It was impossible to explain to him tllat we COULD NOT find a place for him to sleep. So Nate and Matt got on the phone and called everything, the Hilton hotel in Pittsfield, every imaginable motel, and NOTHING was available. Even the motel where deadbeats or drunks stay was full. Finally the name of a woman in Lenox who had an inn came to my mind. "This is crazy," I said. "I don't know why I'm calling you, but there's a Japanese man here who needs a place to stay tonight and I can't explain to him why it's impossible. "Actually," she said, "I can let him have a small bedroom tonight, but I can't give him any breakfast. " So there is a Japanese man who still thinks you can tum up in Lenox on Itzhak Perlman weekend and get a room! Unusual workers came to our door as well. We had a few employees who were waifs to a certain extent--sad because of mistreatment by a previous employer, or otherwise in need of a little mercy. They could do wonderful work, especially if we found some activity that they really enjoyed and were good at for part of their assignment. Maggie Sadoway at Clearwater Natural Foods sent an occasional young woman to us, calling first to describe her. It was a pleasure to have the sad, gentle people who had been burt by life, especially when they started blossoming under the affectionate teasing of their co-workers.

XI. WORD FROM THE REGULARS Some of our regular customers can still be found through our old mailing list. When I told Ginger Chessa, whose excellent shoe store was once at the back of our building, that I was trying to write about the QC and had heard from many employees, she said "You should try to get in touch with some of the regular customers too !" So I did just that. Rita Allen of Pittsfield said: "Yes ! Memories of the Quiet Comer! Definitely, because it was a 'comer of quiet' in our day--friendly--warm--and at a pleasant pace." Rita said she loved the breads, and had asked us for the recipe for raspberry crumble. She often came to the First Thursdays programs. She and Eleanor Hanlon had been "stimulated and amused by David Jacobs, " the retired newspaper man who studded his columns in the Berkshire Eagle with treasured quotations. "The Gizzi poetry was thought-provoking," Rita added. "The grandchildren enjoyed the books that I bought there. The house reminded me of a tea room that I enjoyed in New Haven." Tommie Bailey, fo under of Pittsfield Beautiful, came often for First Thursdays. She liked the coffee and said the sandwich breads were excellent. "Took Ginger Tootill [a beloved local portrait painter] for lunch one day," she said. "We both enj oyed it. The setting was cozy--we could see what was going on on the street." She then went on to say "Why don't you open a similar one on North Street [Pittsfield]? I often wish for such a place to stop in for a delicious cup of coffee and a dessert to share." Like her friend Rita, Tommie remembered David Jacobs' and Michael Gizzi's presentations. She also appreciated "the doctors' concert." That event was top on the list for Adrienne Auger, who lives just up the hill from where the Quiet Comer was. A piano teacher and amateur cellist, she delighted in the "Aesculapian Chamber Players." These were four people all of whom had medical connections. Edith Wax, wife of Dr. Sandor Wax, played a portable keyboard with a harpsichord sound. Joan Vazakas and her husband Dr. George Vazakas played violin; and my husband Dick (Dr. Richard Perera) played cello. In another location, they had also played with flutist Julia Rothenberg, also a doctor's wife, but Adrienne was pretty sure she wasn't there for the QC concert. The audience for the Aesculapians was large, probably the largest of all our First Thursdays audiences. Some people had to stand around the edges of the room or sit in the front window. Franny Hall was a First Thursday attender and also a participant. I will give her response j ust as she sent it, though some years have gone by: "What I remember most about the Quiet Comer were the First Thursday evening programs--quiet informal talks, too intimate to be

Another time, a man arrived by bus, and his friend had asked him to wait at the

called lectures--on Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley HopkinsP Eve honored me py asking me to give one on Yeats. That talk and evening has profoundly affected my life s~nce. "A few weeks after my talk, given in 1987 or 1988 as I recall, an unknown voice on the phone identified herself as a young woman who had heard my talk and who was looking for a Yeats tutor for a Skidmore Without the Walls course. We met and worked together and a most rewarding friendship resulted. More significantly, we decided to go together in 1989 to the Yeats Summer School in Sligo, Ireland, an undertaking I would not have at that time considered on my own. We went. Since then, I have been returning to Ireland to study its literature each summer, capable of going on my own after that first confirming experience. "I am now a member of the Yeats Society of Boston and the Yeats Society of New York, and this summer I will again be returning to the Yeats Summer School in Sligo. By this time, I know a great deal more about Yeats than I did that night in the Quiet Comer when Eve set it all in motion. Thank you, Eve."

17The former by Sarah Begley of Stockbridge, the latter by ELP and the late David Bare of Toronto.

simple, but holding out some special treats for one, i.e. the books. Now, there is nothing to compare to the Quiet Comer. "As for First Thursday, it was a joyous evening of meeting new people, listening to beautiful music or thought-provoking book reviews, indulging in exciting philosphical discussions. I recall meeting old friends, and as well as I thought I knew them, I did not know we shared looking forward to First Thursday. One particular evening stands out in my memory--a friend of yours, I believe she had taught, had gone, with her famil y, back to her family of origin in Italy. Her slides and description of people, places and events was exciting and moved me deeply. The slides were magnificent. "I never realized to the fullest the talent we have in our community, and I regret there are no longer First Thursday evenings to explore and learn." The speaker Irene referred to was our friend Mariena Rapeni Cawse. For me, the most profoundly moving thing about her talk was the story of her tape recording of typical Italian street sounds. On her return, she played it for her father, who had earlier said he had no interest in Italy--where he was born-Â or in Marietta'S trip. But when he heard the long-ago-familiar sounds he began to weep. I still remember the whole story with the special chill of someone who has been granted something priceless. Marietta wrote: "My first visit to the Quiet Comer was with my friend Aud Melsom. We had j ust returned from shopping at Talbots. I'd heard about the QC--and knew you from a Christian gathering. We enjoyed browsing in the reading room, enjoyed your wonderful coffee and desserts, and your wann, lively conversation. That might have been 1984. Since then Aud moved to Fairport, NY, then PA and now Australia. Our meeting opened up conversations, chance encounters with other friends like Judi Loeb; Laurel Caluori; Shirley Blanchard, and buddies like Martha Shirer and Fran Dichter. I always felt comfortable and at ease at the QC. I miss it. "At the time my children were young. I planned to attend First Thursdays but family usually came first. Except the time Lauren and Jeanne helped me tell about our pilgrimage to our/my family roots in Piemonte, Roma and Bas' Italia. Thank you for the opportunity to share that precious time with you and the others." Marietta was glad to hear that we had gone to Wales, from which my father's ancestors had come to the U.S., and that I had felt profoundly at home there, especially in the lovely low green mountains called the Brecon Beacons. There we learned about the smart, hard-working Welsh sheep dogs, and have since discovered the sheep dog trials held in Cummington, just adjacent to Berkshire County. Marietta was sure we would find our journey to Dick's family past--Milan and Genoa--as well as Venice and a few other stops in northern Italy "very important, poignant and memorable." She was right--he saw eight cousins in Milan and Genoa whom he had never met, and one that he

Fay Simkin said "I do remember the Quiet Comer with wann affection, and the night that was special--Helen Epstein and her discussion of Music Talks. Not only was the evening stimulating, but Helen Epstein's mother was there. I knew a little about her from the book written by her daughter, Children of the Holocaust, and I enjoyed meeting this courageous survivor. Not long after, I read a poignant account of Helen's mother's last illness and the agonizing that went with the family's decision to honor their mother's request of no heroics. All the above made a lasting impression because of my chance opportunity at your 'Quiet Comer.' Your soups and rolls were delicious, as was the atmosphere." Irene Kagan, a good friend of Fay's, said "It is with feelings of sweet nostalgia that I attempt to express my thoughts of First Thursday evenings, and memories of the Quiet Comer. The Quiet Comer was exactly that--a place to relax, to exhale a deep breath, enjoy the most marvelous coffee I ever had and let the surroundings embrace me. That act of using the plunger and waiting for that special coffee and/or an elegant sandwich on delicious bread, and desserts truly befitting a choc-a-holic such as myself--I can smell the aroma as I recapture those moments. Eve, it was a delightful New England Tea Room-Â

17The former by Sarah Begley of Stockbridge, the latter by ELP and the late David Bare of Toronto.

had seen only once. They were wonderful, as were lovely things like being invited into an instrument maker's shop in Cremona. But I still remember Marietta's trip, as shared with us at the Quiet Comer, as one of the most moving of all. In 1995 Jane and I took a French visitor to Bascom Lodge at the top of Mount Greylock. We got into a conversation with the summer employee who was answering visitors' questions and selling the items in the lodge's small shop. She began looking at me in a questioning way. Finally she asked: "Were you in the Quiet Comer?" She was Marietta's older daughter Lauren, who would be going off to Columbia University in the fall, and we all tried to chatter together without interfering with the customers. The very next night three Pereras and one French guest ran into both Lauren and her younger sister Jeanne at Sip of Seattle. (My favorite substitute for the Quiet Comer, it moved to Great Barrington in 1997, its old location later occupied by a "Juice 'n Java, " also a place for cheering respite.) Being somewhat weak of memory, I asked Jeanne whether she was still playing the piano, but she motioned smilingly to Lauren: "She plays." A day or two later we learned from the Music School newsletter that Lauren had been one of the year's scholarship winners. Life continues, and the Cawse family is not still in the midst of the Italy trip, though sometimes I am. I will conclude this chapter with what Fran Dichter says (chances are you will have benefited from an important event that she has helped bring into being--she is a willing and encouraging planner and worker):

guilty when I was unable to attend a regular 'First Thursday.' What did I miss? Perhaps the most precious memory is of the generosity of spirit of you, Eve, of Dick, of your friends who so quickly became 'our friends.' Now, some years later, the Quiet Comer is still missed by those of us who enjoyed it. Lenox is a little more quiet, without some of the qualities the Quiet Comer fostered: friendship, ideas, acceptance of individual differences, the need to talk, to listen, to accept, to enjoy all people, and perhaps to be less judgmental. Another word that needs mentioning is the camaraderie that prevailed among the regular frequenters of the Quiet Comer. " [J appreciate so much the memories Fran has shared, which bring those vanished days backfor me. J must say that J too was aware of being affected by

the place and by the wonderful frien ds who came in, as well as by the muchÂ treasured employees. J know it was not my own character that made the difference, because J received more than J ever gave, and was affected as others were by the opportunity to be less judgmental. Although of course many of the staff and visitors would not share this perspective, J have to say that J am sure the idea itself, and the things we learned in the Quiet Corner, were essentially the gift of the great Creator and Lord of all things. ELP]

"I recall my first visit to a Quiet Comer 'First Thursday' night. wasn't aware of what to expect, was a little unsure of myself, and I think I went alone the first time. And, what did I fi nd--friendly, bright, interesting people, eager to listen, to learn, to contribute, to challenge. The programs were so diverse--music, art, politics, talk of activities in other parts of the world, issues of the day and more. Memories also include those of the food, the wonderful smells of fresh coffee, all the new blends you had, and made in what was to me a new and totally different kind of pot. The tea available was equally good, and the desserts: cookies, brownies, other specials, all wonderful. "The people who came to the Quiet Com er because of you, the frie nds who helped, your children, the staff, the "customers " who quickly became friends, and all who pitched in when there was a need, helped make the Quiet Comer a very special place. The physical plant, the art work, the books I seldom purchased but loved to look at--the selection was superb, a reflection of your own interests and taste. "It was always a pleasure to drop in, and to meet others who attended, many of whom I still see. I do recall always feeling a little

Xll. V ALEDICTOR Y DAYS

, The summer of 1990 was busy as usual with floods of tourists, but when the fall came and we needed local customers to rely on, our business and many others found things quite changed. Although I tried hard to think of ways to increase business or save money, I was not coming up with anything very effective. In the spring of 1991 I needed to have a hysterectomy, after which I would not be able to lift anything over ten pounds for six weeks. It was hard to imagine that, with all the cases of j uice and Snapple sodas 18 I had been hauling around, but we still had a few employees, so perhaps it would work out all right. After I came home from the hospital, I was calling potential suppliers, trying to get cheaper crackers, chicken, lettuce and so on without much eagerness. Then I talked on the phone to Barbieo about workers' hours so Dick could bring their paychecks down. Barbieo, who gave us the infonnation, then explained that she was having double vision in one eye and was under a doctor's care. It turned out that she would have to have two months of intravenous penicillin; an ear infection had affected the mastoid bone. When the infection retunned, she was told she would have to have surgery. The question we had been asking ourselves--"How long can we keep the Quiet Corner going?" was being answered quite firmly. Barbieo had her surgery and it was successful. Upon her recovery, she became involved with other artists in starting a gallery, and painting a lot more because her work was in greater demand. She also went to work part-time at Evviva, enjoying it as a pleasant change of pace. Carole, Missy and Gale kept the shop going until I came back and joined them. Each one continued as long as possible. We stopped serving full meals and kept going with tea, coffee, cookies and scones--which, at the beginning, we had thought would be all our menu! Then we started a tag sale of our trays, silverware, china, glassware, serving trays, busing trays and stand etc. We sold our best "donn refrigerator" and gave away another. We also let a favorite older customer have a large fridge which had been given us by Charles Aint, who did not want to store it. We gave away the reliable old stove and freezer. Not worth a lot but highly useful, they would have been an annoyance had we tried to sell them and reached closing day with them still on our hands. Nowadays I teach literature in the fall semester at the Berkshire Institute for Christian Studies, as I had begun to do partway through the Quiet Corner years. I can probably teach better with more time to spare for it. Most years I carry some responsibility with Berkshire Hills Hadassah--working on the newsletter for a couple of years, sending press releases, etc. I continue to do

sporadic free-lance writing and was co-editor with Lucille Salitan of a small journal of essays and poetry ("The Ark"), and of the book Virtuo us Lives (Continuum, 1995), and contributed a piece to Finding God at Harvard (HarpeIi:ollins/Zondervan, 1996). I volunteer at Pregnancy Support Services and was helping lead the women's Bible study at the House of Correction--until overcrowding led prison officials to ship all our women to Ludlow. This I regret, because Berkshire County women will probably have many fewer opportuqities to see their children and relatives. In general I say yes to more requests to help with things than I did in my Quiet Corner years; one of the most satisfying is "The Invisible Community," a project through which the Berkshire Historical Society hopes to make the history and achievements of local African Americans come into view more clearly. I kept certain Quiet Corner treasures, like the clock, which is in our son's old room and is never wound. A striking clock is not an ideal feature in a bedroom! I kept some of the Dansk cups and saucers; they generally sit unused, except that a fe w of the latter became snazzy plant saucers. The teapot we use fairly often, and the coffee makers (one small, one large) we use all the time. A goodly amount of the stainless steel went with Jane to her New York apartment. Some of the treasures from our art shows stay with us. A painting by Barbieo, a somewhat abstract view of a dock and water, hangs above a gateleg table in our kitchen; a "ceramic village" by John ffrench is in our upstairs hall; and a watercolor by Marilyn Larkin, an ordinary streetcorner made unforgettable, is in our living room. In other places we have a strong acrylic by Barbieo's father, Matt Barros, a watercolor by Mario Caluori, and a photograph by Mark Hungate. These, and the new frie nds we still love to see, always remind us of the QC. Every now and then we look for a place to have tea or lunch with a friend--and wish it were j ust a bit more like the Quiet Corner! I feel sad that it is gone, but I know we are all meant to be doing other things now. I don't think I would have the stamina to do what I would have to do if I were still there.

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. " Ecclesiastes 3: 1

18Nobody much had heard of Snapple drinks when the QC fi rst served them!

Xll. V ALEDICTOR Y DAYS

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. " Ecclesiastes 3: 1

18Nobody much had heard of Snapple drinks when the QC fi rst served them!

RECIPES FROM THE QUIET CORNER • BREADS SCONES (Barbieo's version 19) 2 cups sifted flour 1/3 cup butter 1 beaten egg 2 tbsp sugar 3 tsp baking powder about 3/4 cup milk 1/2 tsp salt Preheat oven to 425°. Sift dry ingredients together. Chop in butter with pastry blender or fingers, working it in thoroughly before adding liquid. Add egg and about 1/3 cup milk, using more milk if necessary to make the mixture moist but not sticky. Knead lightly, folding dough toward center a few times. Don't work it too much or the scones won't be flaky. Roll on a floured surface or between sheets of waxed paper. Cut in rounds with a biscuit cutter (ours was 21f4" in diameter). Place scones, touching one another, on ungreased cookie sheet and bake about 10 minutes, until light brown. Serve with butter and jam (or offer creme fraiche or whipped cream).

19She made some for "Breakfast Breads," Berkshire Magazine, Spring 1989. 64

BUTTERMILK BREAD (from the Berkshire Eagle)

In a large kettle combine 1 cup buttermilk (or--not

quiet as satisf actory--milk soured by 1 tsp. vinegar or

lemon j uice), It4 cup sugar, ~ tsp salt, 6 tbsp butter.

Heat over low fla me until butter melts. Cool. Sprinkle

1 tbsp yeast over 1 cup warm water and add to cooled

mixture. Beat in 3 cups flour, Ih tsp baking soda. Then

stir in up to 3 more cups flour to make a soft dough.

Knead on floured surface till elastic, 5-10 min. Let rise

in greased bowl in warm place 1 hour. Punch down,

let rise in greased pan (or pans) about ~ hour. Bake

20-30 min. at 400° (fairly hot).

BECKY'S FRIEND'S BRAN MUFFINS

Stir together 1 ~ cup flour, Ih cup sugar, and 1 tsp

baking powder (1 tsp salt optional). In a separate bowl,

combine 1 cup All-Bran (Kellogg's) and 1 cup 100%

Natural Bran (Health Valley)2° with 1~ cup buttermilk.

Let stand. Add 1 egg and ~ cup vegetable oil; mix

well. Add flo ur mixture. (Add raisins, dates, pecans- any or all--optional.) Portion batter evenly into 6

lightly greased muffin-pan cups. Bake for 20 m inutes

at 400°.

2D-rhese were the cereals that worked best for us.

19She made some for "Breakfast Breads," Berkshire Magazine, Spring 1989. 64

BUTTERMILK BREAD (from the Berkshire Eagle)

In a large kettle combine 1 cup buttermilk (or--not

quiet as satisf actory--milk soured by 1 tsp. vinegar or

lemon j uice), It4 cup sugar, ~ tsp salt, 6 tbsp butter.

Heat over low fla me until butter melts. Cool. Sprinkle

1 tbsp yeast over 1 cup warm water and add to cooled

mixture. Beat in 3 cups flour, Ih tsp baking soda. Then

stir in up to 3 more cups flour to make a soft dough.

Knead on floured surface till elastic, 5-10 min. Let rise

in greased bowl in warm place 1 hour. Punch down,

let rise in greased pan (or pans) about ~ hour. Bake

20-30 min. at 400° (fairly hot).

BECKY'S FRIEND'S BRAN MUFFINS

Stir together 1 ~ cup flour, Ih cup sugar, and 1 tsp

baking powder (1 tsp salt optional). In a separate bowl,

combine 1 cup All-Bran (Kellogg's) and 1 cup 100%

Natural Bran (Health Valley)2° with 1~ cup buttermilk.

Let stand. Add 1 egg and ~ cup vegetable oil; mix

well. Add flo ur mixture. (Add raisins, dates, pecans- any or all--optional.) Portion batter evenly into 6

lightly greased muffin-pan cups. Bake for 20 m inutes

at 400°.

2D-rhese were the cereals that worked best for us.

SANDWICHES 1

MUSHROOM SANDWICH (adapted from a .recipe in "Le Cookbook" from the American Hospital, Paris). Chop Ph cups raw mushrooms and saute in butter. Stir a teaspoon of flour into the butter, gently heating and stirring to make a roux (a thickening sauce); then add ~ cup of half-and-half, stirring gently until you have a smooth, creamy sauce. Season with salt, pepper, powdered onion & garlic, worcestershire and tabasco. Add a little sherry to sauce if desired. Spread on plain or pre-toasted bread (sunflower/oatmeal was the best for us). Heat in a toasting oven till golden brown. TOMATO & HAVARTI SANDWICH This QC favorite, of great simplicity, is made by putting sliced havarti cheese across tomato slices on any good bread, and placing the sandwich in a toasting oven until the cheese melts.

THE QC'S CHICKEN SALAD SANDWICH Our flagship! Tear, shred or chop cooked white meat chicken and mix with a sauce made from an interesting no-cholesterol mayonnaise (we used Bright Day, but we haven't seen it in awhile) into which you have mixed garlic powder (or garlic juice) and curry powder, the amount to be decided by the eater's proclivity for spices. Spread a little mayonnaise on one slice of the bread, and put some lettuce on it (we preferred leaf or romaine to iceberg). To help a regular mayonnaise get "that taste, " try adding a tiny bit of mustard and corn syrup.

GUACAMOLE SANDWICH (loosely based on an old Duncan Hines recipe). Mash one or more ripe avocadoes (don't use the huge watery species!) with onion powder, lemon juice, a few drops of Tabasco, and salt and pepper to taste. Spread on sandwiches, adding lettuce and a little mayonnaise.

TUNA MELT Other places make these, of course. Ours used Jarlsberg cheese, though, and (thanks to Ruth Frantz, whom I've never met) the tuna mix contained garlic and cinnamon as well as low-fat mayonnaise. Low-fat, low-salt swiss can be substituted f or Jar/sberg if necessary.

SANDWICHES 1

SOUPS BELGIAN RED CABBAGE (a sweet-and sour soup adapted from a Belgian cookbook) Boil sliced red cabbage with potatoes and onions in broth (we used broth from Morga vegetable cubes); season broth with a tablespoon or two each of vinegar and sugar. Add salt & pepper, bay leaf and thyme. Remove bay leaf; puree small quantities of soup in a blender. Correct seasonings, reheat if needed, and serve.

CREME BRUXELLOISE (another Belgian recipe, adapted; the Belgians had added celery, lard, a CriscoÂ like shortening called saindoux 21, and egg yolks, mostly too fatty for our customers). The soup is tricky; don't let it burn. Use 1 onion and a little over 1 pound each of Brussels sprouts and potatoes; 2 cups of milk; salt and pepper. Cut up the onion in small pieces and saute in a little butter or oil for a few minutes. Then add Brussels sprouts, potatoes, and about a liter (a bit more than a quart) of water. Bring to a boil, add salt and pepper; lower temperature and cook gently for about an hour. Then puree the soup in a blender, add milk to your taste, heat and serve.

CREAM OF CAULIFLOWER (adapted from a recipe in Hadassah magazine) Break a head of cauliflower into florets; cover it with water and add some broth or 2 Morga vegetable cubes; cook until soft. Puree with nutmeg, mustard, pepper, and broken-up cheddar cheese to taste. Add just a Litte cream while heating.

TAMARI MUSHROOM SOUP We cooked sliced mushrooms and onions in Morga broth with tamari (a flavored soy sauce). We didn't write down any precise measurements, but it was our own invention.

We guessed at how to m ake Diane Weinstein's two great tomato soups as follow s: For Tomato Dill Soup. my file card shows that our ingredients must have been: chopped canned tomatoes, run through the blender with some orange p eel; and 3 large fresh tomatoes, a medium onion, a clove of garlic, 1 tsp salt, iJ4 tsp pepper, 1/4 cup water, 1 cup soup stock, cooked and blended with the rest, allowed to cool and garnished with p lenty of chopped dill. Barbieo 's file card for Z uppa di Tonno lists 1 can crushed tomatoes, 4 lb. whole peeled tomatoes, 1 large onion, 2 large zucchini, red kidney beans, white kidney beans, garbanzo beans, pepper, basil and tuna.

21 We had to call Professor Emile Jalbert for translations!

TAMARI MUSHROOM SOUP We cooked sliced mushrooms and onions in Morga broth with tamari (a flavored soy sauce). We didn't write down any precise measurements, but it was our own invention.

21 We had to call Professor Emile Jalbert for translations!

DESSERTS SELMA'S BEST OATMEAL COOKlES22 (These bear the same relationship to the ordinary oatmeal cooky that the Rolls-Royce does to the bicycle.)

Cream together 1 cup shortening 1 cup white sugar 1/2 cup brown sugar and add one beaten egg. Now sift together 1 112 cups flour 1 teaspoon soda 1 teaspoon cinnamon and add it to the first mixture. Then add 1 112 cups quick rolled oats 3/4 cups finely crushed walnuts or pecans 1 teaspoon vanilla Chill it for an hour. Then put walnut-sized pieces on a greased cooky sheet. Butter the bottom of a small glass, dip it in granulated sugar, and flatten out the little pieces. Just keep doing this--you don't need to rebutter the glass bottom, just resugar it each time. Then bake at 350 0 for ten minutes. Note: This system of chilling the cooky dough and then flatte ning bits of it with a buttered, sugared glass bottom will work for nearly any sort of cooky that originally called for rolling out and cutting with a cooky-cutter; and it's a lot easier.

TR UFFLES Cut up 2 sticks unsalted butter into saucepan, Melt at medium/low; turn to medium. When butter bubbles, mix it. When it foams, remove from heat and let it stand 5 minutes. Skim the foam; pour it off and save clear liquid; wipe the pan and return your clarified butter to it. Add 8 oz. semisweet chocolate bits and melt over low heat. Cool slightly and stir in a small Refrigerate several hours or amount of vanilla. overnight. Shape into balls. Roll in unsweetened cocoa powder on waxed paper. Refrigerate lightly covered between sheets of waxed paper.

RASPBERRY CRUMBLE (our flagship dessert, adapted from Le Cookbook, the cookbook of the American Hospital in Paris) Arrange a layer of sliced apples, then a layer of raspberries, and repeat, in a baking dish (buttered if you like). Crumble together -% cup flour, 6 tbsp butter, ~ cup sugar, and spread over top. Bake 30 min. at 350 0 until crusty. (The first Berkshire Book said it "achieved cake magic. ")

22From Peg Bracken's The I Hate to Cook Book ÂŠ 1960

DESSERTS SELMA'S BEST OATMEAL COOKlES22 (These bear the same relationship to the ordinary oatmeal cooky that the Rolls-Royce does to the bicycle.)

22From Peg Bracken's The I Hate to Cook Book ÂŠ 1960

PEACH TOR TE (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia) A visitor said we'd like this recipe and mailed it to us. Blend 112 cup soft unsalted butter with 113 cup sugar & 114 tsp vanilla. Add 3/4 cup flour. Beat. Stir in 2/3 cup finely chopped pecans. With lightly floured hand press into bottom of floured lO in. springform pan and up sides for about 1 in. Mix 8 oz. cream cheese, 114 cup sugar. Blend in 1 egg, 112 tsp vanilla. Mix until well blended; pour into pan. Drain a large can ofpeaches23 and arrange slices neatly (close, not crowded). Sprinkle sugar-cinnamon mix on top. Bake 25 min. at 375째 (m ay turn off oven for last 5 min.) Watch for burning. CHOCOLATE TOR TE ALLISON Melt together 1 lb. chocolate chips and 10 tbsp soft butter. Separate 4 eggs, beat the whites, and add both parts to chocolate mixture. Add 1 tbsp flour, 1 tbsp sugar, and 1 tsp vanilla. Put into a greased torte pan or pie pan. Bake at 400째 for 15 min., reduce to 350째, and continue baking until toothpick or cake tester comes out clean. Let rest 15-20 min. COCONUT MACAROONS Beat 3 egg whites till stiff; add 118 tsp salt. Sift 1 cup sugar and add to egg whites. Fold in 1 tsp vanilla and 11/4 cups shredded coconut. Drop from spoon onto greased, well floured tin. Bake in slow oven 300째 for 30 minutes. 23Canned peaches are best.

ENGADINE TORTE (Bakery Lane Soup Bowl) Place 2 cups sugar. in large, heavy skillet. Stir over medium heat with wooden spoon until it melts and turns a deep golden brown. Add 1 cup heavy cream all at once. Stir carefully; mixture will steam and bubble furiously. Keep stirring until fully combined. Mix in 21h cups broken walnuts. Set aside to cool. Cream or beat 1 cup butter until light; mix in -Y2 cup sugar. Beat in 1 egg; blend in gradually 2% cups flour. Measure 2 cups of dough into torte pan with removable sides, pressing it evenly over bottom and sides. Spoon nut mixture over it. Shape remaining dough into a flat round and roll between two sheets of wax paper until large enough to cover nut filling in torte pan. Chill this round of dough for about 1 hour. Peel off wax paper and place the dough circle in place on the pan. Press edges of dough together to seal, making a design along the edge with the tines ofa fork. Prick the top of dough with the fork and brush it wi(h beaten egg white. Bake at 350° for 45-60 minutes until browned. Cool; serve cut in wedges.

MOCHA MACAROON PIE (Bakery Lane) Crush enough graham crackers to make 11/4 cup crumbs. Grate 6 oz. (l1h bars) German IS sweet chocolate, reserving 2 tbsp for topping. Butter a 10 inch pan thoroughly; heat oven to 350°. Mix 1 cup sugar and 1 tsp baking powder. Place 5 egg whites in a mixing bowl, adding a dash of salt, and beat until very soft peaks start to form . Start adding gradually the cup of sugar while beating constantly; continue for a minute or two after all sugar is added. Add cracker crumbs, grated chocolate, nuts and 1 tsp vanilla to egg whites. Carefully fold in; spoon into buttered pie pan and bake 30 to 35 minutes at 350°. Cool thoroughly. Add 1 tsp vanilla to 2 tsp instant coffee (at the QC we used a little of our fresh coffee); stir to dissolve. Blend the vanilla and coffee into 1 cup heavy cream with 1/4 cup confectioners sugar. Chill several hours. About 1 hour before serving, whip cream until stiff. Spread over center of pie. Sprinkle reserved chocolate on top. Chill until ready to serve.

PEACH TOR TE (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia) A visitor said we'd like this recipe and mailed it to us. Blend 112 cup soft unsalted butter with 113 cup sugar & 114 tsp vanilla. Add 3/4 cup flour. Beat. Stir in 2/3 cup finely chopped pecans. With lightly floured hand press into bottom of floured 10 in. springform pan and up sides for about 1 in. Mix 8 oz. cream cheese, 114 cup sugar. Blend in 1 egg, 112 tsp vanilla. Mix until well blended; pour into pan. Drain a large can ofpeaches23 and arrange slices neatly (close, not crowded). Sprinkle sugar-cinnamon mix on top. Bake 25 min. at 375 0 (may turn off oven for last 5 min.) Watch for burning. CHOCOLA TE TOR TE ALLISON Melt together 1 lb. chocolate chips and 10 tbsp soft butter. Separate 4 eggs, beat the whites, and add both parts to chocolate mixture. Add 1 tbsp flour, 1 tbsp sugar, and 1 tsp vanilla. Put into a greased torte pan or pie pan. Bake at 400 0 for 15 min., reduce to 350~ and continue baking until toothpick or cake tester comes out clean. Let rest 15-20 min. COCONUT MA CAROONS Beat 3 egg whites till stiff; add 118 tsp salt. Sift 1 cup sugar and add to egg whites. Fold in 1 tsp vanilla and 11/4 cups shredded coconut. Drop from spoon onto greased, well floured tin. Bake in slow oven 300 for 30 minutes. 0

23Canned peaches are best. 74

PEACH TOR TE (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia) A visitor said we'd like this recipe and mailed it to us. Blend 112 cup soft unsalted butter with 113 cup sugar & 114 tsp vanilla. Add 3/4 cup flour. Beat. Stir in 2/3 cup finely chopped pecans. With lightly floured hand press into bottom of floured 10 in. springform pan and up sides for about 1 in. Mix 8 oz. cream cheese, 114 cup sugar. Blend in 1 egg, 112 tsp vanilla. Mix until well blended; pour into pan. Drain a large can ofpeaches23 and arrange slices neatly (close, not crowded). Sprinkle sugar-cinnamon mix on top. Bake 25 min. at 375 0 (may turn off oven for last 5 min.) Watch for burning. CHOCOLA TE TOR TE ALLISON Melt together 1 lb. chocolate chips and 10 tbsp soft butter. Separate 4 eggs, beat the whites, and add both parts to chocolate mixture. Add 1 tbsp flour, 1 tbsp sugar, and 1 tsp vanilla. Put into a greased torte pan or pie pan. Bake at 400 0 for 15 min., reduce to 350~ and continue baking until toothpick or cake tester comes out clean. Let rest 15-20 min. COCONUT MA CAROONS Beat 3 egg whites till stiff; add 118 tsp salt. Sift 1 cup sugar and add to egg whites. Fold in 1 tsp vanilla and 11/4 cups shredded coconut. Drop from spoon onto greased, well floured tin. Bake in slow oven 300 for 30 minutes. 0

23Canned peaches are best. 74

Cover design by Susan Hendrix Grateful thanks to Rosie Perera,

Elizabeth BarboU/; Sarah Novak & C D. Nelsen

COURIER PRINTING

Cover design by Susan Hendrix Grateful thanks to Rosie Perera,

Elizabeth BarboU/; Sarah Novak & C D. Nelsen

COURIER PRINTING

Quiet Corner Days by Eve Lewis Perera