My (almost) first cake: Stir'n Frost

In my evolution as a baker, sometime after saucer-sized, hockey puck-like Easy Bake Oven cakes came Betty Crocker Stir'n Frost Cakes. The cardboard-y pan, cake mix, and frosting all came in the box--you were even supposed to mix the cake batter in the pan (no need to dirty a bowl!) After the cake was done, you squeezed the frosting out of the foil packet. You didn't even need a knife to spread the sticky frosting--you just dragged the foil packet around the top of the cake.

Kid-sized, kit-ized, and sugar-ized. Anyone remember the other flavors? I remember only the chocolate.

And there's no truth to the rumor my hair looked exactly like that little girl's hair, or that I repeatedly combed it throughout the day so that it would flip back just like hers.

My Sears canopy bed, 1976-style

When I was seven or eight,  I mentioned casually to my grandparents that I wanted a canopy bed. On my next birthday, one magically appeared in my bedroom. (The pic above includes my dear friend, Kelly Knight, who did not magically appear with the bed. But this was the only pic of my bed I could find, so I hope she forgives me for publishing her picture. Hi, Kelly, wherever you are!)

Talk about a bed making a little girl feel like a princess. I even made the bed and put the stuffed animals in the same places every day.

This Sears commercial features a similar bed frame in white, but it's a bit later, I think.

Old Seattle that's still here: Seafair

Like much of Old Seattle That's Still Here, Seafair makes me happy.

Seafair is Seattle's summer celebration. It culminates in the hydroplane boat races and Blue Angels performance over Lake Washington. I know it makes no sense that I wrinkle my nose at the mere idea of NASCAR, but I like the hydroplane races. And you know that I'm going to say the hydroplane races were better when I was a kid.

The races really were better, though! The race course was laid out differently back then, and drivers careened throgh five laps. Old piston engines were loud and not quite as fast as todays' turbine engines, and longtime random rivalries formed among brightly colored boats and drivers. Old hydros gave moments of real excitment--kind of like horse racing--with boats barely edging past one another at 100 miles per hour.

Maybe the best part about Seafair Sunday was seeing my mom in rare moments of happiness and excitment, enjoying Her Day, when she didn't cook or clean or take care of others, but merely cheered in front of the blaring TV with her potato salad (made efficiently the day before) and cooler filled with can after can of 7-Up.

And it all happened in the glare and glint of a magical Seattle summer day.

Check out general Seafair info here, the hydroplane museum here, and more cool vintage hydroplanes here.