Yesterday I opened a “letter” from my mother; a perfect example of her eccentric idea of correspondence. Bereft of card, signature, or, God forbid, “Dear Daughter”, the envelope contained 3 newspaper clippings – each annotated with her inimitable, looping script. To the first clipping, a review cautioning that a new kid’s hardback called “The Graveyard Book” may be too dark for sensitive children, my mother had added “This sounds good!” A study exploring the effects of the color red on both attention span and anxiety prompted this commentary: “You know I made all red things for your cradle and crib! How to create an obsessive compulsive?” And of course my personal favorite, an interview in which Nadya Suleman, the recent mother of octuplets, asserts that she wanted a family to help combat depression. In this article the words “children” “cure” and “depression” have all been manically underlined. Radiating a giant arrow, the newspaper’s indent points to my mother’s own thickly inked phrase: “What an idiot!” She may not write much, but it sure reads loud and clear.
My mother’s attitude towards children and their rearing being what it is, she often chose the Wolf Creek Inn as the ultimate destination on the many and extensive road trips we took together. Touted as “the oldest continuously operated hotel in the Pacific Northwest” by the State of Oregon’s recreation department, the Inn boasts perfectly articulated period décor, both a ball and dining room, and a magical, perfumed orchard. It is also remote, haunted, and almost entirely unfit for children (read: no television).
In addition to repeatedly booking the room thought to inhabit the hotel’s most relentless ghost, my mother also convinced herself (and her highly impressionable prepubescent daughter) that the entire town was run by a cult of separatist lesbian witches. (There was, in fact, a separatist lesbian colony there in the 1970’s, though they weren’t witches and did not, unfortunately, “run the town”.) On the mornings after those many nights I spent coldly sweating beneath a depression era quilt, scanning the room for any sign of the occult or malicious undead, my mother would giddily inquire as to whether or not I had “felt” anything. I never managed to. (I also never managed to sleep through the night in a room alone until I entered my 20s, and really, Mom, whose fault is that?)
Of the many things I love about The Wolf Creek Inn – blossoming fruit trees, living history, and austere beds – evenings in the dining room reign supreme. Because my mother and I like each other best when we don’t attempt to communicate, we happily read our respective books thoroughout the straightforward, satisfying courses prepared by the Inn’s country kitchen. And although many fans of The Wolf Creek cite Clark Gable, Orson Welles, or Carol Lombard as their favorite historical regular, my mother, unsurprisingly, names Jack London, whose two most famous books, White Fang and The Call of the Wild, she made me read while staying there. (Dark, unforgiving portraits of the violence of nature, they simultaneously scared the shit out of me and made me feel right at home. Later that year I turned eleven, and she gave me The Tin Drum.) Dinners there felt removed from this century, especially when ordering the steak and mushroom soup, a recipe I’ve recreated from the Tasty Cuisine of the Historic Wolf Creek Inn Cookbook. My mother sent me a copy of it last year: no note, of course, just an unrelated article about a woman who died under a pile of her own clutter.
Wolf Creek Inn, 100 Front Street, Wolf Creek, Oregon 97497, Telephone: (541) 866-2474
Steak and Mushroom Soup
(Adapted from the Tasty Cuisine of the Historic Wolf Creek Inn Cookbook)
Sauté one sweet onion, some shallots, and two pounds or so of mushrooms (crimini, shitake, oyster, chanterelle etc.) in a generous amount of butter. Add 3 or 4 cans of reconstituted beef broth. Simmer to marry, season with cracked pepper, and in the last five minutes of cooking, add slices of beef tenderloin. Serve with a dollop of sour cream or yogurt, and snipped chives.
After 12 years away from her home turf of Southern California, Agatha French returned to Los Angeles from Boston this past fall. She, and her boyfriend Ryan, are very much looking forward to the year round fruit.