SUNDAY OBSERVER; FRUITCAKE IS FOREVER
By RUSSELL BAKER (NYT) 723 wordsPublished: December 25, 1983
Thirty-four years ago, I inherited the family fruitcake. Fruitcake is the only food durable enough to become a family heirloom. It had been in my grandmother's possession since 1880, and she passed it to a niece in 1933.
Surprisingly, the niece, who had always seemed to detest me, left it to me in her will. There was the usual family backbiting when the will was read. Relatives grumbled that I had no right to the family fruitcake. Some whispered that I had ''got to'' the dying woman when she was in extremis and guided her hand while she altered her will.
Nothing could be more absurd, since my dislike of fruitcake is notorious throughout the family. This distaste dates from a Christmas dinner when, at the age of 15, I dropped a small piece of fruitcake and shattered every bone in my right foot.
I would have renounced my inheritance except for the sentiment of the thing, for the family fruitcake was the symbol of our family's roots. When my grandmother inherited it, it was already 86 years old, having been baked by her great-grandfather in 1794 as a Christmas gift for President George Washington.
Washington, with his high- flown view of ethical standards for Government workers, sent it back with thanks, explaining that he thought it unseemly for Presidents to accept gifts weighing more than 80 pounds, even though they were only eight inches in diameter. This, at any rate, is the family story, and you can take it for what it's worth, which probably isn't much.
There is no doubt, though, about the fruitcake's great age. Sawing into it six Christmases ago, I came across a fragment of a 1794 newspaper with an account of the lynching of a real-estate speculator in New York City.
Thinking the thing was a valuable antique, I rented bank storage space and hired Brink's guards every Christmas to bring it out, carry it to the table and return it to the vault after dinner. The whole family, of course, now felt entitled to come for Christmas dinner.
People who have never eaten fruitcake may think that after 34 years of being gnawed at by assemblages of 25 to 30 diners my inheritance would have vanished. People who have eaten fruitcake will realize that it was still almost as intact as on the day George Washington first saw it. While an eon, as someone has observed, may be two people and a ham, a fruitcake is forever. It was an antique dealer who revealed this truth to me. The children had reached college age, the age of parental bankruptcy, and I decided to put the family fruitcake on the antique market.
''Over 200 years old?'' The dealer sneered. ''I've got one at home that's over 300,'' he said. ''If you come across a fruitcake that Julius Caesar brought back from Gaul, look me up; I'll give you $10 for it.''
To cut expenses, I took it out of the bank. Still, there was that backbreaking cost of feeding 25 to 30 relatives each Christmas when they felt entitled to visit the family fruitcake. An idea was born.
Before leaving town for a weekend, I placed it on the television set. When burglars came for the TV, they were bound to think the antique fruitcake worth a fortune and have it in some faraway pawnshop before discovering the truth.
By Monday morning the television set was gone, all right, but the fruitcake was still with us. ''I should have wired it,'' I told Uncle Jimmy. ''Burglars won't take anything that isn't electronic these days.''
Uncle Jimmy was not amused. ''You're a lucky man,'' he said.
Lucky? Bankrupted by an idiotic faith in higher education was what I was.
''Lucky!'' he shouted. ''Don't you know there's a curse on the family fruitcake? It is said that a dreadful fate will fall upon anyone who lets the family fruitcake pass out of the possession of the family.''
That didn't really scare me. Still, it couldn't hurt to play safe. After that, I kept the fruitcake locked in the crawl space under the kitchen. This afternoon, I shall bring it out again when 25 to 30 relatives come to dinner, and afterward we will all groan as people always groan when their interiors feel clogged with cement.
I now suspect Uncle Jimmy of lying about the curse. I suspect the dreadful fate carried by the family fruitcake is visited upon the one who inherits it. I wish I had a relative in the higher-education business so I could will it to him.
