Jack's Christmas Cake

[Glenny Palmer]

Some seasonal shenanigans from my Sweetheart.......

Jack’s Christmas Cake ©croc

Old Jack had been a bushman now for nigh on fifty years,
where raging floods and great long droughts had taken sheep and steers
from off his run on wild wide plains where seasons had their say,
and he’d watched the city folk arrive, but never seen them stay.
They’d come and hung about a bit and ‘thused on setting sun,
and they’d driven ‘round in four wheel drives ‘‘just looking for a run’’
but John (Jack) Jonah Jacobsen, back two score years and ten,
had walked the great out back red track and joined the wild bush men.

It came one day to old Jack’s mind to make a Christmas cake;
he considered all his options - should he steam or should he bake.
Should he heat the oven slowly, would the wood last long enough;
should he go out now and get some more before he mixed the stuff?
So Jack was off and fetched two cord of finest eucalypt,
and ran the chainsaw through the lot, that night before he kipped.
His old wood range had quite a draw - the heat flew up the spout
of the chimney stack on his old shack, on land called ‘further out.’

Most of Jack’s provisions came in overland by road;
he’d get them once a month or so, when Sooty had a load.
From native timber, felled and hewn, a grain store Jack had built,
and just to get it off the floor each corner had a stilt.
Comestibles it kept all year from rigours of the damp,
and more than once, dry sleeping place for swaggies on the tramp.
But now with recipe in hand Jack ventured to his store
for the bits to make his Christmas cake, and wood for fire’s roar.

“Raisins seedless, raisins stoned, sultanas, currents, butter,
I have indeed got none at all.” old Jack was heard to mutter.
“The fruit,” the man contended, “Well the problem’s not that big,
a substitute is what I’ll use, those yonder trees bear fig.”
And so he off and picked a bag of produce soft and brown;
the cake, he vowed, would be as good as ‘‘any shop in town.’’
A half a pint of sherry fine, the recipe called for,
(a quarter pint of gin went in from jars behind the door.)

‘‘Dark muscovado sugar’’ well he’d never heard of such;
white granulated stuff would do, it couldn’t matter much.
And now black treacle, two spoons of, molasses here would do,
“It’s black and sticky is it not,” he reasoned, and so who
would ever know the difference there, and ere he shut the tin,
“A blob for luck,” he cried aloud, and stirred the black stuff in.
Half a dozen eggs stopped Jack, no chickens did he own,
But ‘‘two great flamin’ emu eggs’’ most surely would atone.

Plain flour for Jack was plentiful and as the mix was ‘‘thin’’
he drew out over twice the dose and stirred the white stuff in.
Bicarbonate of soda pulled our Jack up with a turn,
but ‘‘Eno Liver Salts have fizz’’, so that was no concern.
So he doubled up the Eno for the Bi carb there advised
and plain salt had he none at all, so in went ‘iodised.’
He’d never heard the likes of such a stuff called ‘ground mixed spice,’
so he powdered seeds from wild bush weeds - the ones he thought were ‘nice’

A cup of glace cherries had our bush man thinking deep,
but the fruit of mountain ash was thick on hillsides wide and steep.
And ‘candied peel’ was something that he pondered on with doubt;
he cogitated deeply here, ‘‘I’ll leave that blighter out.’’
Blanched almonds, slivered, had him beat for just a little while,
but nuts were nuts to Jack and so pine kernels were the style.
A drop of milk, not much mind you, to let the mixture down
was surely much like water from the creek that ran to town.

Now the mixing bowl and baking tin were one and same to Jack;
he’d use a four quart billy can, he’d found out on the track.
He somehow managed, ‘‘quite a do’’, to pound the mix, quite thick,
there crammed inside the billy can (and give the spoon a lick.)
Thus, Jack’s remaining job had come and that was set the heat;
to strike the spark that lights the bark to set the fire’s seat.
He heaped the wood inside the hearth and then he set the flame,
and sat down in his old armchair - to dream of coming fame.

He read his dear departed mother’s recipe again
and heard her voice congratulating him for all his pain,
but as he read the final bit it brought about un-ease,
for he realised he had no clues on things they called ‘degrees.’
‘‘And in whose name, now what was F, and who was this bloke C,
and ‘Gas Mark Regulo’ indeed, now who the Dickens he?’’
Three fifty F, one fifty C, the foreigner begged two,
with hands supine Jack begged the Great Divine, for any clue.

The skies went grey, a dust storm blew, a gale howled through the crack
that ran from top to bottom in the front door of his shack.
So the fire caught, it danced a jig, and wood it begged for more,
and in no time it rose from sparks to fire lion’s roar.
The heat within the dwelling place got far too much for Jack
so he opened up the door; the gale chucked Jack flat on his back.
It pirouetted ‘round the shack and up the chimney went,
and Jack was getting splinters feeding wood into the vent.

He checked the mix inside the billy, raising now at speed
and popping bubbles as it rose; Jack was impressed indeed.
The embers in the fire grate were thick and red with heat,
thus, that was where Jack placed his mix, well in the fire’s seat.
Large clouds of sparks erupted as the billy cradled in,
and Jack sat down to finish off the other pint of gin.
With gin in hand Jack dozed and dreamt of Christmas cakes sublime,
and F’s and C’s in large degrees and men of foreign clime.

Now, as he drank and dozed and dreamt, the tempest found its lull,
and Jack awoke from blissful sleep to find his shanty full
of thick black smoke and ‘‘What a stink!’’a sight to last for life;
his Christmas cake was charred and bulging, ‘‘…worse than Sooty’s wife!’’
Now while he wheezed and thumped his chest he still could plainly see,
myriad small creatures scrambling, fighting to get free.
Territories yielded and a truce was called for all;
spiders danced and bull ants pranced escaping that grim pawl.

Now after Jack had scrubbed his home and whitewashed in and out,
he set to thinking what went wrong, what was it all about.
It might have been the gin he thought, that set the cake alight,
(and offered up his thanks the gin in him escaped that fright)
Could it have been the sugar, for he knew how it could flame;
it surely couldn’t be two cups of Eno he should blame.
So Jack just scratched his head and had some dripping spread on toast
for Christmas lunch, and said, ‘‘Next year I’ll cook a bloody roast!’’

[william williams]

Now Glenny. Struth I ain't that bad a cook am I


bill the old battler

[Glenny Palmer]

Well Bill I dunno, but your dog certainly thinks you're pretty good with the ingredients...

[Bob Pacey]

Is that that same Sooty Ralphs who runs the bakery at Moura Glenice ?

Bob

[alongtimegone]

That made me laugh out loud Glenny. Wonderful poem.
Wazza

[Glenny Palmer]

Thanks Wazza. Me too...every time I read it. I love the Enos in it...cracked me up. I'd love to put it into a comp but they can't seem to cope with our co-writes...how the devil will they with a posthumous poem??

ROBINSON...use your spell check!!...'Gleneeeeese'!

[Bob Pacey]

I can not see a problem with entering it anywhere I'm sure you have permission

Ok

Bobbitto

[Glenny Palmer]

You got me thinking Bobbo. I am the Executor of croc's will...therefore I am legally entitled to act on his behalf. Just think of the hullabaloo... IF it won. Mannie might haveta add 45 pages to the site....oooh ha haaa! Just imagine being beaten by a spirit human...it'd probably haveta go to the Supreme Court....

[Gary Harding]

I dunno about a competition Glenny.... that just gives it some sort of arbitrary "ranking"....
However... posting it HERE lets a lot of people including myself who like bush poetry get enjoyment from it, and that is what counts at the end of the day I reckon! To be appreciated by one's peers.

So thanks for posting your poem, and sharing some of croc's wonderful thoughts. It was really enjoyable. I never had the pleasure of meeting him unfortunately, but from what I can gather he was a remarkable chap. His writing certainly confirms that. What better legacy than timeless writing...

[Glenny Palmer]

Thank you for your kind words Gary. croc was the most 'uninterested in competitions' person around, so he would probably much rather I do just that....post his works here. He would never have admitted it, but I think he was quite chuffed with his little book. Thankfully we managed to get it printed just before he passed, so it's a lovely legacy for him.

Btw a lot of the nonsense I talk on here is just tongue in cheek....

Cheeers
Glenny