Today, when I was getting my steps, I realized that my blog was going to contain an amalgamation of several topics. Wondering what to call it, I remembered what used to happen at our house on Yuma Trail when my mother, Evie Busk, dragged whatever collection of leftovers she could find lurking in our Westinghouse refrigerator, and served them up as dinner. She always referred to those meals as a “duke’s mixture.”
Whenever I heard that term, I always assumed it had to do with a member of British royalty, sort of like the Earl of Sandwich. I’ve believed that all might life, right up to this very minute when I finally looked it up.
It turns out Duke Washington, a veteran of the Civil War on the losing side, emerged from imprisonment in a POW camp and walked 137 miles back to his farm which had been ransacked in his absence. He managed to salvage some remaining tobacco leaves which he dried in the wreckage of a still-standing of his barn, packaged, and then hauled by a mule-drawn wagon from home to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he sold it for a tidy profit.
At the time he called first salvaged load of tobacco “Pro Bono Tobacco,” but that recipe, which contained several ingredients besides tobacco, was eventually renamed “Duke’s Mixture,” and it quickly became a rival to its chief competitor known as “Bull Durham.”
So there’s your history lesson for today. My mother’s leftover dinners had absolutely nothing to do with British royalty and everything to do with chewing tobacco, but I doubt she knew that reality, either.
So here’s today’s Duke’s mixture. On Sunday afternoon, at 4:54 PM, I crossed into 22,000,000-step territory on my iPhone. That adds up to my having walked 9200 miles. Getting my steps takes at least an hour and a half out of each day, but doing so has been a huge help in maintaining my sanity, especially during the enforced isolation brought about by the Pandemic. I’m still walking and still enjoying it.
During my undergraduate years at the University of Arizona, I lived in a co-op dorm called Pima Hall where the girls living there did all their own cooking and cleaning. Everyone had at least one dorm duty to perform every day. The four-o’clocks started dinner, the five-o’clocks finished it, the four-thirty set the tables, the five-thirties served the food and cleared the tables after dinner, while six-thirties did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen.
Of all the duties, I liked P,P,& V the best—that was cleaning the front porch, the back porch, and the vestibule. Second favorite was being a five-thirty. When it came to five-thirties, our housemother, Mrs. Van, was adamant about there being NO STACKING after dinner. Plates were to be carried from the dining room back to the kitchen two at a time—no exceptions.
That rule has been part of my mindset and household ever since, and all the grandkids know that when it’s time to clear the table after a dinner at Grandma’s house, NO STACKING is allowed.
Obviously I’ve previously mentioned this in a blog because last week I received an email from someone who has recently instituted that rule in her own household. “I don’t know why I never figured this out earlier,” she said. “Now the dishes are only dirty on one side.” Amen, sister. That’s the whole point of not stacking!
And this week, my grandson, too, mentioned the no-stacking issue. He’s currently working for a bowling alley as a dishwasher. “This week someone brought me a bunch of dishes stacked inside a bowl of spaghetti,” he told me. “It was a mess!”
All these years later, Mrs. Van’s “no stacking” rule lives on through me, but I doubt she’d be especially pleased about that. After all, I wasn’t exactly one of her faves. She fired me as dorm song leader for leading the girls in singing bawdy songs after dinner. The one that finally pushed her over the edge was most likely Rusty Warren’s Roll Me over in the Clover. In case you’ve never heard that song, the chorus goes like this:
Roll me over, in the clover,
Roll me over, lay me down, and do it again.
Not only did Mrs. Van disapprove of the song, she made it quite clear that she REALLY REALLY disapproved of my boyfriend.
Of course, she was right about the plates from the very beginning. It took me another twenty years to finally figure out she was also right about the boyfriend.
Hard as it is to write these words, I must admit that Mrs. Van Slyke was a very wise woman.
And then, there’s one more item I’d like to add into the mix. I’m writing the blog update on Tuesday afternoon. Right now the Den of Iniquity word count stands at 73.18%. I spent yesterday afternoon out on the back porch with the computer open on my lap with nothing about the story leaking out through my fingertips and into the keyboard. I was thinking about the book but not actually writing it.
When my daughter called in the afternoon on her way home from work for our daily “I’m in traffic” chat, I told her, “Congratulations on making it through another week at Costco.”
There was a long pause before she replied, “No, Mom, Today is Monday, not Friday.”
Why the day confusion? It may have been Monday afternoon here, but it was definitely Friday, March 6, 2020 in Den of Iniquity, and that’s where my mind was. So if you’ve even wondered if I get lost in writing my stories, now you know for sure that I do.
And that’s the end of J.A. Jance’s Friday morning Duke’s Mixture blog!
You surprised me with your ending, in a very good way. I’m still smiling.
Loved the duke’s mixture story – never knew that.
Congrats on 22,000,000! What an accomplishment!
Enjoy reading about your Pima Hall experiences…the short time I lived in a dorm at Our Lady of the Elms in MA was quite different.
I confess, I am a “stacker” – easier to do with a family of ten at the dinner table, although I agree with your grandson that it can be a mess at times.
You’re allowed to get the days confused when you are writing. In fact, it is a good thing because it keeps our mind focused on the story.
Keep getting lost!
Funny stories…a nice way to start my day. I remember my best friend and I laughing when our moms sang the song. I just looked it up and there are a lot more lyrics to the song that I wasn’t aware of.
Rusty Warren passed away during the Pandemic. After I mentioned her “Knocker’s up” phrase toward the end of one of the Ali books, she reached out to me, and we had been in touch. This spring at the Apache Junction Library event, her former manager and care giver presented me with a 45 rpm recording of Roll Me Over in the Clover. I’m having it framed.
I hope you will take a photo of the framed 45 and share it on your blog- A lovely personal memorial-
I spend enough time immersed in fiction that I think I’ll use it as my excuse the next time I forget what day it is….
What a fun way to start my Friday morning! If only our history books told stories like this – I would have had a lot better grades. Lol! I loved your memories and reminded me of my jobs in school. I did floor cleaning & buffing, worked in the serving line and clean up in the cafeteria (we scraped all the plates with a rubber spatula into a #10 can), and my worse job was the peeling room! Potatoes weren’t bad, but oh, those onions!
Thank you again for your gift of storytelling and blessing so many people through this avenue!
Curious: did the men in their dormitories have assigned duties? Did UofA women have a curfew?
Pima Hall was started during the Depression to enable money-strapped girls a way to stay in school. As far as I know there was never a co-op dorm established for boys. But yes, there were curfews: Sunday -Thursday 10:30 PM for freshmen; 11:30 for everybody else. Fridays and Saturdays curfew was 1 AM. And no pants were allowed in the dining room at dinner! It was a different world.
I attended Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, in the mid-50s. I don’t remember what time the curfew was, but it was early. Sometimes there’d be a fire drill in the early hours of Sunday in case any girls didn’t come back from Saturday night dates.
Such serendipity! Just last weekend at our annual sorority reunion on Whidbey Island, conversation turned to the clearing of dinner dishes. One of the women remembered an interview her grandmother had with a candidate for household help. The hopeful new hire had only one question to decide if she wanted to work for Gramma: “Is you Class or is you Stack?”
Kudos on your steps–keep on keepin’ on!
xx, Annie
I love the blog. I love where you go in sharing your thoughts. I think the fact that you don’t see yourself as a genius further enhances the fact that you are indeed a genius. Thank you for your hard and wonderful writing. I have spent many, many midnights totally immersed in one of your books. Pure Genius. Thank you.
Clay
Like those kids in Lake Woebegone, I’ve always considered myself just above average.
I love that you never round up or down in your percentages!
What you and your family are doing is always interesting no matter what the mixture or order. When you were at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park several months ago, I chatted with Colt about his bowling career. He is a delightful young man, a gracious and obviously loves his Grandmother.
It is so funny how you added the bawdy lyrics. I was on a day trip with a group yesterday. We went through a rare rural area. There was lots of clover and I immediately thought of that little ditty.
Love the “no stacking” rule. I’m 70 years old and mom raised us kids that way. Oh yes, dirty on one side only!
Duke mixture is an old mid-west saying. We used it a lot.
I rinse, then stack for the soapy water. My daughter has been the wise one in my family. She warned me about husband #3, I married him anyway and endured verbal abuse (duh) for 15 years before he passed. the horses and dogs are what kept me going through that. I listen to her much better now. My current husband is almost perfect (no one is), and when she met him, her comment was “Mom, he’s a keeper!” This time I listened and am so grateful.
Have you ever read my book After the Fire? I think it would help you understand how you fell into that trap and why you stayed there. If you would like a signed copy, please send me an email at jajance@me.com. You can order it through a bookstore near me and I’ll go by and sign it before they ship it. As for your husband? My second husband, the good one, says that my first husband was so bad, it’s made his life perfect!
Actually, I DO have it with your autograph. Sure wouldn’t hurt to read it again, for sure. Old wounds do crop up once in a while. Thanks for reminding me.
During my waitressing years I picked up some of the Deli jargon (as opposed to the coffee shop vocabulary)
Virginia Ham with lettuce was, “Give me a virgin- Roll it in the hay!”
I too knew about he “Dike’s Mixture” expression, but not its origins. THANKS for that. Must be an Americanism.
Love the dukes mixture. Love trivia. Thanks for all the fun and interesting blogs. It’s like getting a regular fix of JAJance for free! Hee hee.
Love your “Duke’s Mixture” story. When my kids were youngsters, I would reheat all the weeks leftovers for dinner. We called it “Cafeteria” becuse you could eat whatever you wanted and not be expected to take at least a spoonful. At one point in time, my grandfather passed away. He and Grandma lived in Oregon, so they weren’t close. My sister & I felt bad for Grandma being alone in an assisted living facility and talked Mom into bringing her to CA.. Grandma would spend the day with me and my kids and Mom would pick her up after work. At one point, she spent a weekend with us, with Mom telling her she’d get Cafeteria for dinner! Grandma enjoyed at least a taste (if not more) of everything!! She conidered that dinner a real treat!
Thanks for giving me a good laugh, Judy!
I love your books. I love your since of humor. If you write it I will read it. Love your blog too. I wish I knew about it years ago. You are my number one author I read. And of course I love JP. But are you done writing the Brady series?
Archives of the blogs are all there in case you’re interested.
After a little research, I have determined that Your walking trip would be the equivalent of leaving Bellvue, walking to Portland Maine, thence to Fort Lauderdale, on to San Diego and home to Bellevue for a total distance of 9063 miles.
Also 22,000,000 steps at 1 1/2 hours per day would work out to 3300 hours. A full time job starting January 1st and ending July 24th the next year. WHEW!
That geography report really made me smile. Still miss your Lefse!
What a fun read. I’ll take the Duke’s mixture blog anytime you want to serve it up!
In my family, I was called “The Duke’s Mixture”, because I didn’t really resemble either parent. Like you, I thought it was something special and royal. It was many years later that I thought to look it up and found out about the tobacco and that it was probably just what had dropped on the floor. Good think both my parents were gone or they might have gotten an earful! I still laugh about it.
Enjoyed your blog mix. There is a certain comfort in knowing others’ days and moments skip thru a wide variety of unrelated topics in a seemingly orderly fashion.
No stacking in my house, either. Drives guests nuts!
Oooo, March 6th, 2020! Maybe the characters are preparing to celebrate my birthday the next day! 😉
I look forward to reading the book. Not that you really care about my reading habits, but it may be awhile after publication that I’ll be able to read this particular one, as we (hubby and I listen to them together) are still behind in the catching-up on all-things-Jance department. Contributing to our slowness is that we like to sprinkle in some John Grisham, Jayne Entwistle (narrator), Robert Galbraith (caught up here), Michael Connelly (caught up here too), Ken Follet, hopefully Amore Towles (if he hasn’t stashed his pens/keyboard away for good) and miscellaneous. But we WILL catch up!
I loved the history lesson on Dukes Mixture. I’m familiar with the tobacco name, Bull Durham; probably only thanks to its movie namesake.
No doubt you’ve considered that while Mrs. Van Slyke had your immediate best interests at heart, had you been an irregular youth and actually followed an elder’s advice, you might be on another path now, altogether.
I’m only surmising, of course, that there was a compulsion to prove to the reprobate, and the professor he was in (tacit?) cahoots with, that their prejudice against female writers was completely wrong; that a woman could write every bit as well, and better, as it turns out, as they. (Although, I am wondering, did he honestly agree with the professor, or was it just a convenient excuse to avoid competition, child care and housework?) There are many inherently talented writers without the fortitude and perseverance to get their work published. It may be little consolation for the misery of your years caused by he who Mrs. Van would have had you shrug off; but perhaps his resistance to admit of your potential may at least have provided some of the necessary heat, and certainly his presence, some useful kindling/fodder, for the flame that would lead to success?