Calico's Cookies

What do you do the evening after returning from a camping trip, your house cluttered with sleeping bags, suitcases, aerobeds, camping tools, tubs of cooking utensils, and a mountain of laundry?

If you are Calico, and the baked goods deadline for the county fair is the next morning, you clear a path to the kitchen and bake cookies. Then, if you make a boo boo with the first batch, you pony up and make a second batch, even if it keeps you in the kitchen until 11:00 p.m. and you are ready to drop from exhaustion.

Then the next morning you realize you have a problem: Central Valley heat. All the lovely little chocolate kisses atop your chewy morsels are precariously close to melting and will deform at the slightest touch. So you carefully select your six nicest cookies along with a few extra "just in case," arrange them on a charming plate, seal them in a protective container and clutch them tightly on your lap as you and your mom head out to the van to beat the deadline.

But you notice your neighbor's puppy roaming the street. Since you don't want harm to come to the pooch, you set your cookies down, run inside for a leash, return the puppy to its home, then head back to the waiting van. Off you go to the fair at last! You reach the highway. As your van makes the turn to join the stream of traffic you hear a sickening crash. Your cookies! In the puppy excitement you've forgotten to pick up your container of cookies which has now slid onto the floor. You open the container and flinch at the cookie massacre within. One, two, three....a lump begins to grow in your throat, your voice wavers...four, five... Too few cookies have survived to make the fair minimum!

Home you head to grab a second plate. This time your cookies survive the turn and you head southward for the half hour drive to the fairgrounds. You stare at the car clock as your mom merges onto the freeway. Soon you're there. You've made it with minutes to spare. With relief you join the lineup of cookies, cupcakes, and muffins just outside the display hall. But in an instant you realize trouble is at your door once again -- the hot sun beats down on your kisses, they glisten and slouch. Doom impends.

Then you feel it -- a cool breeze. It comes from inside. The hall is air conditioned! Clutching the last six survivors in your anxious hands, you move into the shade just outside the hall, hoping against hope that the cool air will sustain them. At last your name is called and you tremblingly hand over your treasures. With relief you watch as an attendant carries them to safety inside the display hall.

You smile and laugh with your mom and others as the great door closes when the deadline arrives. Relief makes you giddy. But you soberly nod in agreement with your mom when she pronounces, "Next year --- you're making freezer cookies!"