FAMILY STORIES REVEALED AT ARTS AND CRAFTS FAIRS

Debbie Ebaugh Darby and Jackie Ebaugh Masters were at the Christmas Arts & Crafts Bazaar at the Osage Community Centre Saturday peddling gifts their mother gave them. Their cookbook "Tried & True" is a collection of family recipes compiled as a tribute to their mother, Gayle. Gayle Ebaugh loved being awakened by her children and their friends to nourish them at her kitchen table with fried egg sandwiches and a lack of visible shock at their late-night confessions. She was "short-order cook, confidante and consigliore to assorted boyfriends, girlfriends, casual acquaintances, teammates, pals, buddies, aspiring suitors and miscellaneous others," they write."Tried & True" is a cookbook covering all the food groups, including Wild Hare Chili, Granddaddy Eggs and Cake That Doesn't Last. The recipes also tell the history of a family in which "food ... was the universal language of love."Record-breaking crowds were reported at the three annual arts and crafts shows presented at five different locations Saturday.

The shows continue today. Times are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. for the Christmas Arts & Crafts Bazaar at the Show Me Center and Osage Centre, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. for the Crafts, Gifts and Collectibles Show at the Bavarian Halle near Jackson, and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. for the River City Craft Club Fair at the Holiday Inn Convention Center and the A.C. Brase Arena Building.

More than 1,800 people came through the doors in the first half hour the Me Center was open Saturday, and traffic jams in the aisles were frequent. Daniel North, executive director of the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri, expects the weekend to break the record of 12,500 admissions set last year.

A popular booth Saturday offered wood crafts and furniture made by Michael and Jackie Blankenship, who live outside Springfield, Ill. Their red oak, scroll-sawed Nativity scenes and Christmas ornaments with first names cut out have sold so well at craft fairs that this year Michael quit his job as a cardio-pulmonary technician. Now he spends his days instead of his nights in his workshop. Twenty weekends a year the Blankenships and their two children load their pickup and trailer and travel to arts and crafts shows throughout the Midwest. His smiling mother Fran even came along on this trip. He now views wood crafts as the family business. Jackie, who still works as a registered nurse, does the finishing, and their son Christopher and daughter Jennifer help out."They think all these weekends are mini-vacations," he says of the children, ages 14 and 10. "We stay at a motel and swim in the pool."The Ebaugh sisters grew up at 2550 Allendale in Cape Girardeau. Debbie now lives in Little Rock, Ark., and Jackie resides in Sikeston. Gayle Ebaugh's daughters are continuing her tradition with their own children. "The kitchen was the hub of our lives," Debbie says. "... Our mother loved cooking and has passed that on to us." They manned their computers to create the cookbook originally as a Christmas gift to their own children and those of their two brothers, Paul Jr. and Rick. They printed only a few copies, but so many friends began asking for one they decided to go ahead and publish it. The cookbook came off the press just in time for the arts and crafts fair.

They remember their mother's food, even fried egg sandwiches, as incomparable. But, they write, "As good as the food was, it was just the food. Mom was the glue. Her open heart was like a vacuum that pulled our friends at first, then our wives and husbands and finally our children into its embrace."Their introduction includes a poem their father, Paul, wrote about his wife at Christmas 1998. It ends: "As both chef & mother/she played her part/with talented hands/and a bountiful heart."Paul Ebaugh, a well-known Cape Girardeau banker and construction company president, died last June at 78. He was the cookbook's biggest fan.

As you might expect, Gayle Ebaugh is fond of it, too."She's sort of overwhelmed," Debbie says.