A sweet tradition

Mary Braddock held her annual Cookie Day celebration last Friday at her home on Westwood Drive, where she gave out thousands of free cookies to hundreds of Graham residents, and for the first time ran out of cookies.

The treats were of all different varieties, including chocolate chip, and an abundance of her favorite, sugar cookies. Braddock makes the sugar cookies herself, throughout the week before Cookie Day, but she said most of the cookies are made on the day of the celebration.

“The day of we get up at 5 and we start baking,” Braddock said. “I just have two ovens, but we keep both of those ovens going right until four o’clock when I open the doors. (…) While we are baking, a few friends and all my grandchildren, they are decorating and icing those sugar cookies. Everybody is working hard for two days.”

Paired with the cookies, she said she also had five gallons of milk and decaffeinated coffee to hand out.

“I have been doing this for 61 years and never run out of cookies before,” Braddock said. “But, I ran out of cookies this year. I was very, very sad about that.”

She said she believes the reason for running out cookies this year was due to a change she called a mistake.

“I always give everybody a little plate and they fill plates up and a lot of the little kids they fill them up so full that they drop off, they roll off the little plates and land on the floor,” Braddock said. “I decided well I’m just not going to give them a little plate this year, I’m just going to give them a bag to begin with. I didn’t want to give them a tiny bag so I gave them a quart sized bag.”

She said the change caused the quart size bags being abused and that being coupled with what she said was double the amount of turnout than ever before resulted in the cookie shortage.

“Next year, I’m going back to plates because I am so sorry that I ran out of cookies,” Braddock said. “I feel terrible about that.”

Despite running out of cookies, she said there was a silver lining moment from the day.

“When they (my great grandchildren) found out that we are out of cookies they were just about as devastated as I was,” Braddock said. “Before we open the doors at four o’clock, I give each one of the children a quart size baggie and they are allowed then to pick out their favorite cookies (…) When they found out that we were out that we were out of cookies and that all those people were still standing in line they were so upset. They came in the house and got their bag of cookies and went outside and shared their cookies. I couldn’t believe it when somebody told me that.”

For the full story, see the Wednesday, Dec. 11 edition of The Graham Leader.