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Tom Ross

Tom Ross' column appears Tuesdays and Sundays in Steamboat Today. Contact him at 970-871-4205 or tross@SteamboatToday.com.

Steamboat Springs — Today's the day I reveal the secret ingredient. It's the special elixir that sets apart the double chocolate cake I sometimes bake to celebrate the birthdays of my colleagues. It's buttermilk.

A judicious amount of buttermilk makes the Denver sheet cake from the Colorado Cache Cookbook one of the most moist desserts you'll ever wrap your taste buds around. I even added six tablespoons of buttermilk to the frosting.

On Friday, everyone at the newspaper celebrated the 32nd birthday of City Editor Mike Lawrence, which is today, and the 54th birthday of Production Clerk Fran Reinier, which was Friday, with cakes and candles.

Reinier bravely pointed out to the assemblage that her 54th birthday is actually the beginning of her 55th year. Think about it.

Volunteering to bring treats for other newspaper employees' birthdays is one of the most enduring traditions at the Steamboat Pilot & Today. Everyone gathers in the lunchroom and we sing a very up-tempo version of "Happy Birthday." And thanks to Accounting Manager Holly Hunter and Bookkeeping Assistant Jenn Gibbon, even employees who have been with us for one or two weeks are remembered on their birthdays.

I know, birthday treats are a universal practice in offices all across America. However, they shouldn't be taken for granted. It's a ceremony that brings us closer together and makes it much harder to finish out the work day with a big push to the news deadline.

Lawrence didn't grow up on chocolate cakes. His mother always made him a lemon cake with white frosting. They ate the cake on the kitchen table in Dover, N.H., before heading outside for lawn games.

Lawrence's grandfathers, Bob Eddy and Louis Lawrence, celebrated birthdays one day before and one day after his, respectively.

Mike turned 21 the year that Grandpa Eddy turned 80, and the entire clan migrated to Buffalo, N.Y., for a big celebration.

Reinier got to call for a different cake every year growing up in Monmouth, Ill. The one she remembers best was orange chiffon.

"When I was little, my mother (Margaret Holliday) would make a huge dinner, and we ate on the fancy china," Reinier recalled.

Reinier's fifth birthday was among her most memorable.

Grandma Bernice Holliday took little Frannie to the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago.

"It was my first trip away from home," Reinier remembered. "It was the first time I stayed in a hotel and the first time I ever took a shower."

How nice for you, Fran!

It's funny what makes a memorable birthday. Many of my childhood birthdays were spent riding shotgun in the family station wagon as we pounded out the 2,000 miles between Madison, Wis., and my grandparents' homes in Oregon. So, I celebrated birthdays in city parks in places like Pocatello, Idaho.

I think Pocatello was the year I received a wristwatch for my birthday gift. I can't swear to it, but I think my father bought it out of a rack at a Texaco station.

I treasured it all the same.