February 2001                                                     The Megaphone                                                                 Page 8

   I've received (and have responded to) so many individual requests for the recipe for the barbecue we served at Gardner's Root Beer Stand in the '50s and '60s that it would probably be better if I posted it here for everyone to see. Here it is:

Gardner's Barbecue

5 lbs of lean ground beef
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 large bell pepper, fine chopped
5 oz of tomato soup (1/2 of a regular 10 ½ oz soup can)
5 oz of barbecue sauce
hot sauce to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Cook and crumble ground beef until done.  Pour off any grease that remains after cooking.

Add onion and bell pepper and stir thoroughly.

Add tomato soup, barbecue sauce, hot sauce, salt and pepper and stir thoroughly.

Cook on low heat for approximately two hours.

   That is the original root beer stand recipe.  Over the years, I have decreased the amount of ground beef (even to two pounds) and it tastes just as good.

   This has been fun to find the original recipe. Mom and Dad (who still live in Elwood) were really happy that so many of you remembered.

Enjoy!

Greg Gardner
Orlando, FL
Class of '64

   Julie Duffitt, 62, never would have guessed she would be standing on the edge of an airplane, hundreds of feet off the ground, waiting to jump.

   And then she surprised herself even more when she took the final step and fell through the air, strapped to the front of an experienced jumper.

   After Duffitt, a winter visitor to the area, read a story in The Yuma Daily Sun about a parachute instructor, she was inspired to try something she never thought about  doing.

   "We (she and her husband) always go out and watch the Golden Knights and I think it's wonderful, but it never occurred to me that I could do it," she said. "I thought I was too old."

   Duffitt, an aspiring writer, said she visited the Somerton Airport, not to jump, but to talk to parachute instructors with Arizona Air Play about the sport for a story she wanted to write.

   "They were telling me what it is like, but they were also saying you don't know what it's like until you do it," she said. "I thought I could do it for the story, because I really wanted to write a story."

   Before she could change her mind, Duffitt said she decided to perform the jump the next day. She did a tandem jump with jumper Chuck Sims.

  "He told me, 'You are going to be scared'," she said. "It was the worst terror I ever had in my life. But standing on the edge it hit me, it's no different than jumping in a pool. The second I left the plane, it was ecstasy, there was no fear. As soon as you leave the plane, there is no feeling of discomfort.

   "I had two goals," Duffitt said. "The first goal was to leave the aircraft unassisted, without being pushed, and my second goal was to get no sand on my knees. I wanted to come straight down on my feet and land there. I did it, twice."

   Duffitt accomplished her goal of free-falling, but decided to do it again.

  "I wanted to do it again for me - it wasn't for the story, it was for me," she said.

  But free falling isn't the only thing Duffitt has done to surprise herself.

  "In the last year my life has changed incredibly," she said.

  Duffitt returned to her hometown, Elwood, Ind., a year ago to attend her father's funeral and ran into an old classmate who told her about a Web site started to reunite and bring together people who went to school in Elwood.

  Duffitt, who had never used e-mail before, joined the site.

  Duffitt said the site not only put her in touch with fellow Elwoodites, but also gave her an outlet to start writing stories about her experiences.

  "I never wrote anything in my life before," she said. "I would send out stories to (members of the site) and people liked them."

   Duffitt's latest story is about her free-fall experience. She hopes to convince others like herself to get out and do something unexpected and new.

   "It's the idea in the Nike commercials, 'Just Do It,'"she said. "You've got to keep doing new things. Free falling is the most fun a human being can have with clothes on."

  Duffitt said if she can do it, anyone can.

 "I have major health problems and I can jump," she said. "I did it between an angiogram and angioplasty and I did it with a doctor's approval. It had never passed my mind. I never heard of tandems, I never knew they existed."

   Duffitt has even managed to gain a nickname through her experience. Her friends call her Jumpin' Julie.

   Duffitt and her husband have been winter visitors to Yuma for four years. They spend their summers  working at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon.

   "You just don't retire and sit around and look at each other," Duffitt said. "Retirement is when you close one chapter in your life and open another."