find--once they won five dollars. They have rummage sales, and they sell homemade fruit jams. At one point, they operate a Fun and Freak Museum featuring Biddy, the three-legged hen, which earns them $20.00. Sadly, however, Biddy dies.

The goal of baking the fruitcakes bonds them. They show a great deal of energy and creativity in their pursuit of funds for the cakes. 

This nostalgic memory of a childhood Christmas is remarkable for a number of reasons, but one is the context in which the memory is set. It is clear that Buddy and his cousin come from a poor background, which makes their feat of baking over thirty cakes impressive, to say the least. The story narrates the various challenges that they have to overcome in order to buy or obtain the ingredients that they need in order to bake the cakes, and the detail provided shows what obstacles they need to overcome. Consider, for example, the way that they save all year to get the ingredients that cannot be obtained in any other way:

But one way and another we do each year accumulate Christmas savings, a Fruitcake Fund. These moneys we keep hidden in a n ancient bead purse under a loose board under the floor under a chamber pot under my friend's bed. The purse is seldom removed from this safe location except to make a deposit, or, as happens every Saturday, a withdrawal...

The way that this money is carefully and painstakingly collected is made clear. Throughout the year, Buddy and his cousin have engaged in every kind of employment possible to earn a few more pennies, such as killing flies. It is clear that baking these cakes becomes a year-long endeavour, with many individual obstacles to overcome, but most of all, the poverty of Buddy and his cousin is the biggest challenge.

Buddy and his friend must overcome numerous obstacles as they make the fruitcakes they give as gifts each year.

In Truman Capote’s story “A Christmas Memory” the friends must devise ingenious ways to obtain or purchase the ingredients to make and deliver the gifts. Buddy and his friend live in poverty with little adult support or intervention, therefore they are basically penniless except for the small amounts they raise.

Throughout the year, Buddy and his friend save small amounts of change given to them by relatives, raise money by doing odd jobs, and staging neighborhood activities to raise money for the fruitcake ingredients.

But before these Purchases can be made, there is the question of money. Neither of us has any. Except for skin-flint sums persons in the house occasionally provide (a dime is considered very big money); or what we earn ourselves from various activities: holding rummage sales, selling buckets of hand-picked blackberries, jars of home-made jam and apple jelly and peach preserves, rounding up flowers for funerals and weddings. Once we won seventy-ninth prize, five dollars, in a national football contest.

Pecans are gathered from a neighbor’s property after most of the nuts are harvested. One of their major obstacles is obtaining whiskey to soak the cakes since is illegal. But, Buddy and his friend visit the local distiller who donates the whiskey asking only for one of the cakes.

Despite these difficulties, Buddy and his friend make 30 fruitcakes each year and send them off to a wide variety of recipients.

In “A Christmas Memory,” Buddy and his distant cousin, a sixty-something woman, bake thirty fruitcakes to send to friends. One morning each November, the cousin declares that it is “fruitcake weather,” and the two begin work on creating their traditional holiday gifts. Despite their goodwill, they need to overcome several obstacles in order to bake and send the gifts.

First, they must obtain ingredients. Pecans are free, but they need to spend three hours of backbreaking physical labor in order to gather the nuts. After returning from a grove of pecan trees, Buddy reveals that the pecans are difficult

to find (the main crop having been shaken off the trees and sold by the orchard's owners, who are not us) among the concealing leaves, the frosted, deceiving grass.

Whatever pecans they manage to harvest are just leftovers from the main crop. There are not many pecans, and whatever is left is not easy to see (on the trees or in the grass after falling out of the trees).

Second, they need to buy remaining ingredients but have very little money. Poverty is another obstacle they must surmount.

But before these Purchases can be made, there is the question of money. Neither of us has any. Except for skin-flint sums persons in the house occasionally provide (a dime is considered very big money); or what we earn ourselves from various activities.

These various activities include rummage sales, selling handpicked blackberries and flowers, and entering contests.

But one way and another we do each year accumulate Christmas savings, a Fruitcake Fund.

Third, one of the ingredients for their fruitcakes is whiskey, which is not only the most expensive ingredient but also

the hardest to obtain: State laws forbid its sale.

In order to purchase this bootleg alcohol, Buddy and his cousin must journey down by the river and negotiate with Mr. Haha Jones.

Despite these obstacles, the two persevere and triumphantly finish baking all thirty cakes. The final stage, though, depletes the rest of their limited funds: mailing all of the gifts. As Buddy describes,

Yesterday we carted the last of them to the post office, where the cost of stamps turned our purse inside out. We're broke.

This fourth and most pervasive obstacle in their overall lives is a hostile environment. Both Buddy and his cousin are treated like outcasts by their relatives. They

have power over us, and frequently make us cry.

Despite the lack of love they receive, Buddy and his cousin still show generosity and love towards others, as illustrated by their fruitcake gifts.