Yahoo.com Dec 21, 2001

LINK

Fruitcakes Face Machine-Gun Fire

RENO, Nev. (Reuters) - Drop it from a tall building? Hardly a scratch. Shoot it with a submachine gun? It survives.

But run it over with a sport utility vehicle or kick it like a football and it crumbles, according to a just published investigation into that evergreen Christmas question: How can you get rid of the fruitcake?

The Reno Gazette-Journal, in an effort to rid its readers' homes of the unloved seasonal treat, mounted a series of experiments to determine the best way to destroy a gift ``nearly everyone receives and few actually want.''

``The SUV was what did them in most definitively,'' Camille Hayes, the Gazette-Journal reporter who organized the fruitcake survival test, said on Thursday.

Hayes marshaled several aides and, using store-bought fruitcakes, organized the punishment.

The first test involved dropping fruitcakes from the roof of a two-story house onto a concrete basketball court.

``In the moments before it was let fly, our team wondered if the fruitcake would shatter, bounce or remain intact. The answer was none of the above,'' Hayes recounted.

Instead, the cake survived the drop relatively unscathed, exhibiting only a few ``fissures'' in its dense body.

The second test involved running over a fruitcake with a 3,000-pound sport utility vehicle. This proved to be more effective, leaving a ``tire-marked, raisin-flecked smear on the asphalt,'' Hayes wrote.

A third test, submitting the fruitcake to the power of a football place kicker, was also gratifying, resulting in an explosion of candied fruit as the fruitcake disintegrated.

Strangely, a uniquely Nevada-style solution to the fruitcake problem -- shooting them with submachine guns -- proved disappointing, Hayes said. ``Nevada is a state in which machine guns are legal to own and operate, so I thought it would be a treat to see what one did,'' Hayes said.

Not much, as it turned out. Pummeling a pair of target fruitcakes with two M-11 fully automatic submachine guns resulted in only minor damage, Hayes reported.

``The larger cake proved especially resilient. Rather than shattering it into the smithereens we had expected, the volley of bullets merely nibbled at its edges. And as for the dark center of the beast, it proved too dense to lose its shape.''

Hayes said her fruitcake demolition campaign had garnered largely favorable reviews from the readers of the Reno Gazette, and that she might try again next year with some more ambitious strategies -- like dropping fruitcakes from a helicopter.

-- (lars@indy.net), December 21, 2001

Answers

I've been exchanging the same fruitcake with a certain lady for 20 years. It shows no signs of aging.

-- (lars@indy.net), December 21, 2001.

Lars: I have a friend in Chicago who actually buys these things for HIMSELF every year from Marshall Field's. I'm not sure if he waits for them to go on sale, but [like you said], what's the difference? You want a long life? You ARE what you eat.

I thought about making him a homemade fruitcake one year. That could have been the year that he sent me a lovely plant. I got the recipe off the internet and the whole thing looked like fun to make. I never did make it, though. Maybe that was the year I sent yuttebuckles and pepparkarkor to the family and I got tired of baking and mailing food.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), December 21, 2001.