Sweet smellin aroma wafting down from heaven

Having never heard the name before, Ronald Howes, it did not immediately jump out at me as I performed my ritual daily scan of the obituary section of the paper looking for friends, acquaintances or familiar names that I can pass the word on, to whoever, until suddenly the headline caught my eye, “Inventor of the E Z Bake Oven Dies” Holy shit, that dang E Z Bake oven ruled my life as a little girl. I adored my light bulb driven, foul cake producing oven. It was the only gift I ever asked for, for years unless I was asking for the cake mixes that went with it. Cakes and cupcakes and cookies emerged from the oven with a weird, plastic kind of smell and the icing mixes were pure sugar of some kind with coloring and the water that you added. No matter, I loved it. I made cakes and cookies all day long, as long as I had the mixes. I bought my son one when he was in about the 3rd grade thinking, foolishly in retrospect, that he was going to be as enamored as I at this amazing creation. He thought I was insane when I gave it to him, me all smiles and Sullivan nods. “You love it, right baby?” Needless to say, he and a buddy made one cake, looked at me with the “are you ok?” look and declared it disgusting and bizarre and would have nothing else to do with it. No problem, I still loved it. I finished all the mixes and gave it to a neighbor with the information on where to get more. Even as a grown woman with a 35 year professional cooking career behind me I loved that thing. My sisters and mom actually felt a little bad for me when I told them that he had passed on. I felt compelled to click on the Leave Comment Here button of the obituary and left a comment in the family book. I just said that I hoped Ron and past oven recipient angels, along with all the ovens past, blue plastic or pink, there was even one year an oven that came out with the flower power stickers to put on it, were baking up a storm in heaven. I’m sure he was welcomed with open arms.