Look around the Kitchen

I have been reading a book at night for the last month or so, called "The Big House" by George Howe Colt. About the summer house that had been in his family for generations and the last time back before they sell the house.

Well, ironically this summer I saw it on a table at Barnes & Noble and the picture on the cover made me cry. Not that it looked anything like the house I grew up in, but what memories that 100 year old house must hold. Tonight I read from a page saying how there are things setting places that basically because they were not moved they were left and became part of the house. A simple shell sat on the mantle was an example or even a book used in place of a caster missing from a piece of furniture. Once they are there they become familiar and they stay. Just that sort of thing was the old dining room table that we used as kids until the family out grew it and mom bought a new one on clearance at JCPenney. The old table didn't get sold or thrown out. It was moved to a place where it could be used when we had extra people over or a breakfast table on the enclosed back porch. But over the years mom would bring home little animal statues and and baskets and rocks got carried in or shells and they ended up on the table. It has been years since the table served food. The table has a whole new purpose. It was the place to drop your stuff when you came in the back door or the place the ash tray sat that mom used outside. The ashtray is an old black plastic ash tray that has a notch broke on it and she had asked me years ago to replace. I bought her two new ash trays. Don't know where they are but I guarantee they have never been used and the broken black ash tray continues to be used daily by my brother. See I understand the kind of nostalgia that causes that sort of thing to happen. Why use the new one the old one is working just fine. Same goes for just about everything I look at in her house.

I have written about sorting through things and laughing at things that we have found. I wish we could have done this while mom was alive. I wish she could have enjoyed the memories. But I know just like with me the memories are hard to part with. I know there are things that are gone that mom wouldn't have gotten rid of just because they had been there so long. And this is where I try to sit those things out and see them when I go in and out and to help me either remember the memory that goes with that thing or carry out the door and use it in my own house. Like I have said before I brought home a couple measuring cups. I got rid of my plastic ones and now I have to look to find the glass ones but I have used them and will continue to use them. I am going to do the same with some of the serving spoons mom had or a spatula. I know we have spoke of mom's love for measuring cups but I am pretty sure I never mentioned her love for early 20th century kitchen utensils.

Do you have a butter cutter? I know mom has at least two and one will be coming to my house. Do you have serving spoons with wooden handles or Bakelite handles? I bet I could find at least 3 meat grinders fully intact in the kitchen and at least that many rolling pins if they haven't already found their way to someones house. I could go on and on. Oh I know we just found them, nut crackers and picks. Mom had enough that everyone could have their own for when we had crab for dinner.
The drawer next to the stove is double the size of a normal kitchen drawer and it is so heavy you have to put your hip into it to get it to close and you have to shuffle things around to get them to settle back into place. Once the drawers were all full she took to buying plastic storage drawers which she had at least four on the counter holding the utensils that wouldn't fit in the drawer by the stove.

I would like to say those were the only unusual things in the kitchen but I did not mention the flowered wall paper on the ceiling that was there when we bought the house, Never came down because well it was there and we are all used to it after 40 years.

Will the next person say, "oh my god?"
Yes, and they can take the time to remove it. While they are in the kitchen they will probably want to remove the blue paint that is on the wall behind the refrigerator. When I was about 25 mom went away for Thanksgiving weekend and and the 5 of us decided we would surprise her remove the blue paint from the knotty pine cabinets and walls. Well this was more than a long weekend project but we did remove 80 percent of the blue paint but the remnants of that weekend are still on the wall. Mom was mad that we started, mad that it didn't get finished. Just plain mad. But it was one of those things she had talked about doing since we were kids.

Okay one last thing in the kitchen. The pictures on the refrigerator. I guess it kinda started with the grand kids, A picture of Timmy here a picture of Alex there. Oh every one's favorite Alex picture going down a slide at McKay Park on Mandalay, Smile as wide as the slide. Yellow side, blue shorts and shirt. See it is all here. Not the picture but the memory of it on the fridge. The funny thing is Alex always know as the Angel. Always reminded to keep her halo on straight. Mom would tell her things like that is okay to do with grandma but you really shouldn't talk like that to other people. Mom would spoil all of them bad but Alex she got a lot of mom's attention. So Alex would count how many pictures on the fridge were her versus her brother and when Emily, Ashley and Paul came along well it was an all out war. The kids would see whose picture got a prominent location on a refrigerator that was covered in photos. They would count how many on the front and how many on the side. I would be lucky to be in one family picture and one picture with me and Brian from New York.

Well, I am glad I could show you around the kitchen. And have preserved the memories for those that will come after me.