Yes, the kitchen is always the heart of any home. And of the nine kitchens from my childhood, it seems strange that the one kitchen that is most often recalled to memory was the one that was more of a non-kitchen. In our many rental homes we had all kinds of kitchens, some quite nice, and some not-so. But the kitchen in house number seven, the old house on West 13th Street, was the most challenging kitchen of all.
We were forced to move from house six because our lease had run out and the house had been sold to Standard Oil Company. It was to be torn down so that a gas station could be built on that corner. Mother and Daddy were finding it impossible to find another house to rent, when Mr. Hudson told Daddy about a house in their neighborhood on 13th Street. This house had been built in the early 1900's by a then prominent Anderson attorney. It was now being lived in by the only surviving daughter, and elderly woman, living alone, and unable to care for the aging house. She wanted to move to an apartment, but didn't know how to cope with disposing of everything in the house.
Mother and Daddy finally persuaded her to lease the house to them. She agreed to wallpaper the interior with fresh paper, but asked if she might leave all their "stuff" stored in the basement, the attic, and one large out-building. So a deal was struck.
However, upon getting occupancy, my folks discovered that the kitchen she had been using was no kitchen at all, merely a back porch with one tiny low mop sink. With determination, my folks began the task of turning this old back porch into a usable kitchen. The Canadays, friends who lived right behind us, gave us a nice sink that was in a lower cabinet unit. They had just removed it from their kitchen that was being renovated. This was installed on the west wall of the back porch in place of the mop sink. Linoleum was installed on the wooden floor, the floor that slanted down from the dining room to the back wall. Anything dropped in that kitchen, immediately rolled down to the north wall. The stove was placed on the south wall, that being a wall that looked like the exterior of the house. Mr. Contos, who owned a family grocery at 23rd and Pearl Streets, gave Daddy a metal bread rack that he was no longer using. This was a long rack made up of three shelves. It was metal and we painted it white. This my folks placed down the center of the kitchen to hold all the food, pans, and dishes for which there was no cabinet space. You know that old bread rack worked like a miracle, furnishing not only storage, but wonderful work space on top. I believe that was the early equivalent of the kitchen islands that are so popular today.
The north wall of the kitchen featured a row of windows that began about waist high and went to the ceiling. They looked out over the back yard and there was bead board underneath. Mother was inspired to paint a white picket fence all along beneath these windows, with hollyhocks painted behind the fence. She even painted a tiny mouse peeking out from behind the fence right by the back door. She hid it behind the milk bottle holder where the milk man left the milk each morning. Yes, can you remember milk in glass bottles delivered to the house by a milk man? We even had a bread man who delivered Omar bread right to the door.
After that they painted the kitchen a bright color and Mother made fresh white curtains to hang at the windows. It really was a rather pretty little kitchen. There were no heat vents in the kitchen, but Mother kept the oven and stove burners going most of the time, so it was not too uncomfortable.
At the east end of the kitchen was a door into a tiny utility room. There was a pull-up cellar door in that room, but remember we were not allowed there because the landlady's things were stored in the basement.
Daddy was the only one allowed to enter the basement, and only when there were problems with the furnace.
But, believe me, no one minded staying out of that cellar!
Mother's wringer washer was housed in this utility room along with baskets of unironed clothes waiting to be ironed. On wash day Mother had to pull the washer into the kitchen, along with rinse tubs, to be filled at the sink. What a job! Then the clothes had to be hung outside on the clothes lines. And remember that Daddy wore white shirts to work each day, and there were shirts for four boys, too. I remember Mother would actually try to hang them so that the colors looked pretty side by side, and the clothes pins matched the shirts. She was always the artist first.
Let me refer you to my blog from November 15, 2010, titled "Yet Another of My Mother's Stories." This was a story that she entered into a contest sponsored by the Arthur Godfrey radio show. It had to do with a housewife who had a regular story column in the local newspaper, and her stories were inspired by the sounds that the washer agitator made. She swore that the washer talked to her. By the way, Mother did not win the contest, but the story is quite charming anyway.
On the "bread rack" counter you see a blue enamel roaster. For some reason my mother always called this the "quarter roaster." I suppose that is what it cost when they bought it early in their marriage. On Sunday mornings Mother would put a beef pot roast into the quarter roaster and surround it with potatoes, carrots, and onions. This would go into the oven on a low temperature and cook all the time we were in church. I must confess that my dreams of the pot roast lunch most often stole my attention away from the sermon.
It hasn't been until lately as I have been recalling all these old memories, that I began wondering why a prominent attorney who built what must have been a lovely home in the early 1900's, did not build a proper kitchen in his house. Then I recalled that when we toured Thomas Edison's winter home in fort Myers, Florida, the tour guide showed us the kitchen which was in a separate building from the main house. He said that Edison, like a lot of wealthy people, did not like the cooking odors inside the house. So now I am wondering if the large outbuilding on our property might have been the original kitchen. Hmmmm! Just a thought.
We did survive the non-kitchen kitchen. We had many fine meals living in that house. In fact, for two years while we lived there, Mother served lunches to about fourteen or fifteen school students every school day. Central Junior High School was right across the street from our house. The schools in those days did not serve lunches at school. Students had to bring their lunches from home, or walk downtown and buy their lunches. Many mothers were uncomfortable with these options. Mother offered to serve lunch to some of her friends' children for a nominal fee. Every noon we would show up and lunch would at our assigned places. Mother used card tables in our family room for seating. There would be a mimeographed paper at each place for that child to select his lunch choices for the next day. As best I recall, we had two choices of soup (tomato or chicken noodle, I think), two choices of sandwiches (hot dog or peanut butter), and a choice of either fruit cup or ice cream cup , with milk or orange drink.
Mother even did some bartering. One of the student's mothers was a single parent and a beautician. During those two years, I would walk to Park Place on some Saturday mornings and get my hair cut, or sometimes just washed and set. This was in exchange for her daughter's lunches. For two years I had pretty good hair! Although I hated the long walk.
I had gone to Central Avenue School before we moved there, so I did not know any friends at Central Junior High. It was all a bit of a trial for me: living in that old house with no paint on the outside, having few friends, having to help Mother finish getting everything on the tables at lunch, and having all those kids invading our house at noon. I felt a bit of a freak - but I survived. In fact we all not only survived - we thrived with our non-kitchen kitchen.
