Why Reading Teachers Go Crazy While Reading, And How Muncie, Indiana ended up in Botswana

I love to read.  And I do read every day......and often into the night!  But I have to tell you that there is something that drives me a little bit crazy when I am reading.  I hate it when the main character(s) have names that are impossible to pronounce!

I used to teach reading and phonics for about thirty some years.  I guess that process left me interminably trying to sound out any new word that I encounter.  That's wonderful unless it is one of the characters in a novel whose name defies decoding.  For instance I recently read Elizabeth George's newest mystery in the Inspector Lynley series.  The story revolves around a large family of characters whose last name is Fairclough.  Okay, so how would YOU pronounce it?   There are 70 or more words in the English language that end in "ough".  Think about it.  There is : rough, though, thought, through, bough, etc, etc.  So which pronunciation should I use at the end of Fairclough?  And let me tell you that name appeared on every page of this very long novel.  I just couldn't give it up.  I kept on trying to pronounce it correctly as I read.

So this weekend I read Alexander McCall Smith's novel "The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection."
This is the 13th in the "#1 Ladies Detective Agency" series.  The setting of the stories is Gaborone, Botswana in Africa.  I can actually pronounce Gaborone and Botswana.  No problem.  But let me introduce you to some of the characters.  First and foremost:  Mma Precious Ramotswe who is married to Rra J.L.B. Matekoni.  Her assistant is Mma Grace Makutsi who is married to Rra Phuti Radiphuti.  AAaaargh!  Help me please!  And these characters NEVER speak to one another using a first name.  They ALWAYS use full names.  On every page my simple little phonics-driven mind continues to try and correctly pronounce the names.  I did figure out that Mma must mean Ms.  And Rra is Mr.  (I think.)

In spite of all this, I do enjoy Mr Smith's books.  Do you think because he is a "Smith"  that he is fascinated with hard-to-pronounce names? Even so,  the detective agency books are so charming.  I have really enjoyed them even more since I watched the HBO series of these stories. Now, as I read, I have a very real picture of each character, how they dress, and how the scene must look.  I can see Gaborone, and the countryside of Botswana.

Another item in this book was very interesting to me.  When Mma Ramotswe decided to  open her detective agency (all the way back in book one of the series), she found a book at the book store that she used as a guide for being a good detective.  It is a book titled "The Principles of Private Detection" written by Clovis Andersen.  Both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi  (I hope you are going crazy trying to pronounce)  have committed most of the text to memory, as the manual has guided them through the events of thirteen novels.
You won't believe it, but in this No. 13, they at last get to meet their hero, Mr. Andersen, who appears in Gaborone visiting a friend.

And, guess what?  Mr. Andersen tells them that he is from (hold on to  your hat!)  Muncie, Indiana.  He says that he is a detective in Muncie, Indiana, a midwestern town where glass jars are made.  Not only that, but he graduated from a university in Bloomington, Indiana.  I don't know why he couldn't have gone to Ball State.  The funniest development is that at the end of this book, Mr Andersen admits that he is now retired, and was a terrible detective.  Not only that, but his manual was self published, and he only sold about 30 copies.  The rest were home in his garage.  And this manual has guided the two detectives through many successful adventures in all thirteen books.

I was very interested in reading Alexander McCall Smith's biographical information.  He was born in Zimbabwe, graduated from the University of Edinburgh, taught law at the University of Botswana, and now lives in Scotland.  I wonder how he decided to include Muncie and Indiana into this story.

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Shouldn't You Put Brothers in the Attic?

At long last I have come to the final room (or two rooms)  in my childhood memories doll house.  And, at long last I have finally gotten even with those big brothers who always had the first choice and best bedrooms in the house.  Remember, that I didn't have my own room until I was eleven years old!  Up until then I had a cot in the corner of the dining room or living room.  Poor child!  Don't you feel sorry for me?
Truth be spoken, I can't recall that I ever minded my little cot, and I always slept like the proverbial log.

Anyway, in my doll house I have put my brothers' rooms up in the attic, under the roof.  But I think they look pretty swell.  Don't you?  In fact, my brothers' rooms never looked this neat.  It is impossible to find doll house- sized dirty socks and clothes to strew about.  So I gave up and made their rooms look like those occasions when Mother cleaned their rooms in desperation when company was expected.  We did have the bunk beds in one room and the double bed in another.  But I think that, more often than not, the bunks were set up as twin beds.  However, the bunks fit better up under the doll house roof.

In the bunk room you find the basketball and trophy from the Anderson Indians state final championship game in which brother Clyde played.  The state champion tournament was the most exciting day of my childbood.  The Anderson Indians won the Indiana state championship in 1946, so I would have been 10 years old.  Mother and Daddy had seats in the team parents section (good seats).  David, Dan, and I sat way at the top of Hinkle Field House.  But did we care?  Not a bit.  We were so excited.  Clyde was just a junior so he was not a starter on the team.  He did get into both games (afternoon and evening), but only for the last minute or so.  I was so happy!  I told everyone with hearing distance that he was my BROTHER!
Between games we had supper in a private dining room at a very nice hotel along with other team parents. We had fried chicken.  Pretty exciting stuff for kids who didn't get to eat out often.

And after the championship game, they brought the team back to Anderson and took them around town on a fire truck that ended up back at the high school gym for a big celebration.  Dave, Dan, and I got away from Mother and Daddy.  Guess what.   We ended up climbing on the stage with the team.  Mother and Daddy were so embarrassed.  But, in all the excitement, they forgot all about it.

Clyde eventually went to Butler University where the famous Hinkle Field House is located.  It is the field house featured in the movie Hoosiers.  The tournament was just as exciting as the one portrayed in the movie.

You see signs on the bedroom walls showing that besides Clyde going to Butler, Jack went to Indiana University, and David to Ball State.  Dan didn't go to college, but went right into the Navy.  All my brothers had military experience.  Jack was drafted into the 2nd World War as soon as he graduated from high school.   Then he did some ROTC at IU to help pay for his college.  Clyde also did AFROTC, and eventually served in the air force after college.  David did army service and also army reserves.    They served their country, and helped pay for their own educations.

If you have teen-aged brothers or sons, you know that there may not be a "No Girls Allowed" sign on the door.  But, really, do you want to spend time in such a messy place?   Maybe, even in real life, they would be better placed up in the attic, and under the roof.

The Master (and Mistress) Bedroom

These pictures show my doll house version of my parent's various bedrooms  in all my childhood houses.
It was not the "Master Bedroom."  I never heard that phrase growing up.  The room was just "Mother and Daddy's room.  It was the safe place you could run to if you were sick or scared in the middle of the night.
When did real estate ads and designers start with the master bedroom thing?  Oh no, let me correct that.  They are ideally called "Master suites."  Yes, I am addicted to HGTV.  And no self-respecting twenty something buying the first home would have anything less than a master suite for heavens sake.  Nor would they accept anything less than a bathroom for every bedroom for heavens sake.

Well, I grew up in a family of seven with a grandmother who visited for three or four months every year, and we never had more than one bathroom.  It sometimes wasn't fun, but you just made it work.  And, anyway,
isn't it rather sexist to call it the "Master"  bedroom.  I'd say that in our house Mother had a whole lot more to do with the care and cleaning of the room and everything in it.

But I do digress.  Front and center in the picture you see Mickey, the dog.  Mickey was that ugly little puppy that my oldest brother, Jack, brought home when I was three or four.  I swear that dog lived until I was almost through high school.  Mickey was much whiter and uglier than my little statue dog.  He also had  a  chronic case of eczema on his back, so that he had a large pink bare spot there.  And he smelled exactly like a dog.  Although I wasn't aware of that until someone told me a few years ago that our house always smelled like Mickey, the dog.  How embarrassing is that?  But Mickey and Mother loved one another.  He followed her around the house all day when he wasn't out chasing other dogs or scratching his eczema.  He also slept by their bed at night.  So their room probably smelled like dog, too.

The little black chair beside the bed is the ironing board chair that my Grandpa Lininger made.  I am sure he made it as a "time out" chair for my older brothers. And he made it out of an old ironing board.  But all during my time at home it sat on Daddy's side of the bed and was filled with a large stack of "Saturday Evening Post" magazines.  My dad always subscribed to this magazine, and read them every night before falling to sleep.  See the bed lamp hanging on the head board?  Do you remember those?  Well, they were great for night time reading.  I just remember lounging on Mother and Daddy's bed on hot summer afternoons with a breeze coming in the window.  I loved to read the Saturday Evening Post.  Well, I suppose I first looked at them, and then, when I learned how to read, I read them.  The procedure was:  get the windows opened wide, get the breezes going, select a Post, first go through and see all the cartoons,  then check to see if there were any movie stars pictures, or any pretty ads, then read something if it attracted my attention or I understood what I was reading.  The Saturday Evening Post taught me a lot about America and American culture.  Oh, and I loved the Norman Rockwell painted cover pictures.  I loved them then, and I still do.

On the dresser you see Mother's extensive collection of cosmetics.  That would be Pond's Cold Cream and Pond's Vanishing Cream.  I think there might have been some loose face powder and one tube of lipstick.
That was it!  She used the Ponds every day, but the powder and lipstick only when going somewhere.  But I thought my mother was very pretty.  And Ponds was scented like roses.  So my mother always smelled like a rose.  I remember that Mother could only afford the beauty shop every other week.  And she waited a long time between permanents.  So her hair had a pretty natural look a good bit of the time.  I loved it when she had a new permanent or had just been to the beauty shop.  I thought she looked beautiful.  I always wished she could go every day.  Silly child.  Oh, and she always had a blue rinse put on her grey hair.  All the grey haired women did that.  Why, I don't know.  And it always rubbed off on the pillow cases.

On the shelf you see some of her unfinished crafts.  I swear that when I was born  my mother had a half-finished hooked rug in her cedar chest.  It was still there when we disposed of her household goods at the time she had to have full-time care.  In that chest were some baby books.  Jack, the first born, had a pretty complete book.  Clyde's was so-so.  After that the baby books were pretty much non-existent.  I didn't understand that until I had three children.  There was also a curling iron from the 1920's.  As a child I thought it was a weird thing.  Mother always put my hair up on rags every night.  When I grew up, you would have thought that curling irons were the hottest new inventions around.

On the back wall hang the framed senior pictures of the five children.  When my parents finally bought their first house (a year before I was married), they did have those five pictures framed and hung in their bedroom.
I'm so happy that for a while they were able to have that nice big "master bedroom" in a house that they owned, after all those years of too little money, too small rental houses, and too many kids.

Just the Bare ( or Bear) Facts

I spent Thursday, Friday, and the weekend working on putting faces and trimmings on these bears.
  A group associated with RSVP, are called the "Love Bear Ladies."  They have been making these bears for I don't know how many years.  My friend, Sally, reports that they give away at least a thousand bears a year.  The Love Bear Ladies give these to the Police Dept. and both of our local hospitals.  They are given to children who are ill or are involved in stressful or traumatic situations.

Sally told me that the group has been short-handed because several members have been unable to work, so I volunteered to help out.  It has been fun to give these plain little guys some personality.

Frank, the cat,  thinks he is a bear, or wants to be a bear, or is vying for my undivided attention - the attention he usually enjoys.  Or maybe it is all three!

Oh, and thanks to friend, Ginny, who proved on Friday that she really is a good friend.  She came out on a 103 degree afternoon so that she could stuff bears!

The BEST Room of All!

Finally, I get to tell you about the best room in the house.  Well, anyway, it was my very favorite!  You have to realize that I never had a bedroom of my own until I was 11 years old.  So, no wonder I liked it so much when I finally did get my very own space. Up until then I had just had a cot in an available corner someplace.

The house on 13th Street was large enough that it had four very nice upstairs bedrooms.  Our landlady had put fresh new wallpaper on all the walls, and  my room had pink flowers.  The Canadays, the friends who lived behind us and gave us the kitchen sink, also gave me their only daughter's bedroom furniture.  She had gotten married that summer and they were turning her room into an office.  They gave me a twin bed with a pretty rose sateen bedspread, and a long dressing table with the same rose sateen skirt.  There was a large mirror over the dressing table.  Oh, I became such a princess.

My room had two nice windows that looked out into the tall green trees outdoors.  They were perfect windows for a daydreamer.  Grandma and Grandpa had found a section of school chalkboard someplace, and I had that in my room.  One of my favorite pass times was to used colored chalk and cover the board with a huge picture, or write some long story on the chalkboard.

See the box propped up at the end of the bed?  That is the box that Jack brought home and Mother painted for me.  Inside you will find all my  favorite pictures and paper dolls.  On the wall you see a wall shelf that Grandpa Lininger made.  Grandma and Grandpa had had a fishing cottage at Riverwood, so that Grandpa could go fishing.  When they sold the cottage they gave us the shelf.  Mother let me hang it in my bedroom and on it I placed the doll tea set that had been my mothers.  I still have some pieces of that china tea set.
I also had my Storybook Doll collection.  That sounds impressive.  But I don't think I ever managed to collect more than three of them.  I have no idea what ever happened to those dolls. Our daughter, Cheryl, still has the shelf in her kitchen.

On the dressing table you see a blue perfume bottle.  Several years before on my sixth birthday, about midday Mother realized that she had forgotten and had no presents for her precious daughter.  As I remember it she called Daddy at work and then baked a cake for supper. My sixth birthday was in 1942, and we had no car, nor was there much gasoline available if you had one.  Daddy rode the city bus to work, and it required that he transfer to another bus downtown.  Daddy must have gotten off the bus on his way home and shopped for my present at a drugstore downtown.  When, after blowing out the candles after supper, I opened my present, it was an aqua blue hobnail bottle of cologne!. It was probably a totally inappropriate gift for a six year old, but I adored it!  I felt so grown up, and my daddy had picked it out!
That was seventy years ago and I still have my aqua blue hobnail bottle (no cologne).

You see a doll house in the picture above.  Let me tell you the story of my FIRST doll house.  My Grandma Green always came to stay with us for three or four months each year.  Grandma had very limited eyesight, and had to walk with a walker (hmmm?  I think I may be related to her.)  I am thinking now that she must have had such patience.  Since she couldn't climb stairs, she always had to sleep on a sofa bed or some awkward place.  But she was always sweet about everything.  Grandma spent her day reading and writing letters to every relative she had.  First thing in the morning she read the newspaper from cover to cover ---I mean Every Word!   Grandma saw a classified ad about a doll house for sale, and talked Daddy into going to see it.  It must have been about my 8th birthday, because Daddy bought the doll house.

Let me tell you, this was a doll house and a half.  It was about five feet long and five feet tall with Southern colonial pillars on the porch.  The biggest problem was that where we lived on Meridian St.  at that time, our house was very crowded, and I had no bedroom.  So this monster of a doll house sat in the basement.  The next problem was that doll house furniture built to that scale did not exist, and no one in our house had the time nor the money to build any furniture.  I am very sad to say that I can't remember what happened to my Monster Doll House #1.  It certainly didn't make the move to the next house.  But I think it did spark that interest in me that has never gone away  - only now I try to keep it in scale.

I remember the open windows in the summertime, listening to the summer night sounds.  I remember watching the neighborhood comings and goings.  I remember a lot of daydreams happening in that room.
I remember having the German measles during sixth grade, and having to stay in bed in the darkened room.
I was so sick.  I remember my mother coming in and washing my itchy skin and powdering it.  She made me feel so much better.  I remember a bat got into the house one night and was flying up and down the hallway.
I stayed under the covers until Daddy caught it and put it outside.

It was a long time coming, but I am so thankful that I finally had a room of my own.

Where the Living Was Easy

Houses didn't have "family rooms" when I was a child.  At least I had never heard of such a thing.  In my world you had a living room or a parlor, or sometimes you had both.  In most of our rental houses we just had a living room, and that was the place where everyone gathered in the evenings or on weekends to relax and be a family.  In the houses where we had two such rooms, we invariably chose the smaller and cozier of the two for the daily gathering place.  Now that I have used that word "gathering", I realize that I have often seen that used in country decorating books to describe just the sort of room I am talking about today- the "gathering room."

You see that there was no television set in our living room.  We didn't have a television set until I was in high school.  My dad finally HAD to go buy one during the high school basket tourney time, so he could watch the games happening in Indianapolis.  You do see a radio.  And that was what the family gathered around when we wanted some entertainment other than conversation or games.  I LOVED listening to the radio shows in the evening.  David and I would fix snacks.  We used to make "Hermit" cookies, or Mother's "Never-Fail" fudge, or popcorn.  Then we would lie on the floor and listen to "Jack Armstrong", or "The Shadow" and eat our snacks.  And the whole family listened to "Fibber McGee and Molly", "Gildersleeve,"
or "One Man's Family."  I think that "One Man's Family"  was our favorite, and it was aired on a weekend evening.

I can tell you exactly what the house and street looked like where Gildersleeve lived.  I can describe Molly's living room, and the  jammed closet that would "explode" every time Fibber opened the door.  Strange, though, that the house and closet looked a lot like ours.  And Gildersleeve's street looked a lot like our street.  That was the beauty of radio.  It required that the listener really listen and use his mind to conjure up the sights.  It was a much more creative process than mind-numbing television.  Perhaps we were fortunate to grow up in such a time.  Our granddaughters attended a Waldorf Elementary School.  In Waldorf Schools the teachers use no audio-visual equipment whatsoever.  Everything is done through story-telling and visualization.  Both girls have grown up to be very creative writers and artists.

On the game table you see a Monopoly game.  We did play games like Monopoly.  We also played card games:  mostly Hearts or Canasta.  Mother and Daddy played Bridge.  Alas, I don't seem to have any card-playing sense.  I have never learned to play bridge.  Don likes to play euchre.  I play for awhile, then my mind begins to wander, or I start an annoying conversation (annoying to the card players), and all is lost.
Also, I am a terrible loser.  I HATE to lose.  While Don, on the other hand, is very competitive, but takes losing right in stride.  So, these days, television is pretty much our entertainment of choice.

The throw on the back of the couch would have been crocheted by Grandma Lininger.  Grandma never sat down that she didn't have her crocheting with her.  She made an afghan for every child and grandchild.  I still have mine.  It has been mended and repaired, but I still treasure it.  Often, during the evening, Mother would wrap up in the throw and take a nap on the couch.  Or sometimes I would come home from school in the afternoons and find her under the throw and listening to her radio shows (Soaps.)

When we lived on Meridian Street and I was between the ages of 8 - 11, one of my favorite tricks was to search for coins under the chair cushions, and down in the chair crevasses.  You know that fathers and brothers do not sit up straight when they are relaxing in an easy chair at home.  They slump and lounge, and pocket change has a way of escaping from their pockets.  Glory! Glory!  If I could find enough change, I would run across the street to the drugstore and buy a magazine.  I loved movie, fashion, or home magazines.  I loved magazines that had pretty, colorful pictures.  Then I would read them and cut out all the pretty, colorful pictures.

When Jack came home from the army, he brought with him a German ammunition box.  It was wooden with rope handles and an attached lid.  Mother painted it and put my name and a Pennsylvania Dutch design on the lid.  This was my treasure box.  For years I collected all my favorite magazine pictures and kept them in this treasure box. I also kept my paper dolls in this box.  I liked paper dolls, and I liked making my own clothes for them out of  scrap paper.  And sometimes I cut out the ladies from the Sears catalog, and cut out extra clothes for my Sears paper dolls.

The Hermit cookies I mentioned were from Mother's recipe books.  As I remember them they were soft and chewy, and had raisins and spices in them.  Sometimes they were better than at other times.  If we couldn't find one of the ingredients, we just made them without that ingredient!  The fudge was one Mother had made all her life.  I have seen many Never-Fail fudge recipes, but not like Mother's.The newer recipes call for Marshmallow Fluff and chocolate pieces.  I remember Mother's recipe called for cocoa powder, butter, water, milk, vanilla.  You had to stir and stir.  At eight years old, I could check to see if fudge had reached the "soft ball" stage.  That is, if when you dropped a bit into cold water, did it form a soft ball?  If so, you could take it from the fire, stir, and pour it into a cake pan to set.  I have one of my mother's teen-age diaries, and she talks about going to "fudge parties."  At Christmas she mentions that one of her gifts was a "fudge apron."  Our mother knew her fudge!

Ah, such simple pleasures.  But I do remember it as a mostly happy childhood.  Today's children might find it hard to survive without electronics.  But I recall all that "living" with great fondness.

With a Little Song in our Hearts

I have put a lot into my memory doll house that reminds me of my mother and her interests and talents - definitely her creative and artistic talent.  But my dad had his creative talents also - only his outlet was music.

Daddy worked for General Motors from the time I was six  until he retired some twenty years later.  He worked at Guide Lamp in the office where he wrote applications for states' approval for their head lamps.
It was a good job and he earned a pretty good salary, I guess.  At least our family of seven survived even though our parents had to crawl out of the great financial hole created by the depression.

But my dad's real love was music.  Daddy a a very nice bass singing voice, and his great love was sacred music sung by a choir.  He had grown up the son of a Methodist minister, and he had learned early to love the music of the church.  He did not play the piano.  His sister, my Aunt Alice, had been given the piano lessons, and Daddy had been given violin lessons.  I guess their parents had a small family orchestra in mind. But Daddy used his musical talents to add much- needed extra income to the family treasury.  He directed church choir, a community chorus, and an American Legion male chorus.  Besides this, he gave vocal lessons at home to some of the choirs' more talented singers.

The picture above shows the "music room" in my doll house, really the end of the living room.  At our various rental houses, the piano had to be placed where it would fit.  On Meridian Street we had two living rooms, one that could be shut off by french doors.  On 13th Street, there were two living rooms, but we had to use a folding screen to provide a separate place for lessons.  In those old houses, heating duct work didn't go to the second story.  There were heat register grates cut into the ceilings of the down stairs rooms.  Heat naturally rises, so that is how it traveled upstairs.  These grates also gave ornery children a wonderful birds eye view of the lessons going on down below.  And sometimes the lessons, or rather the singing, was pretty funny.  We were in trouble more than once for giggling overhead!

Daddy's students?  Well, some were better than others.  Like I said, most of them sang in one of Daddy's choirs.  Their voices were fine, but Daddy made them sing "fah lah lah" scales, and always was asking them to breathe deeply.  Sometimes it was pretty funny.  One of his students did become a professional singer.
He wasn't famous, but he sang in night clubs all over the country.  Every time he came back to Anderson to visit his relatives, he would call Daddy and come back for one more lesson.  I think it was mostly a way to keep in touch and thank Daddy for all his help.

A few years ago I attended a West Anderson church.  A gentleman from the choir sang a solo.  After the service he approached me and said that he had taken voice lessons from my dad, and he remembered me as a child.  He spoke so kindly of Daddy.  The soloist also had a lovely bass singing voice.  It was a little like touching my Daddy again.  So sweet!

I remember traveling on some Saturdays with Mother and Daddy to other cities where other American Legion posts sponsored chorus concerts, and Daddy's chorus would perform.  His church choir also did some joint programs with churches in other towns.  Mother and I would go, listen to them practice together, then enjoy a pitch-in church dinner, then stay for the evening program.

But the most memorable program was the one given by the Anderson Community Chorus.  A stage was built at the base of the Japanese Gardens at Shadyside Park.  The chorus sang on risers on that stage accompanied by an orchestra.  All the songs selected to be sung were titled with girls' names.  As the chorus sang, pretty girls in appropriate costumes would walk down through the gardens.  It was a lovely concert, and we were very proud of Daddy so handsome in his tuxedo as he directed the chorus.  Mother let us kids go up and sit at the very top of the high hill where we could wiggle and talk without bothering the audience.
We had so much fun, and I still remember the beautiful scene and the beautiful music.

So was any of his musical talent passed on to his kids?  I guess not so much.  We all sang - in choral club at high school, Clyde sang in a quartet at college, Dan always sang in church choirs, I sang some.  We had voices that were good for a group, but not solo voices.  I took piano lessons, but was not disciplined enough to practice like I should have.  I can read music.  I used to be able to play one song, "Bless This House"  from memory.  I can't even do that now.  Mother could always play one song that she remembered from childhood lessons, too.  Clyde learned to play Claire de Lune, not from music but by ear.  Jack could play the boogie beat.  It wasn't a very impressive family concert.  Daddy had to hire a pianist to accompany his voice lessons.  For years a teenager named Gerry Thornberry came to accompany the lessons.  We all loved to have Gerry come to visit.  She later married and became an English teacher, teaching at Anderson High School.  Her name then was Gerry Casey.

But we all did learn to love music.  Sacred music is still one of my favorites.  All our homes have always been full of the sound of music from one source or another, and several of the grandkids and great grand kids have more than a little musical talent.  So I guess you can say that Daddy's Beat Goes On!

It is in the Dining Room Where Life Is Shared

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, then the dining rooms in our houses were the communication centers.  In some of our rental houses we had eat-in kitchens, and in others we just had dining rooms where we ate all our meals.  But the evening meal was always the sit-down-around-the-dining-room-table meal.

We always ate between five-thirty and six, shortly after Daddy arrived home from work.  At our house this meal was always called supper, and it was the big meal of the day, except on Sundays and holidays.  Then the noon meal was called dinner, as in "Thanksgiving dinner", or "Christmas dinner,"  or Sunday dinner.  It was expected that all would show up and sit down together to eat.  Sometimes jobs or classes interfered, but usually everyone showed up and on time.  This was the time of day when news and experiences were shared.  And, with the boys, there were usually a lot of laughs.

We couldn't afford fancy meals, but Mother was a  pretty good and creative cook.  In those days we didn't have freezers and frozen foods, so foods were fresh or canned.  Grandpa and Grandma Lininger had a garden, so we did get fresh or home-canned foods from them.  I especially remember canned green beans and cherries from Grandma Lininger.  I was always amazed as a kid , that Mother could get home at 4:45 or 5:00 from her club meeting, open some cans, and have supper on the table on time.  Although, I was always expected to set the table.

What our meals lacked in special foods, Mother made up for with a pretty table.  As always the artistic side of Mother made her find a pretty table cloth, a pretty centerpiece, and set the table correctly.  I learned early about where to place the napkins, the silverware, the cups and glasses.  I am, even now, a very indifferent cook.  In fact, I cook very little.  But I still like for the table to look pretty for whatever Don fixes or carries in.

Grandma and Grandpa gave Mother the pretty pink and white flowered dishes for on of her birthdays.  And another birthday she received some crystal stemware.  We had nice silverware from when Mother and Daddy were married.  These we saved for Sundays and holidays, and used our every day dishes for the other days.  You will see in the picture above that on the buffet is a crystal punch bowl set.  When I was fifteen I had my first job working at the Star China Shop during the Christmas season.  I bought the fanciest punch bowl set that my wages could buy to give my parents for Christmas.  Looking back now, I know that there were many other things that my parents needed more.  But that punch bowl set has been used for every family party in the history of our family from that Christmas on.  AND I have it in my china cabinet even now.  AND we still use it for every one of our holiday parties.  Grandson Taylor always requests the cranberry punch.

Look again at the picture.  See the greenery on the buffet?  When we brought home a Christmas tree, Daddy always trimmed the lower branches before nailing it onto the stand.  Mother used these branches to decorate the rest of the house, including the top of the buffet.  She also added candles and ornaments or bows.  One Christmas we were eating dinner, when my brother, David, (without pausing from eating) announced in a very calm voice, "The buffet is on fire."

Everyone, but David, jumped up and began pouring water and trying to put out the fire.  But David just went on eating.  After that we were always careful about combining greenery and candles.  We also never let David forget this story.

I think the dining room table in the doll house is quite pretty.  But the dining room suite that I grew up with was pretty --uh, what shall we call it?  It was Sears and Roebuck baroque.  It was several shades of brown stain, with inlaid veneer designs, and lots of carving.  It had big fat ball legs, and heavy antique-looking gold drawer pulls.  The chair seats were some kind of dismal velvet.  It did make a statement!  Mother kept table linens in the bottom two drawers of the buffet.  But the top drawer was the place you could find anything that was missing from the rest of the house.  Look there if you were searching for a bill or receipt, tape, scissors, a nut cracker, your lost report card.  Doesn't every household have such a drawer?

After mother received all the wonderful china and crystal, Grandpa Lininger made her a wooden cabinet for storing her dishes in the dining room.  It had a flat wooden door with no glass panes like most china cabinets.  So Mother used her paints and artistic talents to paint a large floral design on the door.  You can see my version in the doll house.  Grandpa's was a corner cabinet and was brown wood stained.  I do remember coming home from Central Avenue School for lunch and finding Mother , still in her pajamas and robe, painting the flowers on the cabinet door.  She looked up aghast and said, "Is it noon already?"
It is hard to be a mom and a housewife when you are really an artist at heart.

And, of course, I have already and often told the story of the Saturday night when our parents went to bridge club and left us kids home alone.  We were all in our early teens, so this was no scandal.  We decided to set the table with all the fine linens, china, crystal and silver.  Then we cooked our supper - I think it was bacon and a can of peas.  We put on our dress-up clothes and sat down for a good ol' banquet.  Mother and Daddy came home while we were eating.  Thank goodness they had a good laugh, so we weren't in trouble after all!