I dream it into three dimensions so many nights— my growing up home. 830 North Ash in McPherson.
The very last time I stepped inside for real—the rooms echoingly empty, I recorded the metallic rasp of the oven door on Mother’s ancient Chamber’s gas range. But the tape never matched my memories. I am left to create the kitchen in words.
I was seven or eight when my dad’s employer, the Alliance Insurance Companies, moved from downtown McPherson to a new building on the north edge of the community. That became my dad’s excuse to sell our lovely small bungalow for a miniature, mock English Tudor revival house just three blocks from his office. To his eye, our new home spoke more “class” and affluence than we really had. It offered two small but adequate bedrooms. A little den. A small bath created with cast-off marble. An elegant “sunken” half-timbered knotty pine living room with a fire place. An entry way that served as a dining room. A basement that had once been an apartment, which my dad hoped to use as lodging for our frequent company. A single car garage. And a diminutive kitchen. Really an unworkable kitchen. One that my dad promised my mother that he’d renovate.
Turns out, in that era before home inspections, the basement beams housed a tribe of termites. Who withstood the waterfalls that cascaded down the cellar walls in every rainstorm. My dad had purchased a real lemon. He was daunted and embarrassed by its problems—ultimately realizing that eliminating the termites and replacing joists was the first, pricey priority.
Fifty years later, both parents gone, the basement still leaked unrelentingly and no kitchen renovation had ever occurred. From the vantage points of middle age, my sister and I knew that Paul and Esther more than had the funds to update the kitchen. But for a pair who always purchased a used car, the potential cost likely seemed exorbitant. I don’t think that they grasped where to begin. Or how to live through the process.
Mother managed, soldiered on, put up with that kitchen until she died in the house—a few months beyond her ability to cook. I never heard her complain—although she would look longingly at other kitchens and exclaim over ones designed along a single aisle. Galley kitchens, she called them, with generous cabinets and countertops in easy arm’s reach.
Instead, picture a little walk-in closet-like space. With a small bump-out into the garage that previous owners had fashioned to accommodate a stove and a refrigerator—1940s sized. At the north end, a single window overlooked the sink, framed by what-not shelves. A set of yard-long cabinets—uppers and lowers–and yard-long countertops flanked the sink. On the left, the lower space held drawers for silverware and dish towels. Upper shelves held glasses and dishes. On the lower right, a single drawer stored utensils; shelves below held pans and mixing bowls. Baking ingredients occupied the upper shelves.
A chrome table and four chrome/red leatherette chairs sat opposite the stove and refrigerator, pushed up against the wall. The chairs all snugged up around one curved side. That was the kitchen.
Mother wasn’t a gourmet cook. She’d majored in home economics, albeit along with English, music, and art. And her take on healthy eating reflected 1930s thinking and economies.
Lunch—at which we all ate even when she had to pick us up from school—was usually bologna or toasted cheese sandwiches or potato or tomato soup with crackers and celery or carrot sticks. Bear in mind that the cheese Mother used in ALL dishes was Velveeta.
Supper (we didn’t eat dinner) might be a sausage patty, mashed potatoes, peas, a small pile of iceberg lettuce with half a pear or peach on top. Or sweet corn and pork chops and potatoes fried in bacon grease. Or hamburger in gravy—and the same basic assortment of vegetables and potatoes. And jello. Jello appeared often with various fruits suspended inside.
We’d ask Mother to make a big batch of sausage and pinto bean chili for our college friends. Or if the weather was cold and snowy (conducive to “setting” the mush), we’d beg for fried mush topped with sausage gravy. Both seriously economical foods with luscious tastes.
In a world where no teaspoon of food was wasted, I reveled in “restaurant” nights. Mother let us choose among whatever leftovers were available. Or she’d stir those tiny dabs into rice or mashed potatoes and fry up the resulting “cakes.”
For many years, my folks rented a locker next to the railroad tracks and in it stored a quarter of a beef or a hog and chickens from the Dresher’s farm. Plus vegetables that Mother had raised and blanched before bagging and boxing into the era’s freezer containers. Which meant that Mother had to plan meals ahead of time to have secured the main ingredients. Our own refrigerator freezer, of course, was about a foot square. When my folks acquired a second-hand, stand-alone freezer that lived in our basement, Mother was overjoyed.
Sunday and company meals—often one and the same—were comprised of a rump roast cooked with potatoes, carrots and onions in the “thermowell” of the Chambers gas range. In essence, a built-in, super-insulated crock pot equivalent. Or fried chicken.
Both roasts and good fried chicken remain favorite meals. The bad news is that I’ve never learned to duplicate the taste of Mother’s chicken. The good news is that now—unlike then—I can recognize parts of a chicken’s anatomy other than wings and legs.
In later years, Mother favored Huntington Chicken for big dinners: a combination of shell pasta, chicken from an “old hen,” chicken stock, and Velveeta cheese. I was astounded to find a recipe by that name on the Web, although the ingredients now include cream, cream cheese, cheddar, pimento, and butter.
The scritch of the oven opening–that I so wanted to record– occurred at all hours of the day. In the morning, if I heard it from the bedroom, we were having biscuits and gravy—my Dad’s favorite dish. Throughout the day, the sound translated into cookies or pies or fruit crisps or cakes—all made from scratch. For company dinners, that sound meant that Mother had made her world-class dinner rolls—food for the gods.
In my dreams—in that kitchen–there is always a musty smelling, much battered Tupperware container with crispy cookies it. Sitting on top of the toaster on the left hand counter. As long as Mother could see enough to measure ingredients and not burn herself on the oven, she kept that container filled.
The rest of that counter was given over to the drain board and drain rack—blue rubber, cracked and crazed with age. Plus washed, empty jars: mayonnaise, peanut butter, olive, pimento. Along with washed and dried bread sacks, used sheets of tinfoil or wax paper, and margarine and cottage cheese containers. All, all waiting to corral leftovers.
The right hand side of the sink offered another blue rubber drain mat for dirty dishes, dish soap, plant fertilizer, a container that held bacon grease, and a second-hand blender. The remaining couple square feet provided Mother’s stirring and mixing space – along with a pull-out cutting board.
Meanwhile, the table on which we ate sported a two-tiered bread box, little boxes of pills in current or previous use; more left-over containers; a couple vases; program booklets from various organizations; the city, church, and 4-H phone directories; a small Pyrex dish holding a used tea bag; and the phone.
Plus, the table was Mother’s other working space. The only flat surface big enough on which to roll out pie crusts or cool cookies fresh from the oven or hold canning jars after they were filled with boiling peaches or applesauce or plums. All of which had to be cleared away before meal time.
Mother stood just over five feet tall – delicate in all ways. She took pride, though, in her muscles. The benefit of carrying baskets of wet laundry and fruit up and down the basement stairs. Still, she could barely reach the second tier of cabinet shelves. The sink area could accommodate only one person washing the dishes and one person drying and putting them away. It was a dance we executed after every meal. If we didn’t, dirty dishes precluded cooking or baking for the next meal. The space could not accommodate the many generous backsides of women there for company meals—who wanted to help and to visit.
For 4-H fair, I turned out cookies, banana bread, and biscuits on the table and braved lighting the oven myself, squeaky door and all. That required striking a match—stored in a tiny cubby above the stove along with a big pepper shaker that held salt.
By the standards of any HGTV show, Mother’s kitchen was not cute—not even a cozy relic. It didn’t function. But Mother did. I treasure and use several kitchen utensils and dishes to remember her by: the flat china bowl that kept pancakes warm as she made more; our sturdy silverware; the Bakelite ladle that spooned chili into our bowls; the little red snapping turtle/clothes pin that displayed uplifting quotations over the sink.
I still dream the kitchen. And its smells and sounds. Often, I’m waiting for Mother to go out to a meeting or shopping, so that I can clean. So that I can replace those stained, cracked rubber drain mats with new ones. So that I can bundle up those glass jars and cottage cheese containers for recycling or the trash. So that—at least in some small way–I can make Mother’s life easier—tidier—brighter. And be with her again.
And I still dream the oven door’s creak—the sound of Mother in a warm, welcoming, dysfunctional kitchen. ©
