My 1974 Kitchen

I'm feeling a bit nostalgic today.

The past is drawing my heart…

This picture of Mama and Daddy started it.

'

Daddy would have been about 20, Mama 19.

Not sure who the baby is…

oh yes, that's me, named after my mother
Marian Dewena.

I wish I had pictures of some of the kitchens
Mama cooked in over the years,

the first ones only came with kitchen privileges

as Mama and I followed Daddy from base to base

during World War II when he trained 

as a navigator on B-17s and then B-29s.

But oh, the magnificent meals she turned out
in a tiny kitchen in a post-war cottage
in Nashville once the war was over,
where so many relatives visited that
an uncle once slept in the bathtub.

Then when I was 12 years old they built this house.

Years later they moved out of state and sold it to me and R.H.

And this was our kitchen circa 1974.

The beam across the middle is where Daddy
at one point had removed the wall 
between the kitchen and the dining room.

I see my Spode Blue Bird wedding china in the hutch.
I see copper molds everywhere.
I see my macrame plant holders and Mason jars
holding dried beans and Lord knows what else.

Hey, it was the '70s.
If it could fit in a jar, I put it there.
If it would hang from a hook, I hung it.
(Not sure why the glass milk jug from 
W. E. Davis Dairy was sitting on the counter 
or a liquor bottle near it.)

We still have the old green china hutch and the wood ice box,
but how I wish I still had that wonderful old stove
 with the pull-out burners that Mama left when they moved.
I could probably do without the pine panelling now
but it was cozy as could be then.
The red plaid wallpaper on the ceiling that went
all the way into the den remains a favorite.

There's one other thing I miss--
no, not the lamp with the holes in it--
that little daughter who grew up way too fast. 

[I wish I knew why the text size arbitrarily jumps around on me. I simply cannot correct it.]