Three Word Wednesday for Monday Memories

Bone posts "three words every Wednesday (perhaps Tuesday night even, oh wishful thinker that I am). Your mission is to write something"--a poem, story, sentence, anything–using all three words. Then you leave a comment at the 3WW site letting people know they should visit your blog. For January 16 the 3WW cue was

Awkward
Kitchen
Obsessed

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My mother wasn't obsessed with remodeling the awkward kitchen in the homes my father bought, but her eyes widened and her fingers seemed to twitch when she first saw them. Every house my father found seemed to have an outdated kitchen--and sometimes Mother hadn't seen the house before he purchased it. The earliest home I remember at 203 East Hitt Street in Mt. Morris was not old enough to be horribly outdated--being perhaps 30 years old--but it probably received fresh paint and new curtains for the southern exposure kitchen window. The wall cabinets had heavy pull-out drawers. I remember dragging them out like stair steps for climbing to reach something. And then falling.

The first home in Forreston was a disaster--an old 19th century farm house with a cold water hand pump in the kitchen and an outdoor toilet. Mother rose to the challenge, remodeling the kitchen and installing a bathroom using one of the smaller bedrooms. When it was livable, dad bought a very nice brick home a few blocks away. It was well designed with beautiful woodwork and amazing closets (each closet had a closet), but the kitchen sink with a sloping drain board hung on the wall. Even a skirt to disguise it didn't help and the ice box (no refrigerator) was on the back porch. Mother went to work and built a standard sized sink cabinet and bought a refrigerator, and then built an eating nook with a wrap around bench which was all the rage then. But the bold colors of the late 1940s were her undoing. I think she clipped too many articles from Better Homes and Gardens, because she painted the linoleum deep maroon, and speckled it (sort of like the 90s craze for faux painting) by dipping a crumpled newspaper in white paint and patting it on the maroon floor. It looked like a frisky puppy ran through spilled paint and dashed through the kitchen.

In 1951 Dad bought several different houses in Mt. Morris, the first two being too small for a family of six, so he traded the second for our wonderful home at 4 South Hannah in March, again with an awkward, dated kitchen. I've used this photo before, but it's all I have to show the features--the old turn of the century wall cabinets to the ceiling with work space about 12" deep, radiator for heat over which Mother had built a shelf, a very tall window, and a wood table heavy with paint. What you don't see is the sink behind me hanging on the wall next to a bathroom door. The bathroom had been installed in what was probably the "carriage porch," and had four doors and a washer and dryer--a door to the backyard and the kitchen plus two other doors to the basement and the music room/dad's office. In front of me in this photo was a door and a window to an enclosed back porch which had cabinets for storage. Mother remodeled this kitchen in late 1955 and again we had a table with a built in bench (they really aren't very convenient, but were very popular then). She only enjoyed it three years.


Their final house in Mt. Morris at 315 East Lincoln Street was probably less than ten years old when they bought it in 1958, and although not dated, the kitchen was awkward and tiny. Out came Mother's box of magazine clippings and down came some walls. She hired a carpenter who built her dream design--a wonderful plan that lasted her over thirty years, and cost at least half the value of the house (which is probably why dad didn't sell it).

In the 1960s she began remodeling her parents' home place as a retreat center, a huge house between Franklin Grove and Ashton. She had tongue and groove cabinetry installed to match some of the original from 1908, and removed the cook stove to install a washer and dryer enclosed behind doors. It was a wonderful, bright and airy gathering spot.

Mom had one last kitchen to tackle before her final reveal. When she and dad moved into their retirement home in Pinecrest Apartments in 1997 their unit was quite new, but not convenient for a short, 80-something woman with a few opinions about kitchens. She hired a carpenter to build in sliding and roll out shelves in all the kitchen cabinets for easy access. She didn't do much cooking during her final years, but she was quite proud of her efforts and when her daughters and grand daughters visited, we appreciated again her knack for handling bad kitchens.