The Kitchen

There was no better smell than that of Grandma's kitchen.  When I was a kid I was amazed at how great a cook she was.  When my family would come for a visit, she would cook up some of the greatest meals I had ever tasted.  She cooked every meal.  Every meal.  Today, it isn't unusual for my family to grab a sandwich and chips for  lunch, a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and something quick for supper.  Grandma cooked every meal, and there were courses.  The plate was always full.  Fruit, toast, and juice with the cereal at breakfast - and at least one, maybe two vegetables with every other meal.  She always had a piece of bread too.  She always sat down last after everyone else was already sitting and eating.  My greatest memories of her are watching her in her kitchen.  When she died, I asked to have the big yellow mixing bowl where I had watched her mix a hundred pumpkin pies and where I mix mine today.  I think that was why today was a little hard for me.  We're working in the kitchen.  The old wood floors were found intact underneath the multiple layers of vinyl.  The cake layers were like this:  vinyl, plywood, 3 more layers of vinyl, 1946 newspapers which crumbled to the touch, and then the prize - the original pine plank flooring -- beautiful and barely walked on.  There were 3 bad spots which we worked to repair today - one was the corner where the previous owners left their refrigerator filled with food, shut their electricity off, and then left it sit for a year.  The second was where the chimney used to stand.  The third was under where the sink used to sit.  When Grandma lived in the house, she had a pump on her kitchen sink that ran to the cistern.  She had water to the pipes from the well, but the cistern water was used to wash most dishes.  She only had one large cast iron sink.  It was gone when we bought the house.  I bought a large cast iron farm sink to replace the stainless steel sink which had replaced Grandma's sink.  The house is connected to city water and all new pipes have been installed to replace the old copper pipes.  Basically, it looks nothing like Grandma's kitchen used to look.  Nothing.  There are days when I think we have ruined everything.  She would hate it.  She would think it was wasteful and unnecessary.  She lived such a simple life.  She cooked in that kitchen with very little modern technology.  I admit much of the gutting had to take place to make room for my modern appliances and vintage cabinetry.  Things she would have just shook her head at.  We refloored the entire attic to secure the area where our heating/ac unit will go, and as we did I couldn't help but tell Stephen again about when Granpa was in the attic and fell through to the kitchen.  There were always pans in the attic to catch the water from the leaking roof.  When I asked my uncle why the landowners didn't just fix the roof for them, all he would say was, "they  just didn't."  The just didn't.  The landowners didn't add a bathroom until 1964.  I asked my mother why the landowners waited so long to add a bathroom.  Other people in the rural area where we are had bathrooms.  The technology for indoor plumbing had existed for decades.  All Mom's friends had indoor plumbing.  Which is why I was so confused as to why they didn't have an indoor bathroom until 1964.  "We just didn't," she said.  They just didn't.  It seems to me that if you have a family which you have provided shelter for in return for working, planting, and harvesting your land of which they must pay you a percentage, the least you could do is give them a bathroom especially when they are raising 6 children in the house.  My mother used the restroom outside until her senior year in high school.  They all bathed in a big tub in the kitchen -- until 1964.  Our country had figured out how to put humans in space by 1961, but the landowners here hadn't figured out their sharecroppers and their 6 children needed an indoor bathroom until 1964.  Brilliant.  When I explained it to my mother in that way, she felt my anger.  To me there is no worse insult then to dehumanize a family in such a way that forces them to take their children outside to use the toilet 4 seasons a year.  I knew my grandparents.  They were 2 of the  most hard working people I knew - up with the sun and working the entire time.  They were good people -- they were kind and giving, generous and loving -- they deserved a flipping bathroom.  They deserved insulated walls and a roof that didn't leak.  They deserved to be able to pick out their own wallpaper and kitchen vinyl.  They deserved to be treated better.  --  I never heard her complain one single time.  Not once.  Each day, we fix something, and many times we will say aloud, "I wonder why they never did that for her?"  They just didn't....but we will.