Nora Hoffman Macbeth: 52 Ancestors 2021 Prompt “In the Kitchen”

Grandma’s Kitchen: Home to African Violets, a Metal Formica Table and the Heart of the Family

Nora Elsie Hoffman Macbeth: 1899-1994

 

            As soon as I read this prompt, I immediately thought of my grandmother’s kitchen. Some of my best childhood memories took place in that tiny room. The room was home to a thousand different household functions—I don’t know how my grandmother managed to do so much in that cramped space.

            Grandma’s kitchen had scarcely any wall space—the L-shaped room had a stunning six doorways—the main door out to the porch and farmyard, the door to the stairway leading to the second floor, the door to the basement, the door to the huge pantry, the door to the living room, and lastly, the door to an enclosed porch we called the “sunporch”. The remaining space featured wall-mounted coat hooks by the door next to an old white porcelain sink surrounded by white metal cabinets, a stove on the tiny wall between the basement and the upstairs doors, and the refrigerator wedged between the pantry and the living room doors. The kitchen table was pressed up against the wall opposite the stove.

The tiny corner by the living room door contained a turntable console with a row of books on top, and table linens stored beneath instead of records. A black dial telephone was mounted on the wall above, along with a wall calendar from a local bank. All my grandmother had to do was drag a chair over from the kitchen table so she could sit and talk comfortably. She had three sisters and a sister-in-law plus her daughter (my mother), and she loved to talk to them all for hours.

            When she had to iron clothes, Grandma would drag out a large, folding ironing board from a cubby on the back wall of the basement steps, and would open it to stand in the space between the living room door and the kitchen table. It would block traffic to and from the living room, forcing people to go through the sunporch to get to the back of the house.

            My grandmother was a lover of gardening, and hated the long winter months when her garden was frozen under a blanket of snow. To satisfy her craving for plants, she grew pots of African violets. My grandfather, who loved to craft things with wood, built her a series of shelves along the window that looked out on the sunporch, each shelf screwed into the window frame. Her violets lived there, carefully tended, watered and fertilized—studded with blossoms of deep purple, purple and white stripes, lavender, violet, and pink.

Violets, tile trim and Last Supper bas relief

            It’s odd what the brain remembers and what it forgets. Until I examined this photo of Grandma’s kitchen from 1963, I had forgotten some details. I hadn’t remember the tile border around the room that separated the two paint shades on the walls. I’d forgotten the bas relief of the Last Supper mounted on the wall above the table. And I’d forgotten what the table and chairs looked like, with their curved silver metal legs, the oval black-and-gold-flecked white formica table-top with the metal edge, and the plastic upholstered chair cushions—I think they were charcoal and white.

Clockwise, Nora Macbeth, her sister Sadie and husband Fred Seltenreich, sister Mart Seltenreich, sister Jennie and Delbert Edwards, and sister-in-law Mildred Hoffman (also Delbert's sister), 1963. Photo taken by Nora's husband Ivan.

            My favorite childhood memories involved Grandma’s huge pantry. It provided storage for food, spices and the usual pantry goods, but also Grandma’s pots, pans, dishes and silverware. Tucked in drawers and cupboards were towels, tablecloths, napkins and potholders, most featuring hand embroidered decorations my grandmother added.

            The best feature of the room, however, was the large workspace under a window that looked out onto the screened porch that ran the length of the back side of the house. The space was made for mixing and kneading bread dough, for the house was built in a time long before the advent of supermarkets and sliced mass-market bread. My grandmother inherited the house and the pantry from her mother-in-law, Lucy Macbeth, and, just like Lucy, she made her own bread for many years until she started complaining of “rheumatism”, which was probably osteoarthritis in her shoulders from heavy, repetitive labor like kneading bread dough, making lye soap, and washing and wringing clothes with a crank washer.

            Below the workspace was a tilt-out drawer where the huge 50 pound sacks of flour were kept—that was how people bought flour in those days, contained in fabric sacks. Fabric was expensive, so the flour sacks, which occasionally featured floral prints as well as solid colors, were repurposed into dresses, blouses, and aprons. I remember my excitement as a child when Grandma let me tilt open the drawer and use the red plastic measuring cup inside to measure out the flour we needed for a baking project. I had a special apron to wear at Grandma’s too—an over-the-head smock style similar to her own. I learned how to make yeast dough from her, punching down dough as I gazed out the pantry window through the screened porch at the chicken house and the garage.

            I also remember Grandma’s cookie jar, shaped like a lamb, painted a soft brown color with pink trim, and the words on the lamb’s tummy “For good little lambs only.” No matter whether I was a good lamb or not, the jar always held cookies. Usually they were homemade peanut butter cookies, a special favorite of my grandpa’s, or a molasses spice cookie. Occasionally, there were store-bought cookies like Fig Newtons or vanilla sandwich cookies.

            Grandma didn’t have a dining room, so all the family meals were eaten at the kitchen table. I graduated from an old wooden highchair to a real chair—at first with Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogs stacked on the seat so I could reach the table. Grandma was a good cook, so I always looked forward to eating there. We drove to their house—thirty miles from our farm-- at least a two or three Sundays every month, so Sunday dinner at Grandma’s was a tradition.

            The kitchen table was also used to play games—Chinese Checkers, Sorry, and a variety of card games. Often the adults played card games too complex for children, so my brother and I would play with a set of toy farm animals and equipment that were stored in another niche on the basement stairs. The kitchen was also a source of entertainment—a radio sat on one of the shelves—I think it was on one over the stove—and music and farm commodities news would be playing.

            My Grandma’s kitchen was the center of her home. Looking back, I realize that the kitchen, like Grandma, was filled with a sense of love and purpose. Nora, like her kitchen, was a woman of many talents who stepped up to do whatever needed to be done.