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Week 5: In the Kitchen – The Place Everyone Hung Out

This is my fourth year working on this year-long 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

I don’t have a lot of photos taken in the kitchen, but that was where everyone in our family hung out. It was a big room, with a cooktop island in the center. A large table to hold eight people on one side and knotty pine cabinets on the other side. Here is the kitchen side. We were celebrating a birthday. A banner can be partially seen hanging above the island. The countertops were red Formica, the stove was electric, and we had a portable dishwasher in the center.

The dining side had vinyl wallpaper with white bricks. Lots of doodads hung on the walls. I think a lot of these items were found by my mother at antique and junk stores. You can see the café curtains hanging in the corner windows.

These shots were taken in 1979 as we celebrated my brother, Steve’s birthday. Our house was painted olive green and white and the door to the kitchen from outside had paned windows at top and a country look on the bottom.

Here is a shot of my mother in the kitchen side preparing hors d’oeuvres. Although the snacks were placed in the living room to snack on, people just gravitated to the kitchen. Maybe it was the odors of great cooking. Maybe it was because it was brighter with the white wallpaper than the knotty pine walls of the living room. Likely it was because that’s where Mom was hanging out preparing the food.

Later, my parents moved across the street because the state purchased their property to widen the freeway. This kitchen still had the 40s look as when it was built. There were white cabinets with red trim.

I wish I had more photos of our kitchen. We tended to take more photos of each other in the living room.


Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.

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