Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Kitchen Table Folks

Sometimes my mind starts to wander.  Often times these days it goes skipping on down Memory Lane.  This evening the memories were about kitchen tables.

When I was a kid my Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Em were our only relatives who lived close by.  This was a time long before cell phones, when people went visiting instead of texting.  The kids would play games outdoors and the grown-ups would visit.  My aunt and uncle had a nice living room in their house.  My parents had a nice living room in their house.  But the place they all sat to talk to one another was at the kitchen table.

My Grandma in northern Minnesota had a kitchen table next to the only window in her kitchen.  When we went to visit her, we sat around the kitchen table while she cooked on her big wood burning kitchen stove.  Often we would sit there peeling carrots or shelling peas for her.  She could always find a glass of milk, fresh from the cow, and a cookie or two for a granddaughter to consume at that table.

Mother's friends would stop in now and then.  It wasn't unusual to find two or three neighbor ladies sitting at our kitchen table, drinking coffee and catching up on the neighborhood gossip.  And when Mother and her sisters gathered around the kitchen table, there was always a lot of laughter and a lot more "Remember when..."

When I had a home of my own, life seemed to revolve around the kitchen table.  Friends would sit there for a game of cards.  Others might bring their kids over to play with mine, and there were always coffee and cookies or cake or donuts to go with good conversation at the kitchen table.  Homework was done at the kitchen table.  Letters to relatives were written there.  Pictures were drawn by children, books were read while drinking countless cups of coffee and checkbooks were balanced - all at the kitchen table.

I am not a fancy person.  I am much more comfortable with a mug of coffee at the kitchen table than I am sitting in a living room chair trying to balance a cup and saucer on my knee.  I suppose that comes from having a long line of kitchen table folks in my family history.  So should you ever drop in for a visit, don't expect tea in china cups.  With saucers.  You will, however, usually find cookies in the cookie jar and will always find a steaming mug of coffee.  In my world, it doesn't get much better than that.

12 comments:

  1. My parents and grandparents had dining rooms next to the kitchen, and that's where we usually sat with company. As with your family, there was usually something to drink and a treat of some kind. About the only time we were in the living room was when we were watching TV, which wasn't so often on a farm, at least during daylight hours.

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  2. Gorges...If there were more than 5 or 6 people present, the dining room table was used. Living rooms weren't used much in my family, either. Most everyone liked sitting around a table, I guess. :)

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  3. Oh I can remember being at both grandmas homes the adults in the kitchen drinking coffee too, laughing talking and such. These days our kitchen table isn't used for any of that. When we eat everyone goes someplace else in the house to eat. My grandma had a small black and white tv in her kitchen. We would eat dinner and watch the evening news.

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  4. My family always ate at the kitchen table. Until Dad brought home a TV. And TV trays (remember those?) For a while we ate supper in the living room while watching TV. After a while the novelty wore off and we were back at the kitchen table. :)

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  5. Thank you, BW...what a nice thing to say!

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  6. I remember visiting my dad's side of the family up in Rush City out on the farm. Big old wood burner in the kitchen. My uncle took me out on my first snowmobile ride. Would have been sometime between 1966 to 1971. Now that I think about it everytime we visited other family up north it was always in the kitchen for coffee. Even my aunts house in Blaine it was coffee in the kitchen. I remember a friend telling me when the price of coffee at Perkins went up folks blew a gasket.(His dad was COO) Now days they don't even think about what they spend on "coffee" at Starbucks and the rest of the coffee houses. Scott says at MP, they have two big brew pots going all day for folks. The deli is always full of folks getting together to eat, drink coffee, and talk. Much like the pub's of old.

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  7. Rob...Those are some good memories. I don't know about other places, but here in MN it seems that most conversations, whether among friends or relatives, are usually held over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. I think that's a pretty good tradition to hang on to.

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  8. Love this post, warm and fuzzy like a big hug. Great memories to have.

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  9. Jenn...Thanks. The world we now live in seems to have gone completely bat guano crazy. Sometimes it is good to take a look over our shoulders and think about what life was like before we lost our collective minds. You and BW do the same thing, you know. Your photos are great reminders of a more gentle time.

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  10. Love your writing. It brings to life that world. I can almost smell the cookies.
    I was the youngest by a decade or more and enjoyed a home that my mom designed and my parents built. Mom built a galley style kitchen which was quite novel in the 60s. She didn't want the table you described. She would often say she didn't want kids under foot. But she designed one whole side of the galley kitchen as a snack bar. So my memory is mom sitting on 'her' side of the snack bar drinking coffee and me and any friends on stools on the other side.
    She also designed her living room so that it was 'kick off your shoes' comfortable. Unlike the stuffy living rooms of my friends' parents, our living room was where we hung out, played games and sat by the fire. No tv allowed. Just books and games and music. Thanks for the memories! SJ in Vancouver

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  11. Thank you, SJ, for the kind words. One house I lived in had a galley kitchen, but next to that was a room that held the kitchen table and the wood stove. I think my favorite house (we moved a lot) was the big, old, rattletrap of a farmhouse. That one had a "breakfast nook" in one corner of the kitchen, complete with a kitchen table.

    I remember the era of the snack bar. I was always jealous of friends who had them because I thought it would be just so cool to sit on stools instead of chairs. One of the things I liked about my youngest son's houses, both the old one and the new one, is that both had/have the kitchen island with stools. I think they are more used today for food preparation than for meals or serious coffee drinking.

    I have always liked houses that were "kick off your shoes" comfortable. It seemed to me that those who had the more formal living areas had them more to impress others than to live in. I think maybe we both had really good, down to earth places to grow up. I know that my little Home Sweet Apartment will never, ever be featured in one of those decorating magazines, but it is comfy for me and I like it. Guess that's what matters, isn't it. :)

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