The Old and The Old

When I was a kid I lived in the same house in the same neighborhood until I married; my dad worked for the same company until he retired and my mom was the homemaker, proud that her husband didn't want her to "work."

In all that time the furniture was rooted in the same spot,  the appliances never wore out and if a saucepan wore thin and developed a pin hole, you mended it; replacing it wasn't considered --you made do. It wasn't a case of thrift as much as custom--and  there were no house and garden magazines encouraging consumerism.

My mother had no interest in owning a refrigerator and we kept an ice box on the back porch. We were the last family to get a fridge and the only reason we got one then was mom's best friend moved out of the province and sold hers to mom. As a kid I remember the good thing about a fridge is that the jello sets quickly; with an ice box it takes much longer.

We augmented the ice box with a cooler, an ordinary cupboard  with some screened vent holes built against an outside wall,. We lived in Vancouver so the weather never got extraordinarily hot or cold and we used the cooler year-round.

Wringer washers were a fact of life and the laundry dried outside on the line and that might take days in Vancouver weather. Our wash day was Monday and it was an all-day affair, or it seemed that way to me when I was small.
Mom attended the wringer washer and the hired girl hung the wash out on the line that stretched from our back porch to the post at the very back of the garden.
When the wash came in,  the pull-down  ironing board in the kitchen came into play

This is a roundabout way of telling you about my fascination with my pal Vee who is a throwback to those times.

She is not affected by house and garden magazines or punchy consumer ads; she lives contentedly in her own time warp.

Vee and her husband built their house in 1962 and nothing has changed since they moved in. Same furniture in the same place, same wallpaper, same stove.
I haven't checked the washing machine and furnace.

The furniture is family pieces. I play bridge there and come to think of it I've never actually sat in that room.

We play bridge on the dining room table--yep, the same dining room table she has always had.

She does have a television set--just one, in the living room. I asked her once if she would consider getting a set for her bedroom and she looked at me as if I were nuts--Two televisions? What ever for?





I am fascinated with her stove. It was state-of-the-art when bought for the new house; for several years two burners weren't working and just recently she had them repaired.
If they couldn't have been fixed she would have carried on without them.That's an oven above the elements, not a microwave.



One of her daughter's slept in this room.
The lovely quilt was made by an aunt and there are many others folded away in old fashioned hump-back trunks.



Vee comes from local German stock and it was the custom, around here at least, to have an above-ground basement complete with living room with wood-burning fireplace, full kitchen and dining room. That's where the large visiting family members were entertained and by her description the meals were hearty.

After her husband died some twenty-odd years ago she swept out the fireplace and never used it again or the kitchen, and the furniture is gone from there.It wasn't as much sentiment as they shared the tasks and her practical side decided she didn't want to take on the full load herself.

She is a constant reminder to me of how far we have strayed from the habits and arrangements our parents established.

I doubt that Vee has ever thrown away any family items and eventually her daughters are going to have a problem sorting through that collection.

No matter--she thoroughly enjoys her home and her life on your own terms and may the stove elements last another twenty years.