I find inspiration in glancing through old photos from time to time. Digital life affords us the ability to do this easily. Here I am four years ago flying a Piper Archer III out of KPWK in Chicago. That was a fun airplane to fly.
Mid-Century.
A napkin holder exactly like this one sat on my grandparents’ kitchen table for decades. Even when the mid century style dining room table was replaced by a monstrosity my grandfather built (it could fold and expand and had inserts labeled with compass directions for proper orientation), the napkin holder exactly like this one lived on until my grandmother’s passing in 1996. I don’t know what happened to it after that.
I find a certain comfort in little trinkets and objects like this, especially those with a Mid Century flair. I mentioned last week that I was looking for drink glasses from the period that I remember in Grandma Country’s kitchen. They arrived earlier this week and I’m happy to add the glasses to my collection.
My interest in this time period is not only inspired by memories of my childhood but also because there was some pretty cool designs going on. While commercial buildings of the time are quite boring, I really liked mid century residential designs. When we were in Palm Springs a couple of months ago I could help but marvel at all the wonderful architecture.
While my grandparents’ custom designed was is pretty conservative in it’s mid century design, there are plenty of elements that lean the home in that direction. I love the use of slate and brick and the angles of the lines. My grandfather had a customer of the family contracting business design the home for him in the mid 1950s so the customer could pay off his bill. There were adjustments all the way; the kitchen was relocated so my grandmother could look out a window facing the front of the house when she washed dishes. She liked watching the trains pass by behind the hay field across the street. Because of this redesign the dining room was made smaller. My husband never liked the dining room. He thought it was too small, and honestly, it was more of a pass through area getting from the kitchen to the main living space. He didn’t like the kitchen off by itself. There were pocket doors scattered about. And the aforementioned slate and stone and brick. Built in 1959 it was a charming house.
After the kitchen and dining room were renovated into some dark wood colonial motif (that I absolutely hated), the only place one could find the speckled linoleum of the dining room floor was in the hall linen closet. The slate floor was reserved for the head end of the living room. The colonial linoleum that replaced the speckled original floor always seemed liked it shouted its presence. The dark cabinets that replaced were so very heavy in stature.
The house was sold after my grandfather died to a man that turned it into a hunting camp. I have the numbers from the in-wall kitchen clock that had stopped working sometime in the early 1990s. I might have to put them in a wall here in our home in the desert. It’d be a nice tribute to my fondness for Gram and Gramp’s home.
No Angst.
I read about the childhood of LBGTQ friends and the struggles they went through, some of them absolutely horrific, and I count my blessings for my life. Either I was incredibly fortunate or blissfully naive, but I never felt too much of a struggle getting through childhood. I sometimes wonder if my parents shielded me from the rougher parts; I know they were both quite protective in some ways. There were some normal rules about what we could watch on TV and what movies I could go to as a teenager and the like. My sister was more of a rebel than I ever was. I was content in my own little world, whether it was exploring the woods behind the family house, pretending I had cash registers and computers in my bedroom, or roller skating around the basement before my Dad started building airplanes down there.
My childhood is neatly and distinctly divided in half with our living arrangement at the time: my first 9.25 years was spent in a 10×50 mobile home with an 8×40 addition my father built. The second 9.25 years were spent in a colonial four bedroom home built in a hay lot across the street from the aforementioned mobile home. When I left for college I moved out of my parents’ home and never moved back in. No regrets; they’d done a good enough job that I was able to sustain myself after failing out of college the end of my freshman year. I remember musing to my father that I made have made a mistake along the way; taking a volunteer leave from the second largest computer company at the time and ending up working for a department store chain. It’s one of the only times he gave me advice of this nature and told me to never have regrets, I’m doing fine, I’ll figure it out. That meant a lot to me. My dad didn’t say a lot but when he did I listened, even though I know to this day that my sister was his favorite (and there’s no hard feelings about that).
When we lived in the 10×50 mobile home with 8×40 addition we couldn’t all sit at the kitchen table for dinner and opening the refrigerator at the same time. The appliances were a wild 1960s blue color. The living room, which was in the addition my dad built, had windows that looked into the original living room. It was normal to have a metal wall that was the original siding of the mobile home. In the coldest of Upstate New York winters the addition was heated by two tiny electric heaters embedded in the wall. We made due with crocheted booties and blanket made by Grandma City.
When I hear what my contemporaries went through, and how some of them went through so much physical and/or mental abuse for not fitting the portrait their family wanted them painted in, I feel sad and I want to give them a hug. Our experiences make us who we are as adults.
I’m fortunate that my experiences have been mostly positive. I wish our world was headed in a more positive direction.
Happy Endings.
ABC really did their audience when they cancelled “Happy Endings” after three seasons nearly 10 years ago. Earl and I still watch this show from time to time and I always find it an enjoyable experience.
Public.
Taken on Valentine’s Day three years ago. Remember when we used to do things like this in public? Good times.
Art Deco.
Public buildings built in the late 1930s and early 1940s are very interesting to me. I love the architecture. There’s a certain amount of comfort in these designs; the elementary school I attended was built in 1939 and had a distinct Art Deco flair in the design. There was an impressive staircase in the middle of the school. It linked the main entrance to the second floor, with ornate metal railings and a color scheme similar to that seen in the photo above. The stairway took folks to the second floor in a split design, arriving in front of the library. It felt so solid.
The library was filled with so much wood trim. The shelves and desks were sturdy. There was a room off one end of the library designated for the Board of Education meetings. The wood appointments were heavy and it always felt like important decisions were made there.
Public buildings built after World War II don’t really interest me. Design moved from impressive to functional. Cinder blocks were painted to look like a wall. There’s a lot of brick. No columns, no ornate railings, no heavy desks.
These pre-WWII buildings are bit more rare here in the desert southwest. If I find one I can’t photograph it; I might be mistaken for a terrorist or something. Things are weird in the 21st century.
Coincidence?
I just tried liking a tweet about the CIA on Twitter and this happened.
Coincidence? Big Brother is watching you. Always. Treat anything and everything you say on the Internet as if you just published it on the front page of the New York Times.
Style.
I have two of these glasses. From the mid 20th century, they are Libbey “Nordic” glasses. I believe Grandma Country bought them at Woolworths. I remember her finding another set of glasses on a shelf sometime in the mid 1970s and happy that she could expand her set.
The glasses originally came in the tumbler seen here, as well as a shorter juice or cocktail glass. I may have found a set online and that set may be on its way to our home.
Most would find them simple. I find them delightful.
Point of No Return.
I first heard this song on the “93Q Clubbeat”, which played Saturday nights on WNTQ when I was teenager. I was thinking of this specific version of this song the other day and realized that when it was released in 1985, we were closer in time to an Elvis track than today in 2022 is to this song in 1985.
Someone around here is getting old.
From 1985, here’s “Point of No Return” by Exposé, when the group had its original lineup (before the ladies we know as Exposé today). There’s something about this version that sounds quite nostalgic to me.
