A random memory

For a while--late Sixties, early Seventies--most everybody I knew had (and didn't have) the same stuff: no dishwashers, no microwaves, no disposals, dispensers, compactors, passports, or color TV.

None of my friends had housekeepers, yard men, king-sized beds, garages, or walk-in closets.  Or rooms named "master bedroom," "powder room," or "family room." Being unconventional was a point of pride.

Most of us had small, cramped kitchens with irregular lighting and mismatched appliances. Inside the window sills, something was always growing--green potato and avocado vines in iced tea glasses, alfalfa sprouts and homemade yogurt in quart jars, heavy brown bread dough rising in crockery bowls.

Slowly, people started getting things--a microwave here, a dishwasher there--and each acquisition was big news in the world of coupledom.   "Hey, we got a color TV!" our friends Robert and Ruth  called one day to announce. (This was shortly after we acquired a telephone, and we imagined that it must have cost "thousands of dollars.")

All married couples got fondue pots as wedding presents, but only one couple used theirs.  At their house, we sat around with chunks of hard bread and dipped them into melted cheeses with names I'd never heard of.

At a big Southern Living cooking show, my friend-at-the-time, Sherry,  (who'd bought me a ticket) introduced me to her friend-at-the-time this way:  "This is Linda.  The one I told you about who doesn't have a microwave, a television, an air conditioning or a dishwasher."

"Or an electric can opener or knife sharpener," I added helpfully, fleshing out my identity as one who hadn't yet caved to advertising.

I acquired a secret yearning for real furniture at some point--a hutch cabinet, a table with four matching chairs, a headboard--but those were deemed less important than motorcycles.  We had two 250cc motorcycles and a dog (which we'd sold our wedding silver to buy) and a baby on the way.

Then we met Peter and Rita.  Peter was a doctor and Rita and I taught at UTSA together.  They had granite counter tops and matching appliances and chairs and sofas from a furniture store; we had a tiny kitchen with zinnia wallpaper, a green refrigerator and a yellow stove in our rented cabin on the hill.  We had two director's chair, a make-shift sofa (a trundle bed actually) and pillows on the floor where our friends gathered to dine on chalupas and spaghetti, smoke Salem cigarettes and drink Lancer's Rose.

What really capped off the difference between my kitchen and Rita's were fat packages of deli sliced meat, an assortment of breads, and honeydew melons!  To me, Rita's kitchen looked like a stage set in a movie.

Our fridge was stocked with iced tea and Lone Star beer; Rita and Peter had about twenty bottles of wine for Pete's sake!  Nobody we knew had more than one bottle of wine at a time, if any.  For sandwiches, I used leftover roast beef or pimiento cheese on homemade seven-grain bread--while at Rita's, you could choose from several kinds of deli meat and cheese, pasta salad from a deli, along with olives, pesto, guacamole, and hummus, each in little plastic cartons.