Pieces of the American Dream

The women in my family prized their hutch cabinets, the lower cabinet for storage, the upper shelves for display.

According to my sources (aka Google), hutch cabinets date back to the Middle Ages!  Who knew?

I recently sold my late-18th-century hutch to newlyweds who loved it.  But for me, it didn't work.  The shelves spaced too close together for dinner plates was its main deficit.

The day after it left for its new home, I bought this one, much more to my liking: 

Before most families had built in kitchen cabinetry, there were many variations of hutches and china cabinets.  A modest farm house like my grandmother's (before they built the brick house in town) relied on various cabinets, built most often by the "menfolk" to serve specific cooking needs. 

Wealthier people had china cabinets in formal dining rooms, but for Mimi and Papa everything in my earliest memories happened in the kitchen.  Getting an actual dining room with a table to accommodate ten, along with a china cabinet for her blue dishes--was a big deal. 

Nostalgia drives us women of the 21st century to buy cast iron cookware, kitchen utensils, dishes and bowls that remind us of what our grandmothers were all too happy to replace with newer models. You can't shop for more than a few minutes in an antiques store or thrift shop without hearing someone say, "This is just like the one Grandma had!"  As children we weren't particularly interested in the furniture; what we remember are the dishes filled with delicious fried chicken (way tinier than chickens of today), butter beans seasoned with ham hock, mashed potatoes, coconut pies, and pound cakes topped with cream and strawberries.

What we are buying when we buy things "like Grandma's" are memories of the aromas and happy conversations around the table. No frozen meals, no microwaves, no eating at separate times, those years were homemade food, everyone eating together, three times every day. 

During the months our brick house was being built, mid-fifties, Bob and I traipsed all over Macon with our furniture-shopping parents, "bored to death" we probably said.   Like so many young couples a few years past the war, babies, and college, our parents were intent on creating a beautiful house in a pretty neighborhood.  They wanted proximity to other kids, safe streets, woods to wander in. 

Our house on Ann Street had a picture window, shutters, three bedrooms, flower beds, and  two bathrooms.    Our one car (rarely anyone we knew had two) was parked in the carport, usually a blue car, usually a Pontiac.

The American dream of the 1950s meant searching for hours to find the pieces that fleshed out the "homey" pictures in their imaginations. Flowery wall papers, modern appliances, pastel colors. The reward, for Bob and me, was s trip to Woolworth's (we each had a whole dollar to spend) and coke floats at the soda fountain.  

Hands down, Carlene's prize find was her long awaited cherry hutch. She can't recall how much they paid for it, but for some reason, $400 sticks in my mind--a seeming fortune in the mid-fifties. Papa gave us a dining table and chairs and soon we were able to afford a stereo and a few records.  

As we were talking about hutches yesterday, Carlene said, "I still think it's the prettiest piece of furniture in the house. I hope someday someone will enjoy it for another fifty years."