table-model radio in one corner, which I remember hearing only once: in 1932 on the
occasion of the nomination of Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Democrats’ candidate for
the presidency.. How long the radio had been there I have no idea, but I do know that
it was the only one in the house and perhaps the adults reserved it for their privileged
use. The other furnishings were hard-looking and uninviting and they remain as
black and white photos in my mind’s album. The fact is, I didn’t see the room often,
that being the formal space, the “parlor," reserved for the young adults’ parties and
for special occasions, like wakes, as was the custom of the day.
Adjoining the front room, separated by sliding doors, was another large room
which undoubtedly had been designed as a less formal sitting room. Ma and Jeanette
had converted it into their joint bedroom after Ma’s husband, Will, decided to move
to another town to make his living. Opposite that room was the large, elegantly
furnished dining room. A glass china closet held stacks of dinnerware and a
mahogany buffet displayed gleaming silver pitchers, trays, etc. and cut glassware.
Dining in that room was reserved for special occasions like Christmas, when I was
always tickled to see the little individual salt dishes and spoons at each place.
The kitchen, where most of the meals were taken, and a cluttered pantry
completed the first floor. A big black coal-burning cooking stove dominated the
room.. Visible on a wall was the terminal of a speaking tube that at one time had been
used for communicating with some upstairs room. The usual route between the
kitchen and the second floor was an enclosed staircase which the kids were expected
to use rather than the “front steps." I must have clattered up and down those back
steps repeatedly for I frequently flew down them in my dreams!
On the second floor there were three spacious bedrooms. My father and
mother and I occupied one, for a couple years George and his family another, and for
a time the third was rented out. Grandpap slept in one of two smaller rooms. My
father in later years chose the solitude of the second small room. The bathroom, of
course, was on that floor.
In the unfinished cellar there was a gray, wet-smelling laundry room, which
exited into the back yard where the clothes were hung to dry, weather permitting. The
next room housed an immense (so it seemed to me) furnace and a coal bin that was
filled through an outside window. There was one small room that I was scared to go
in. I was told that long ago the servants slept there in the wooden bunks that one
could see just inside the doorway. I imagined the servants’ ghosts were still in that
windowless, lightless room.
The house outside was enhanced by a high-roofed front porch which ran the
length of the facade and partially along one side. In my vociferous, hyperactive toddler
years, I would run from one end of the porch to the other, making as much noise as
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