Comments on: Guest Post: What Do Children Notice About Other People’s Houses?

By: The Other Clark

The Other Clark — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 19:07:35 +0000

Milking a cow one-handed. That’s a feat worth commemorating!

While reading the comments, I’ve taken a mental tour of my grandparents homes. Because my parents moved frequently in my childhood, my grandparents’ homes in some ways were more familiar and homey than my own. One smelled of minty muscle cream and bag balm; the other of dried fruit and fresh-baked bread. Ah the memories. It’s like Whittier going “Out to Old Aunt Mary’s”

By: charlene

charlene — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 17:58:29 +0000

Amy,

I inherited the shaving stand…a memorable but unstable and less than useful piece of furniture.

By: Amy T

Amy T — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 01:34:36 +0000

Happy birthday to Edie! What a delightful and affectionate portrait, Tracy. Charlene -- it's so curious how we remember certain things like the shaving stand, or the drinking glass, and these things can be such a persistent part of our memories. I will confess that I wrote this post to memorialize the Pymms, but I am really enjoying all the beautiful and intriguing memories being shared here. Kate Thurston's portrait of the Pymms ended up being one of the most memorable passages of her book. I've added the Pymms' obituaries to their Findagrave entries: Seth Austin Pymm and Eliza Dent Pymm. Eliza's said, "Aunt Eliza as she was affectionately termed was a good woman and a devout Latter-day Saint. She was of a kindly nature and very charitable. Her deeds will live after her." Her obituary and Seth's are both very generous, but not as meaningful as Kate Thurston's story which really brings the two to life.

By: charlene

charlene — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 18:03:59 +0000

At my grandparents’ house, I remember the coal stove in the kitchen. They didn’t get a gas stove until the 60s. I also recall my grandfather’s shaving stand in the bathroom. A four-foot tall, one-square foot platform with his leather razor-sharpening strap hanging on a nail. Grandma always had a glass sitting on the kitchen sink and would drink water frequently when she happened to be passing by. I think about Grandma when I drink from the glass on my cupboard.

My best friend’s house was dark, quiet, orderly, and smelled of face cream. There were two children in the family and a semi-invalid mother. In my identical house lived seven children and a lot more chaos.

By: Tracy Taylor

Tracy Taylor — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 16:31:45 +0000

The transplant of my mother’s family from Provo, Utah to southern California was completed in 1939 after her father, Fred Larsen, died unexpectedly from an infection caused by a cat bite. Mom’s older brother and sister had moved from Utah to California years earlier and so my widowed grandmother sold the Provo house, and she and Mom moved in with Mom’s older sister, Edith, in Southgate, California. Because my paternal grandparents lived in Massachusetts and Grandma Larsen had died by the time my sisters and I had arrived in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Aunt Edie became the “grandma” figure in our lives.

Her home was where we had most of our family holiday gatherings. And, yes, her 1930s home did have a unique fragrance. It often smelled of homemade crescent rolls rising or roses just picked. There was another smell, too, that our new tract home didn’t have. To me it smelled like heaven.

Built into the wall next to the back door was a small metal box with a door on the outside and one on the inside. The milkman left the bottled milk and sometimes butter in the box. We left notes to Edie. Everything in her house was pink, including a buffet that Dad built for her with scalloped trim. Her carpet was green with large pink roses, procured for her by her son-in-law who was a mortician and had access to special floor coverings. She had ruffled chintz curtains covered with roses that she had made herself and her green sofa had long twisted fringe along the bottom. Her dining table was small until she folded it out and added several leaves to seat our entire family. I usually sat on the piano bench at the end of the table.

I don’t recall any toys at her house, but who needed them? She had a shelf in the kitchen that held such things as a china hound dog whose head sat independently on the neck and bobbed when you touched it. There was a very small hollowed out wooden pig with a cork for a nose and eyes and ears that were small, wiggly pegs. If we were lucky, my cousin would catch a fly and carefully put it through the uncorked nose, quickly re-corking it with the fly inside. The angry fly would buzz around inside the pig, making the eyes and ears wiggle furiously. We didn’t think it was cruel because if we had left the fly cruising around Edie’s house, it wouldn’t have been long before she slapped him dead with the fly swatter that hung on the knob on the ironing board cabinet.

There is lots more to say about Edie’s house, including the cedar chest, from which came a silky nightgown I got to wear once when I unexpectedly got to spend the night and the long hanging doorbell chimes that I liked to clank against each other since I was forbidden to ring the bell more than once a visit. Suffice it to say that we had none of these exciting and exotic devices or accessories in our own home.

Today is Edie’s birthday, June 14, Flag Day. She would have been 101 today. I miss her as much as I do my own mother. What a wonderful aunt-turned-grandma we had!

By: Grant

Grant — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 03:33:04 +0000

I remember visiting my Great-Grandparents’ house on Quincy Avenue in Ogden – one of those brick houses with the brick half-walled porch. My Great-Grandmother had little porcelain figurines of a Dutch boy and girl kissing (if you placed them close enough). She would take them down from the shelf to show me and say that the little boy was me and the little blond girl with a blue cap was my girlfriend. I never found that little girl. But considering that my Great-Grandmother’s Mother was named Gertruida ter Bruggen (1859-1910), born in Amsterdam, Holland, I think it was maybe one of those connections across generations.

By: Last Lemming

Last Lemming — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 02:32:49 +0000

Here’s a link to a story on the “old person smell” study.

http://gizmodo.com/5914450/old-people-smell-confirms-science

By: Amy T

Amy T — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 21:12:33 +0000

That’s such a touching story, Bessie.

Oh, smells can be so evocative, Vader. I read recently that old people smell different than younger people, but homes are probably another thing altogether.

That’s funny about the ice cream and soap and tin can lids, Bruce!

Ardis, thanks for the note about how views can change about these childhood impressions.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:49:03 +0000

I think I know what you mean, Vader. I think the smell in my older relatives’ [clean] homes came from their using older types of cleaning products and toiletries, and an abundance of leather over plastic. Everything in my house was lemon and pine and peppermint; everything in theirs was wax and shoe polish and camphor and old-lady-hair-products.

By: Bessie

Bessie — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:33:03 +0000

I always loved my Grandma Emily Frazier’s house in Woodruff, Utah. She had a long red linoleum covered counter in her kitchen. And there was a little metal woodpecker with a sharp beak that picked up a toothpick if you needed one that sat on the windowsill over her sink. I couldn’t reach it, but I looked at it a lot. Grandma loved me and welcomed our family when we came to live with her and grandpa in 1949. I can almost feel the warmth of that kitchen sixty-two years later. I remember the shelf in the kitchen where her radio sat. It was up high on the wall and every Sunday morning she listened to the Sunday Morning broadcast from Salt Lake. Grandma helped me memorize the first talk I ever gave in Sunday School. And that was in front of everybody. We practiced and practiced there in her kitchen, and I could give it without the paper. On the Sunday I stood up behind the railing in the Woodruff Chapel to give my talk they let me take the paper–just in case. I stood there with the sun streaming through those old windows onto me, put my head down, pulled out the paper, and read every word. I didn’t look up once, she loved me anyway. And I love remembering her and her kitchen.