A time to remember

I think we've all had the discussion, "if your house was burning what would you try to save?"   For me it would be my grandmother's old Hoosier cabinet.   It sits in my kitchen where it has been for years, and   I still remember the day she gave it to me.  My 90 year old grandfather helped me carry it from their outbuilding where it had been awaiting a new home for years.  We got it into my car, and I brought it back from Kentucky to refinish and enjoy.

This old cabinet was never an expensive piece of furniture,  I am sure I paid more to have it refinished than it cost in the first place, but it has been around a long, long time.   It started its service  in my great grandmother's kitchen, and when she died it came to my grandmother's home to work some more.  The flour bin was always full, and my grandmother cranked the flour for her light, fluffy biscuts from it every morning.  It served as dish cabinet, canned food storage, and held its share of pots and pans.  Everyone who passed through grandma's kitchen went out of their way to walk by the cabinet because there was always a cake, pie or pan of biscuits waiting to be enjoyed.

My grandmother, being the self sufficient woman she was, grew a big garden every year.  By summers end her root cellar shelves would be lined with sparkling jars of green beans, tomatoes, corn, jam, jelly, pickles, beets....anything she could grow or swap with her friends to preserve.   Late summer she could always be found in the swing on the front porch...her apron full of green beans to "break". 

The unairconditioned kitchen would be hot and steamy from the huge pots of boiling water just waiting for the jars to be submerged.  All day long my grandmother would pluck the jars from their steaming bath and line them up to cool,  row after row filling the porcelain cabinet top on that old Hoosier.   She kept count of the "pings" as the jars cooled and sealed.  She hummed and whistled some tuneless song, and she worked and counted.   A smile would twitch at the corners of her mouth as those jars played their own little concert of sounds.

A lot of years have come and gone, and I am the third generation to have this cabinet.  A while back I decided to use grandma's receipe and try to do justice to the pepper relish she always canned.  I chop and I mix and I hum and whistle.   I line the jars up on that same porcelain counter top, and I listen for the "pings".  It is a comforting sound, a friendly ritual....and somehow it feels as if I'm doing the whole thing with my grandmother.   At the very least I know somehow she is proud of me for trying.  I hope one of my own children or grandchildren will want this cabinet when I'm done with it.   It has a lot of good years left in it.....and a lot of good memories behind it. 

The more things change, the more they stay the same......life is good.