You also have some interesting comments on kitchens. I feel very strongly that people should design their kitchens for themselves, as opposed to thinking only of the resale value or, even worse, going with whatever is “hot.” A basic rule of physics is that whatever is hot will eventually cool, which is fine for soup that burns one’s lips, but rather detrimental for a kitchen remodeling that has cost forty thousand dollars or more!

I don’t share your enthusiasm for 1950s kitchens, but that’s just me. I will say, though, that I have seen some wonderful recreations of this period. In the end, though, it’s an aesthetic decision, which necessarily means that it cannot be right or wrong, just different for every person who considers it. Even so, I was particularly interested in what you had to say about kitchens as a whole and 1950s kitchens in particular.

I have done my own share of research on the Internet for my blog site and came across the Hoosier Kitchen some time ago. They absolutely fascinate me, as does that whole idea of modern kitchens. What you had to say about kitchens with cabinets coming into vogue in the 1950s was particularly interesting because we moved to Helena, Montana in 1950, and my father, who had once worked as a carpenter, did a lot of remodeling in that house.

The house itself had first been built in the 1880s, and whenever Dad took out a wall, we found square nails. Also, because of the period in which the house was built, it had a separate pantry that adjoined the kitchen. Tastes had changed by then, though, so Dad closed off the pantry to the kitchen, gave it a different entrance and made it into a sewing room for my mother. The kitchen was of a fair size, and had both base and wall cabinets. There was no dishwasher, of course, and the sink was a single-basin in the beginning. Later, Dad replaced it with a double-basin sink, and we all thought we’d died and gone to Heaven!

Thank you very much for sharing your observations on that long-ago time. You brought back a lot of memories of that old house and its kitchen and the man who first taught me how to use hand tools. I’m a cabinetmaker now, but whenever people praise anything I might be fortunate enough to make, I always think back to the Old Man. There’s a Jewish saying that sums it up: “If I see further than my father did, it’s because I should. I’m standing on his shoulders.”