30 - Sunday, January 26, 1992 - North Shore News

Moving further from the heart of the house

REMEMBER WARMING-ovens? Great for the dinner-
plates. We put all the heels from the loaves in there too, to
make instant crumbs for the pork chops. A few passes
with the Black and White whiskey bottle that was mother’s
rolling-pin — a cinch. Oh of course, the empty one.

Eleanor

All egg-shells ended up in there
too and were reduced to powder
in the same fashion. The chickens
thus had their feed empowered
with the calcium they’d originally
contributed. Some recycling
system.

This stove of which the warm-
ing-oven was an extension was ac-
tually the heart of the house. We
gravitated to it after school, to
warm our chilblains on the oven
door or put a kettle on for cocoa
or just hang around with mother,
whose territory it was.

She’d be ironing, maybe, using
the patented tandle that let her
lift the hot sad iron off the stove
after depositing the cooled one.
The ironing board would be
balanced between sink and kitchen
table. Always a little uphill.

If she’d done the wash, earlier,
we’d have had rice pudding for
lunch because the copper boiler
needed a roaring fire to keep it
going and so did rice pudding.
Ergo, as somebody used to say.

I hated wash-day lunch, mother
distracted, emerging intermittently
from her steamy gloom, cranky
from leaning over the wash-tub
muscling our stuff against the
glass ribbing of the scrub-board.

Our first washing-machine
came out of the Chinese laundry
on George Street, and had three
great cups that plunged pur-
posefully, going slosh-glop,
stosh-glop as long as you kept
pumping the handle on the side.
The water for the thing still had
to be heated in the great boiler,
and lugged out to the back porch
to be dumped.

Winter-time, bringing the wash
in from the outside line was like a
wrestling match with a billboard.
Long-johns, sheets, tabie-cloths
frozen stiff, and then when you
brought them in they soon began
to go limp and fog up the place —

THE VINTAGE YEARS

we seemed always to be slightiy
clammy.

The other side of all this physi-
cal angst was that no one had to
carry a key. The house was never
locked. We lived on the boundary
road between city and district, and
were actually on the far edge of
settlement, yet we were never
disturbed by intruders.

To be home alone of an evening
was great fun — you could read
undisturbed, make a pan of
fudge, eat the whole thing. I’d
walk home from a dance alone at
two in the morning not turning a
hair.

When we went skiing, en
famille, of a Sunday, we skiied
off the back porch, my mother
and I clad in calf-length skirts
and heavy Eaton’s sweater-coats.

If evenings offered any freedom
after dishes and homework, we
might be allowed to listen to
Amos and Andy, or ‘‘jelio-
again.’? What was his name? Jack
Benny. Radio reception was only
possible for us in the winter

uring the winter months our North Shore
News carriers deliver the paper after dark
on Wednesdays and Fridays.

You can assist our carriers by leaving your out-

side light on for them.

THE VONCE OF NORTH AND WEST VANCOUVER

DISTRIBUTION
986-1337

months and after dark. We did a
lot of reading.

We listened a lot, too, to our
elders and other authorities. In
fact, we were never encouraged to
voice our views and experiences as
it was assumed that we couldn't
possibly have any.

We heard our parents talk
about polio and tuberculosis but
the word ‘‘cancer’’ never crossed
their lips. People thus afflicted
were said to be ‘‘not at all well.”
Similarly, no one was ever
described as ‘‘pregnant’? — such
were referred to as being ‘‘in an
interesting condition.”

All this rummaging around in
my murky adolescence is the result
of having just purchased a fax
machine. That one can transmit
the written word half across the
world in the time it would have
taken in my girlhood to crank up
the telephone operator and have
her in turn crank up the grocery
store half a mile away is reason to
marvel.

The microwave oven hots up
my lunch muffin in seconds. The
entire house is warmed by nudging
a dial, The dishes are washed and
dried without need of dishpan or
towel. The oven cleans itself in
secret and the washing never
freezes to the clothesline. The
television in the living-room, the
new transplanted heart of the
house, has no compunction about
what it sees and hears.

' nee ys

1 go nowhere alone at night.

Your childhood was perhaps
not as primitive as mine, but
nonetheless you will share this oc-
casional feeling of being alien, of
masquerading, of occupying a
temporary tinie-warp.

Actually, we're pretty wonder-

ful inasmuch as weathering it is
concerned. Why, in the grocery
line-up the other day no one
would guess 1 was having an at-
tack of the vapors at the headline
of the magazine rack offering ad-
vice on ‘“‘How to maximize your
orgasms.’°

DR. L. WAYNE HALSTROM .

is pleased to announce that

DR. ALFRED Y. WONG ...

is now joining our dental practice

at EASTERN HOUSE

#202-126 East 5th St.
North Vancouver

980-5405

(Located in Central Lonsdale)
NEW PATIENTS WELCOME

FOSHSRSENN ES 987-4458"

A Proud member of The Northshore [Kingsway Auio Fanily