07.02.18. The Old Kitchen

18. THE OLD KITCHEN

It was late when Todd arrived, but mother went immediately to the kitchen and built a fire in the old wood stove and cooked him the first warm meal he had eaten in a long time. The kitchen was just a large log room with one small window, and with a door leading out into the yard. An old fashioned safe stood in the corner, the kind that was made of tin with small air holes like nail holes, and in the center of the room stood a long home made table, for the room served for both dining room and kitchen and when company came large pallets were made on the floor and it became a bedroom also. There is no place about the home that so grips the heart of a boy as the kitchen and especially a boy like Todd, for his mother’s kitchen was free, the key that was made to lock the safe had been thrown away, and only a wooden button stood between her children and the things she had to eat.

"Far back in my musings, my thoughts have been cast, To the cot where the hours of my childhood were passed.

I loved all its rooms to the pantry and hall But that blessed old kitchen was dearer than all. Its chairs and its table, none plainer could be, But all its surroundings were sacred to me; From the nail in the ceiling to the latch on the door, I loved every knot in that old kitchen floor.

"But the dearest of memories I’ve laid up in store, Is the mother that trod that old kitchen floor Day in and day out from morning till night, Her footsteps were busy, her heart always light; And it seemed to me then, that she knew not a care, The smile was so gentle, her face used to wear, I remember with pleasure what joy filled our eyes, When she told us the stories that children so prize.

They were new every night, though we’d heard them beforeFrom her place in her chair on the old kitchen floor."