This year, for the first time in more than a decade, we had Thanksgiving dinner at someone else’s house. And, at least from what I could see, absolutely nothing went wrong. I would like to know how the hostess accomplished this, especially because she’s my mother, and isn’t she supposed to pass on that kind of wisdom?
As soon as we moved into our house, we began an annual tradition of hosting the Thanksgiving dinner. In a previous column, I mentioned some Special Features of our pre-remodel, circa 1968 kitchen. These included a tortuous traffic pattern, ugly floor tiles, and a “copper-tone” sink and venthood. I had particular fun defacing my “favorite” features prior to demolition (see helpful photo). But that first Thanksgiving, our remodel was still years away.
I was expecting 15 guests for dinner. In the course of my meal preparations, I learned something unexpected that was Special about our kitchen: The double oven interiors were only 19” wide. Try fitting a full-sized roasting pan that holds a 16-lb turkey into a 19” oven. This was why, the morning of Thanksgiving, I was waiting outside the grocery store when it opened, along with every shell-shocked hostess who learned at the 11th hour that Aunt Zelda was not only coming to dinner this year but bringing her entire mah jhongg club. Except I was there to buy an aluminum roasting pan that I could squish up accordion-style to fit in the oven. I understood then why the ovens were in such pristine condition: The previous owner had never used them. On the other hand, it is good for a family to develop its own holiday traditions, and the annual squishing of a disposable aluminum roasting pan became one of mine.
What made that first Thanksgiving truly special, however, was the electrical fire.
In the peninsula countertop, flush with the surface, there was an electrical outlet. Maybe you are saying, “That’s not up to code!” If so, you are correct. And you clearly know more about it than I did at the time.
The meal went smoothly (other than a tiny leak that developed in the squished aluminum pan and left a lake of gravy in the oven). As the evening ended, we were wedged, along with our guests, into the narrow pantry corridor that normally permitted only single-file passage (and then only if you could wrestle the pantry doors closed). This crowding occurred because of what I will call the “schooner in a bottle” rule, that is, the largest number of guests will always mass in the smallest, least navigable space. So, we were saying our goodbyes…and, no surprise, a drink was knocked over. The liquid spilled all over the peninsula countertop that bordered the passage…and some of it ran into the electrical outlet. (Did I mention, not up to code??) We didn’t notice. We were busy. We shut the front door behind our last guest, and breathed a sigh of relief that we’d made it through our first Thanksgiving in the house without major mishap.
And then, we heard a pop and a sizzle.
We rushed into the kitchen in time to see smoke rising from the outlet and sparks flying threateningly close to the ugly fluorescent light. I had to balance my desire to see that light melted beyond recognition with my desire to avoid a major fire. I think we had the presence of mind to find the breakers and shut off the one that controlled that outlet. The next morning, the electrician came—yes, this is not a fantasy…the day after Thanksgiving an electrician came to our house! He told us we were “very lucky.” He sealed off the outlet, and later moved it to a safer location.
Fast-forward a couple of years: It’s three days before Thanksgiving. I’m at the stove, waiting for the cranberries to simmer, when I hear a crack and a bang. I look around for the source of the sound. I see chunks of black glass in a pile on the floor. For no clear reason, the tempered glass door of one of the too-narrow ovens had shattered. There was a network of cracks in the door. The oven was not turned on. I was only glad that my toddler, who had been occupied industriously peeling the ugly tiles off the floor a moment earlier, was not underneath the oven at the time. So here was the dilemma. Of course, I hated those ovens because nothing fit inside them, but I could not install larger ovens without ripping out the entire wall of cabinets and the cooktop—in other words, not without remodeling. We were not yet ready for the full-scale job, particularly not three days before hosting Thanksgiving dinner.
I called the oven manufacturer. Once I had listened to the entire Carpenters oeuvre and reached a human, I was told that, sure, they could send me a new door, but not in time for Thanksgiving. So now I was down to a single 21” oven in which to cook the holiday meal. I don’t remember how I made that work—maybe by propping the turkey up diagonally across the pan of sweet potatoes? In the same phone call, I learned that the oven was no longer manufactured. Of course not. So I would have to choose from among the random replacement parts the company still happened to have lying around.
My ovens were black. The only door left in stock was white. And they only had one.
At what point, I wondered, does ugly become an aesthetic? Given that I was already living with the copper-tone décor, white fake brick floor, mahogany-stained cabinets, and yellowed box fluorescent fixture, the “zebra” ovens would fit in nicely. Of course it is just this kind of event that leads people to redo a kitchen before they’re ready. I don’t remember precisely what it was that finally triggered our decision to move forward with the remodel a few years later—the death of the hot water faucet; the failure of the glue I’d been applying to keep the floor tiles in place; the drawer front that fell off; the dishwasher that sounded like a jet engine; the leaky fridge—it may have been all of the above.
Right around now is where I should say something like, in spite of the problems that arose in the old kitchen, I feel nostalgic for that time when something was always breaking, and we were always adapting, but things always worked out, blah be de blah blah. But, frankly, I hated those ovens. I hated the narrow passage, the ugly floor and the loud dishwasher. My kids may miss pulling up those tiles to see what was underneath, but I don’t miss the old kitchen. Not one bit.
For more from Paula Whyman, see www.paulawhyman.com and her online parody newspaper www.bethesdaworldnews.com.
