In the kitchen of my grandparents' house (my dad's parents), a blue and white tiled chimney rose up from the basement, through the kitchen, and up through the second and third floors of the house. There wasn't a fireplace in that house, but the chimney was somehow connected to the oil-burning furnace (originally heated by chunks of coal which were delivered through a little trap-door in the basement).
During cold winter days in New York, that chimney was a source of heat that warmed up the kitchen even more than Grandma's oven. My grandfather's German Shepherd dog Major would lay next to the chimney on the coldest of days, leaving the cold floor of his sleeping spot in the back pantry in favor of the warm floor next to the chimney. Major somehow knew not to leave that space by the side of the warm chimney... if he did, he would be banished back to the pantry and would have to make do with the cold air coming in from around the back door.
In front of that chimney sat a step-stool. In the 1940s, it was brand-new, the best that the local hardware store had to offer. The stool's two steps folded up underneath a square-shaped seat that was covered in a white pattern of vinyl. If someone had to change a light-bulb or hang up curtains, the stool would be moved from its spot, the steps folded out and ready for the chore at hand. When the work was done, the stool was put back in front of the chimney. There were two pantries adjacent to that kitchen, both of which were about the size of a 9' x 12' room. Plenty of space in either pantry to store that step-stool, but Grandma preferred to have it by the chimney, which was right next to the oven.
In the 1950s and 1960s, all of the grandchildren would use that stool as a desk... folding down the two steps, sitting on the top step with their legs underneath the seat of the stool. It was perfect as a child-sized writing desk. Great for small games or coloring books, a private table for a snack. As each child grew too tall to sit on the steps of that stool, the next grandchild in line would have it all to themselves most of the time, having to share it with only one other cousin at a time.
Every aunt and uncle would sit on top of the stool, talking to Grandma as she cooked. No matter what was cooking on the stove-top or in the oven, whoever was sitting on that stool had the best view of the process, and the first taste of whatever Grandma was cooking. If Grandma had tomato sauce cooking (we called it 'gravy' then) whoever was sitting on the stool got the heel of the Italian bread dipped into the gravy and sprinkled with grated cheese. Grandma would watch us tasting the gravy-covered bread and she would say "Good, eh?"
When I was three years old, I sat at that little stool while Grandma was making dough for homemade ravioli. To keep me out of her way, Grandma gave me a round circle of dough and a small rolling pin, telling me to "Make something." I remember rolling out the dough, trying to get it to cover the entire top square of that stool. I watched Grandma rolling out her own massive rectangle of dough on the kitchen table, cutting it into squares for the ravioli, and I wanted to do the same thing. I asked Grandma for a knife, so I could make straight lines in the dough, as she was doing. Busy with the ravioli, Grandma gave me what she thought was a butter knife, but I found out quickly that the knife had sharp teeth at one end....... and I had sliced through the vinyl cover of the stool within seconds.
As I looked at the seat cover, the small split opened up like an eye.... when it finally stopped moving, the scar was about two inches long and half an inch wide. I put the knife down on the stool and called my grandmother. She was not happy... not because of the cut in the vinyl, but because she had been careless in handing me a knife that could have cut my fingers. Grandma made 'the sign of the cross' and thanked God that I hadn't cut off my finger. "The stool, she can be replaced... but there's only one of you, and you still have ten fingers, thank God." Grandma would repeat that story to all of my aunts and uncles over the years.
My Aunt Dolly had bought that stool for Grandma's kitchen..... they needed a step-stool for reaching the higher cabinets, for changing light-bulbs, changing curtains. Aunt Dolly had no idea that the little stool would become such a beloved icon in Grandma's kitchen. We all called it "the best seat in the house" because it was near the oven, near Grandma, and it was the warmest place to sit on cold winter days.
Everyone in the family, at one time or another, used that stool as their favorite spot to sit while in the kitchen. My grandfather would sit on the stool waiting for the coffee to perk in the morning... he would get up an hour before Grandma and the coffee would be ready and waiting for her when she came down the stairs. When my dad took a hair-cutting course in the 1960s, nearly everyone in the family sat on that stool so he could get extra practice by trimming our hair. Uncle Mino would sit there and read The Daily News while my grandmother made his lunch. When I was a teenager, I sat on that stool reading library books or studying for a test at school. Aunt Dolly used the stool when she wrote out a grocery list. Aunt Edie sat there countless times after she had polished her fingernails, letting her hands rest on her lap as she waited for the nail polish to dry. And Aunt Jaye would sit on that little stool, take one long look at my dad, and tell him that if he came within two feet of her hair with the scissors, she would take a bread knife and cut off his arm.
In the 1970s, the legs of the stool became loose from all the folding and un-folding of the two little steps. My dad found new screw-type bolts with larger nuts to make it more secure. It was harder to fold and un-fold the steps, but at least the stool was sturdy enough for yet another generation of grandchildren. During the decade of the '70s, Aunt Dolly had Grandma's kitchen chairs re-covered with new green vinyl. When all the chairs were covered and there was vinyl left over, she decided to cover the top of the little stool. The cut I had made with the knife was always there for everyone to see, and now it had disappeared under the new vinyl. Without exception, as the rest of the family came into the house and noticed the green vinyl on the kitchen chairs, they would look towards the chimney at the stool. "Look at the stool... the sliced spot that Larrie made is covered up now."
In the 1980s, the legs of the kitchen stool were still sturdy enough to hold an adult, but the fold-up steps just didn't work correctly anymore. New screws and bolts couldn't fix the steps because the metal holes had spread wider over so many years of adjusting and tightening and no one trusted the steps as a seat for a grandchild or as a step-up for an adult to reach the top shelf of the cabinets. My dad used heavy wire to tie the fold-up steps to the four legs of the stool, making sure that the stool could only be used as a seat.
The 1990s came, and Grandma's kitchen stool still sat in front of the chimney. Grandma and Grandpa had passed away in the 1970s.... the dog Major had long since died...... all of the cousins I grew up with in the 1950s were adults then, with children of their own. We still gathered at Grandma's house, where Aunt Dolly did all of the cooking and baking.... and whoever happened to be sitting on the little stool got the first taste of the gravy-soaked bread sprinkled with grated cheese.
As we got into the early 2000s, the family decided that Aunt Dolly shouldn't be living alone in that great big house. The neighborhood had changed, the neighbors that she had known for decades had all moved away... everyone agreed that before she got 'too old,' she needed to be in a safer place. Aunt Dolly was about 92 at that time. Before one of my cousins moved her to Florida, Aunt Dolly called everyone in the family to ask them what they would like to have from Grandma's house. She had already decided what she would need in her new rooms in cousin S's home, and the rest would be sold. But before anything was "sold to strangers," she wanted everyone in the family to pick what they would like for their own homes.
We had a lake house at the time... a small cottage-type house sitting next to Lake Livingston in Texas. My husband and I would drive up there on weekends, taking the cats and our dog Gracie with us. I furnished that little house by shopping at estate and yard sales, flea markets and resale shops, and I was happy with the shabby-chic/casual decor of our little get-away-from-Houston home. When Aunt Dolly called to ask me what I wanted from Grandma's house, I told her that I could use the rattan porch set at the lake house..... a sofa and two chairs that had been purchased in the 1930s and looked as new as the day it was first delivered to Grandma's enclosed front porch.
I called a NY moving company to arrange having the porch furniture picked up in NY and delivered to Texas. When the movers got there, Aunt Dolly called me and said the men were wrapping up the set with "yards and yards of bubble-wrap and brown paper." She seemed pleased with the careful packing of the old furniture. Before we ended the phone call, my aunt asked me if I wanted the kitchen stool. (I didn't even ask for that because I was certain that it had already been claimed.) Aunt Dolly said that no one had asked for the stool, no one wanted it.... "Everyone loved that stool when they were little.... now they're all grown up and they don't even talk about it anymore." Before I could give Aunt Dolly my answer, she was talking to the movers, asking them if they had room on their truck for one more thing. When she came back to the phone, I told my aunt that I would love to have the stool.... and the movers wrapped it up in bubble-wrap and brown paper, and I could hear Aunt Dolly telling them "Be careful with that... there's sixty years' worth of memories in that little stool."
I kept Grandma's step-stool in the kitchen of the lake house... it seemed to "go" there, along with the shabby-chic look of everything else. I put Grandma's sofa in one of the guest rooms, and the two rattan chairs sat by the fireplace in the living room. When we sold the lake house, in preparation for moving from Houston to the Hill Country, Grandma's porch furniture went into the TV room of our Houston house, and the little stool was put on the screened-in back porch. My cat AngelBoy would sit on the seat of that stool for hours, looking out at the birds and squirrels in the yard. When he got tired of the view, he would curl up on the seat and go to sleep.
As I type this story, that little stool is downstairs in my kitchen. When we moved to this house, the green vinyl on the seat of the stool matched the green tiles on the kitchen floor.... the same pattern in my kitchen tiles can be found on the kitchen floor of my grandmother's house. (We didn't install the kitchen tiles here... they were chosen by the previous owners.... just another happy little coincidence with this house.)
I was talking to Aunt Dolly one day after we had settled into this home, and she asked me where I had placed Grandma's porch furniture... I told her that the sofa was in the guest cottage and the chairs were in our TV room for now, but I had plans to move the two chairs to the third floor when we turned that space into a library. Aunt Dolly seemed pleased with that, but not pleased that I had removed the plastic slip-covers from all of the cushions. I told her that the plastic slip-covers were too city-ish for this part of Texas. I resisted the urge to tell my aunt that plastic slip-covers had gone out of style after Eisenhower.
"And where did you put the stool?" my aunt wanted to know. I told her it was in the kitchen, right at the end of the island which sat in the center of the room. I told her that I sit on Grandma's stool sometimes when I have breakfast, and when I'm looking through a cookbook. When I told her that the green vinyl matched the tiles on the floor, she said that the stool was meant to be right where it is. Aunt Dolly asked me if I remembered making the little slit on the top of the stool's original white vinyl.... and I told her that yes, I did remember. Aunt Dolly said that for years and years, everyone in the family would run their fingers along that cut in the vinyl and remind Grandma that "Larrie did that when she was about two or three years old."
When I got off the phone that day, I turned the stool upside down and found that there were rusty staples holding the green vinyl in place.... I got a screwdriver to pry up the middle of the staples, and then used a pair of pliers to pull up the old staples. When I took away the square of green vinyl, the white vinyl was underneath, and there was the two-inch slit on the right-hand side of the stool. After all those years, with everyone sitting on top of that stool, the slit in that vinyl never opened up any more than its original length and width.
I cleaned the white vinyl, and tried to polish up the silver metal of the legs on that stool. The heavy wire that my dad used to secure the two little steps was still there, holding firmly to the legs. I ran my fingers over the slit in the white vinyl, hoping that I would feel the essence of my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins... everyone in my family had touched that same cut in the white vinyl over the years.
I keep a small embroidered tablecloth over the seat of that step-stool now.... not to cover the white vinyl but to hide the silver legs of the stool which, after all these years, have darkened with age. In my mind's eye, I can see a snow-white vinyl-topped stool with mirror-bright chrome legs... and there's a dark-haired little girl sitting on the fold-down steps, rolling out dough and trying to make ravioli like Grandma.
