More From the Tholozan Kitchen

After writing about Hepp the Electrician, I was reminded of other kitchen-related events.

Shortly after we moved from Winona to Tholozan, baby Brian encountered something he never

had to deal with on Winona, steps. The kitchen, in the back of the house, had steps that led

up to two bedrooms on the second floor. There were about four steps that led to a narrow

landing and then made a 90-degree turn and went up about another 8 steps.

Baby Brian had mastered going up the steps quicker than he did the downward route. One

evening the inevitable happened. The good news, as they say, was that he only fell down the

last four steps. The poor baby cried all evening, and if my memory is correct, he actually had a concussion.

My bedroom was quite large and had a dormer window. Diane's was smaller and had a

regular sized and shaped window. For some reason, when Grandma Hilda came to live with

us, she and Diane shared the smaller room. Grandma, who never complained much when

she was awake, repeatedly moaned, "Oh my buckel," several times a night. We asked her

what it meant and she closed her eyes and laugh, "It means, oh, my back."

Diane and I used the last four steps for a resting place for items that needed to be taken up

stairs. Mainly clean clothes, books and junk. Why we just didn't take them up, I don't

know.

My art class was assigned to make a sketch, linoleum cutting and mosaic from a single

design. I used a simple madonna and child. We were given a few months to complete the

whole assignment and I remember sitting at the top of the stairs, smashing up tiles with a

small hammer and then gluing them into the pattern. While I worked, I listened to WIL radio, and sometimes, if I really got into the music, I would hit my index finger instead of the tiles.

The all-time greatest event that took place in that stairwell occurred while I was working

on the mosaic. It was early fall and we had the huge window fan that had traveled with us

from Lafayette to Winona to Tholozan going full tilt in Diane's bedroom. I was whacking

away and my apendages, and I suppose the noise of the music and tile-smashing became

too much for my Mother. She called up, "I'm going to close this door for awhile."

When she closed the door the ceiling over the four last steps collapsed, I suppose from

there being a vacuum created due to the lack of air supply and the window fan. It scared

the bejebbers out of all of us. I was so surprised, I jumped up and at least 100 tiny pieces of

tile fell to the bottom of the stairs, right into the rubble on the landing.

After that, we were careful to never recreate the circumstances that would cause the

ceiling to fall down. In fact, whenever we would turn our attack fan on at our house in

Blue Springs, I'm careful to call out, "Open a window."

Dad was a procrastinator, and several days, then weeks, went by and the rubble stayed on

the landing. Diane and I perfected a way to go up from the fourth step and around the landing,

at a 90 degree angle to the fifth step. Of course, going down in the morning required us to

take a leap of faith from the last step at the bottom to the fourth step at the top of the

little landing.

This would be the end of this passage, but it occurred to me that in writing about the

kitchen I used the word linoleum twice and I have rarely used it that many times in such

a short distance between usages.

Hepp the Electrician

The kitchen on Tholozan was huge and had beautiful black and white tile around the sink and

counters. Unfortunately, it also had black and white square linoleum on the huge floor. At

some point it was discovered that some of the wiring in the kitchen needed work. Enter

Hepp the Electrician. He was a friend of Dad's but I'm not sure how they knew each other.

In addition to fixing the electrical stuff, he was also going to redo the floors, change the

cabinets, grout the tiles and get new counter tops. I was reminded of this when we were at

Sally's and she was going to the bathroom to get cooking water. John was putting in a new

sink and fixing the dishwasher, which he accomplished in a few hours.

Unfortunately, Hepp the Electrician was not so speedy. He also tore out the plumbing before

starting the other revamping. I mainly remember this because we had to get cooking water

from the bathroom. And do the dishes in the bathroom sink. And every time you wanted a

glass of water, the bathroom sink.

Soon the parents engaged in conversations that were variations on a theme: Mom would ask

dad, "When is he going to be done?" Dad would reply, "I don't know." "Could you ask him?" Then Dad would ask Hepp, "How's it going?" And Hepp would say, "It's getting there" or "Almost ready to put the plumbing in" or "Any day now."

In addition to being a very slow and meticulous worker, he also spoke very slowly and

his stories were quite long and drawn out. So if we had to pass through the kitchen for

any reason, we didn't want to ignore him, but on the other had we didn't want to spend the

next half hour listening to him. Every minute spent in conversation, and I use the term

loosely, was another minute not being used to get our sink back in service. We had to

develop the knack of whisking through the kitchen, saying hello, and then whisk right

out again.

I'm not sure exactly how long the renovation took, but I do remember coming home from school and if Hepp wasn't laying down with his head under the sink, I thought maybe he had taken a sick day. Eventually, just as with daVinci, Hepp a true artist in his own right, finished

the kitchen. For a while I think we actually missed him.

Legion of Decency

Several years ago, I told Sally about the Legion of Decency's ratings for Catholic movie goers.

Tonight, after seeing "Doubt" on demand, she wondered what rating it would have. In addition

to holding a priest in a precarious position, but also, the big controversy about having

"a secular' song in the Christmas program. On top of that, the secular song, if it was "Frosty,

the Snowman," would also "conjure" up the whole magic hat thing.

I told her about how even "Miracle on 34th Street" was given a "B" (objectionable, in part,

for all) because it "accepted the possibility of divorce." This always gave us a hoot: not

only was a divorce objectionable, but even the possibility of divorce was not considered valid,

if you were a Catholic.

I remember looking at a list of "Condemned" movies and thought the most tantalizing of

them was "I am a Camera." When I saw it on TCM years ago, with Julie Harris as Sally Bowles, I was impressed in how not salacious it was. In fact, it was "I am a Camera," or some other book or film by John Van Druten or Christopher Isherwood, that was the basis of "Cabaret."

The Legend of Decency's weekly movie ratings was the only thing I read in the Friday

issues of The Catholic Review. Ah, how lovely it was to have the Church tell me everything

I needed to do, and of course, what to steer away from. If only life now could be that

uncomplicated. But then again, no.

The Party's Over

As Grandma Santa used to say late in the day, on January first, "Festa Fini" - announcing to

everyone still at her house that the holiday season was over. She had been feeding and

entertaining all our relatives for about one month, and was ready for the whole season of

love and peace to be packed away for another year.

We spent today at the young Whitaker's house and had a great time. The food was good,

the relatives were fairly sane.

I am trying to write something of value, but somehow, I can't remember anything of

worth and I keep awake to do it. Love to all