My Life in the Little Brown House, part 11: Dining Room and Parlor

Though the family income was adequate for keeping the family well clothed, housed and fed (aided by the supplementary facets of garden, chicken, cow, etc.) there wasn’t much left over for discretionary purposes. One purchase that my mother did make however was a set of china, sort of intermediate in quality between the everyday dishes and her best dishes (the latter were plain white with some gold edging, and the cups were rather small and dainty and distinctive in shape). It was sort of a black and orange (or yellow) floral design and I think it was referred to as the chrysanthemum design. The plates were not round but edged with a combination of short and long straight-line segments (slightly rounded where the segments joined). She bought this set from one of the local stores — I almost wonder if it wasn’t some sort of promotional deal for some sort of merchandise. After she got them, grandmother and her household also purchased a set of the same design, motivated I think by my mother’s purchase. I always had the feeling that my mother was more receptive to new ideas and things than were the members of my grandmother’s household.

Beyond the dining room to the east was the parlor — seldom if ever referred to as the living room. It was not a room that received as much use as the others rooms of the house. For the children any play or activity there would be much more decorous than in the kitchen or sunroom for example. The furniture consisted of the “library” table which occupied a place in the southeast corner of the room, a couple of large rocking chairs (again with the seat of some leather or leather-like material), perhaps some of the extra chairs from the dining room table set. For awhile the piano was along the north wall of the room before it was moved to the erstwhile bedroom in the northwest corner of the house. After the family purchased a radio, it was placed in the southwest corner of the parlor. This purchase was made in 1929, not a particularly auspicious time for such an out-of-the-ordinary expenditure. I recall my mother commenting that 1929 was an unusual year for expenditures — the birth of Marold (at the hospital, differing from all the other children), the radio and last of all, the Essex.

I remember the folks tried out several radios before settling on the Majestic floor model they finally chose. One they tried out was a smaller one that would sit on a table with the speaker above it. The unit that was provided for demonstration developed some difficulty and the set grew hot and emitted a peculiar burnt odor. I can well recall it when this occurred; it was in the sun room, on a temporary perch on my mother’s sewing machine. I actually have little recollection of listening to the radio very much at all in the little brown house; it was not until the move to the farm that it really began to occupy a significant niche in the daily activities of the family.

























1929 Majestic radio

Both the dining room and parlor had rugs on the floor (not wall-to-wall carpeting). These were taken outside during “spring cleaning” to be laid on the ground and beaten with [the] carpet beater to remove the year’s accumulation of dust and grime. The rest of the year they were subjected to a weekly cleaning with the carpet sweeper. My parents did have a vacuum cleaner (it stood in the cloak closet in the entry to the parlor from the front door) but sometime in its history the motor had burned out and I don’t recall ever seeing it used. Both the parlor and dining room windows were curtained by the ubiquitous lace-like curtains typical of the period in Gowrie.

There was no door between the dining room and parlor. There was a large open passageway flanked on either side by another higher open area beyond two large pillars. On the parlor side adjacent the passageway on both sides were two bookcases with ornamental glass doors in front of the shelves. The bookcase on the south contained various children’s books and others that I don’t recall now. The children’s books were a compilation that my parents had purchased all together to provide for their children’s reading — I don’t really know if the Gowrie library was functional or existent when they bought them. Included were such books as A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, Heidi and Pinocchio.

The other bookcase contained, amongst other books, two multi-volume sets of large books. One set was an encyclopedia which I remember using for reference material in my schoolwork. The other was a set entitled Ridpath’s History of the World. This too received some use, from me at least, but mostly for looking at the pictures, some pretty lurid and gory. I’m quite sure that both these large sets of books has been purchased by my father and I suspect they were form his bachelor days — perhaps even from his days in the teaching profession. Then there was also a scattering of novels — for example the book She by H. Rider Haggard was there. I don’t recall reading it though or other books of that character.