Mother, Laura Wiseman Johnson

Mabel, Walter, Laura, & Glenn Wiseman

Eighteen years old.

Baby sitting. Circa 1910.

With Laurrie & Patricia on McKinley Avenue. 1950

Mother’s Kitchen

         When I was in high school, Mother and Dad built a house. Dad, being a homebuilder, had built thousands of houses, but never before had there been one designed especially for his family. There were months of discussion about how many rooms were needed and how large they should be. The kitchen was the most important room. It was to have windows facing the street, so Mother could easily see what was happening on Lewiston Road and who was coming to visit.

         Mother’s kitchen was large. In addition to the kitchen table and chairs in the center of the room, there was a round blonde wood table next to a full length aqua couch where you could lay down and read the newspaper or talk on the phone; a wooden rocking chair, a black leather captain’s chair and, most important, Mother’s wooden desk. On the right hand side of the desk sat a hand operated adding machine that Mother used to keep track of expenses and income from rental properties owned by the Walter S. Johnson Building Company, Inc. As a young child, I had learned about numbers by practicing ordering canceled checks into numerical sequence. Mother liked to work at her desk while waiting for pies to bake in the oven. She was never one to waste time.

         Above the couch, where one might expect to find pictures or a bulletin board, was a large mirror that caused the kitchen to look even larger and brighter than it already was. The walls of Mother’s kitchen were light yellow, a warm sunshine color for the room that was definitely the core of our house.

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