The Cupboard

My Pop-Pop sitting by the cupboard. It sat in the dining room till the late 60’s when my great grandfather brought some antiques over to the farm. A gorgeous glass china hutch took its place.

It’s been a fixture at the farm since I was little…around four or five years old, I suspect. Grandma’s jelly cupboard came into my life by way of an auction. An auction at the old house two farms down from ours. The property Frank and Beans own. The day I met them on the front porch, they called out… “We’re your neighbors!” THAT property.

Grandma and Mom pulled me around in a little blue wagon. They bought me a hot dog for a nickel. And Grandma bought the cabinet for $5. That was a lot of money to her. She needed more room to store her dishes and this one was the perfect size.

It was covered with several coats of thick, white enamel paint. My Pop-Pop let me “help” him strip the paint off to reveal this beautiful golden oak beneath. I still remember what the paint looked like when the scraper pushed it into a rippled ribbon. I still can feel my Pop-Pop’s weather work-worn hands covering mine as we held the scraper together.

Pop-Pop painted the inside a garish orange color. I never liked it…but it has aged beautifully. Deep and rich…like an heirloom pumpkin or the bittersweet you sometimes see in the wood in late autumn. I always knew, if there was anything at all the I ever wanted from the farm, it was this cabinet.

I promised Frank and Beans that I would go through the photos that belonged to my mom and send any that were taken of the farm…the house and outbuildings and barn. The strawberry field and the old home place back on the hill. The nearly bare hills that are now thick with trees and underbrush. As I looked through the old black and white photos, there was grandma’s cabinet that now graces our living room…home to my collection of quilts.