When I was a kid, I spent hours imagining I was the keeper of a “store” in the farmhouse basement’s huge food storage room.
Since Mom’s passing in November, I’ve been straightening and cleaning at the farm, and last week my focus was the basement pantry.
To step through its threshold is to step through time.
Grandpa and his brothers built the brick house in the early 1950s. He built the storage room shelves with dimensional 2x10 planks of hardwood.
Grandma carefully covered them with pages from the 1948 Ladies Home Journal.
The fabric curtains she hung to protect the canned goods from light still hang from the original wire. A mouse or two have sampled the fabric, adding to the busy patterns Grandma preferred.
Seventy years have passed, and covered with dust, elements of the trendy design style called “farmhouse” fill the room. Here is a Red Wing crock. There, an egg basket. Over there, a copper ash bin and dozens of blue Kerr canning jars with glass lids.
And, of course, the shelves still boldly display Mom’s gleaming jars of red tomato sauce, green beans, pink canned meat and orange peaches.
As I straightened the pantry’s shelves and swept its floors, I recalled all the good things that came out of this room.
It was a happy day when Mom said we could have a jar of canned Bing cherries with dinner. My brother and sister and I would carefully count the pits to confirm we’d had equal servings.
A meal featuring Mom’s canned cubed beef with mashed potatoes and gravy came straight from heaven.
“Run down and get a jar of beans,” was a common instruction to one of us as Mom made supper.
I blink, and 50 years have passed. Hundreds of those jars now stand empty and dusty on Grandpa’s sturdy-built shelves.
A few dozen jars display Mom’s last harvest.
And I am a middle-aged lady with a broom and a dustpan, keeping a store in the farmhouse basement storage room.
