Grandma's Hoosier Cabinet

After Lizette Elizabeth Alt Beavin's funeral in 1968, her family gathered at her house near the church in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin to clear out her possessions. Some of my relatives were expressing their passionate disagreement over what Grandma had left to whom. I was distressed and walked out back with my new husband to take a deep breath and try to calm myself.

Grandma's 1916 oak "Hoosier" lay in the ally. It had been dismantled and awaited large item pickup. At the time my husband and I were still in college, living in a small efficiency apartment in Naperville, Illinois. When we asked if we could rescue the Hoosier, we got a quizzical look. "What do you want with that old thing?! How will you get it to your apartment?!" we were asked.

We took the Hoosier to Illinois on the top of the 1955 Ford we had bought for $1. Now, more than 50 years later, Grandma's Hoosier has earned a place of honor in the history of our marriage.

In our Naperville efficiency apartment, the Hoosier was placed behind our hide-a-bed couch to make a small office where I could study before sunrise and husband could study well after the sun had set.

After my graduation, we moved to Dekalb, Illinois where I taught speech and drama on the fine arts team at Huntly Middle School, while my husband finished his degree. The Hoosier took up residence in our study as a desk and craft space.

We moved to Denver in 1970. Our little apartment in the old house on Pearl Street had a kitchen so small I could stand in the center and reach all its walls. The Hoosier was our only kitchen cabinet. I actually used the built-in flour and sugar bins, and I kneaded homemade bread dough on its pullout surface every Monday night.

Our first house, a Dutch colonial on Denver's Northside, had a dining room! The Hoosier became a china and linen cabinet. Our next house, a haunted 1911 Craftsman with Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired windows, had a country kitchen that welcomed the Hoosier which once again provided a perfect surface for baking prep and good storage for spices.

Today we live in an early 1970's condo on the Southeast side of town. Our all-season studio/sitting room/lanai is sunny and east-facing. The Hoosier rests neatly along the north concrete wall holding printmaking screens, woodblocks, and a variety of other "clean and dry" art supplies. Its white porcelain surface is nice for photographing small prints.

So we have disassembled and reassembled the Hoosier many times. It still has its penciled delivery instruction to my great grandfather, its meal plans for a young married woman in 1916, and a perpetual calendar with hearts and the initials of my Auntie Dorothy and her girlhood crush. My Hoosier is still beautiful.