What Is It?

It's not a Hoosier cabinet and there are no upper doors. We bought it in the early 1980s in an antique store. I don't know what it is but wonder if it might have been used in a cafe. The working space is a porcelain top, and the metal base has a small drawer and a door that drops down to hold all my cookie sheets and muffin tins. Two metal shelves are attached to the top. Here is a picture of it:

It's impossible for us to get a full-on picture of this cabinet as it sits in a narrow space meant to be the refrigerator nook when we built the new kitchen. When the refrigerator sat properly in its nook, this cabinet sat beside it, acting somewhat as a room divider between the family room and kitchen. The one photograph I could find of the area at that time shows my sweet mother with her hand on this cabinet, my sister Teresa by it, and our sister Jenn sitting on the sofa arm. (Sorry Jenn, but you're still beautiful even with your eyes closed!)

Then the refrigerator quit on us and I fell for a large one with the freezer on the bottom. No more stooping to find forgotten food in the bottom of the refrigerator. I love it but it did not fit in the nook so it swapped places with the antique cabinet.

It holds my yellow mixer and the old black scales that R.H. used to weight grass seed at the garden center he and his brother owned back in the 1970s. Before that it was used for years in my father's garden center and was an antique even then. It is accurate, had to be since a nice man from the state came around regularly back then to make sure it was.

A few special cookbooks are on the metal shelves including one from my mother, a 1951 copy of Stove Pilot, recipes from Maxwell Air Force Base wives, where my parents were once stationed. This little cookbook gives the impression that a good Air Force wife knew that the way to help advance her husband's career was to keep him well fed, to entertain brilliantly, and flatter his commanding officer....and their daughters and granddaughters probably became the feminists of the 1970s. Think of that!

Alongside is another book, not a cookbook but a perfect green color, a 1952 children's book by Leonard Wisgard called The Clean Pig. Sure, E.B. White's Charlotte is some pig but the clean pig is special too. If you ever have a messy house and need a little motivation to clean, just read The Clean Pig and you'll be up and at 'em. Could possibly even change the habits of a messy child.

Please notice the old photographs of two handsome men on the cabinet. On the top shelf is a photograph of my grandfather, a butcher by trade in South Carolina. On the lower shelf is a photograph of my father, a grill master. He and my mother put mouthwatering meals on the plates of family and friends for nearly 60 years. I like being reminded of the grandfather I never knew and of my father who must either be cooking or gardening in heaven, or maybe telling one of his good stories.

So there it is, an old kitchen cabinet, not a Hoosier. What in the world is it?