-- BAY AREA STEW --
by
Juanita Callejas
by
Juanita Callejas
Juanita and daughter in Mama's kitchen (many years ago)
What is it with mintgreen kitchens? Especially mintgreen plastic-tiled kitchens with yellow countertops? The first house I can recall had that color combination, and the second house, AND the third… In 1956, the family moved from a railroad flat on a San Francisco hilltop to a hillside bungalow in Bernal Heights. The backyard contained two years of garbage-- the kitchen had mintgreen plastic-tiled walls and yellow countertops. When we were naughty Mama would send us to stand, arms outstretched, spread-eagled legs, hands on mintgreen walls. The coolness of the tiles would comfort our red-hot cheeks, and the walls would listen to our mousey squeaks. Over the years, hundreds of tiny fingers repeatedly traced the grooves in the mintgreen panels; monitored the little ants as they pant, pant, panted their way up through the indentations in the plastic tiles. Sometimes tears poured down the walls, hearing the arguments between Mama and Papa, Papa and daughter, Mama and daughter, parents and daughters, sister and sister… The day my Papa, inspired by a case of Lucky Lager beer, threw an iron at my Mama, she ducked; but the mintgreen walls were not so agile, and they bore a distinct memento of that altercation. Then there was the time that I refused to eat my sopa de albondigas. Mama shoveled the vomit back into my mouth, and sent me spinning back into the mintgreen walls, which awaited me with the anticipated embrace and the never-ending receptivity of countless years. In the late sixties, I bought a house in the suburbs of the City. I would walk up a forever hill, up thirteen steps, through a living room-dining room combination into a mintgreen kitchen with yellow countertops. It was unplanned. That was the color combination in the kitchen on the day we moved in. And although the walls were gypsum board and the countertops ceramic tile, the place was immediately familiar, the mood was eminently clear. My first child remarked that the kitchen was too small, BUT, it was the RIGHT color. Thirteen years later, we moved back to the City, to a different district, to a house with mintgreen plastic-tiled walls and yellow countertops. The following week, my husband tore down the tile, put up new gypsum walls, and painted them white. The following year, we replaced the yellow counters with virgin butcher block. No more mintgreen kitchens; no more yellow countertops. Photograph provided by author |
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