Fifty-two Summers
In an old beach house in the northeast U.S. on July 4th, I faced a kitchen full of hungry kids. Two were mine, the rest were their cousins—a sunburned, salty crew with no shoes, fresh from a full day at the beach. The dinner hour had come and I knew they would probably kill me if I didn't feed them soon.
I had packed provisions, because God help you if you don't. But the granola bars and drink boxes were long gone from our day at the beach. As I surveyed the kitchen, I saw at once that my dinner plan was doomed. There was no working grill. No toaster. And the only oven was a decaying Hotpoint probably dating back to when Eisenhower was president, when there were only 48 U.S. states.
The kitchen was frozen in time. I was making dinner in 1958.
Before the Pre-Internet Age
Picture it: a kitchen that was created and then never updated. It had somehow escaped almost every modern innovation, from the electric can opener to the microwave. All around were relics—dilapidated things that you'd find in a museum.
There was an ancient fire extinguisher, made by a company called Badger in Methuen, MA, that read: "DRY FOG, patents pending." In a drawer, there were spotted aluminum measuring spoons with almost illegible markings. The Hotpoint oven, however, was the real gem. It was a cartoonish silver, like the robot from the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still." You could spin its dial and specify the desired number of "HOURS TO COOK." (Who spends hours cooking these days?) The inside was blackened, bringing to mind the Looney Tunes episode in which Bugs Bunny detonates a bomb inside an oven.
I suddenly needed to know how old these things were, and the Internet was no help, even with serial numbers. The closest thing to the fire extinguisher that I could find online was on a site called oldfirestuff.com, which sold vintage fire helmets, badges, and other memorabilia, including an undated Badger dry chemical fire extinguisher, "unusual design, original condition," that was offered for $75. No luck with the Hotpoint oven, either, since—as an appliance-dating website told me—it was far too old for the Internet to care: "Products made before the mid-1970's are unlikely to be able to be dated using this service."
What I Made
So what can you cook in such a place? I rifled through some cabinets, found a nonstick pan, and fired up the stove (an electric Magic Chef of indeterminate age.) Grilled cheeses all around. Carrot sticks and sliced strawberries on the side. Meanwhile, the oven actually worked. It heated right up, and cooked a frozen pizza to perfection. Nary a complaint from the kids.
In fact, the oven worked a little too well. Hours after dinner, when the kids were in bed, I opened the oven, just to be sure it was off. It wasn't. The coil was still on, and plenty hot. Its off switch evidently wasn't working, so in order to shut it down, I had to go to the electrical panel and kill the power to the entire kitchen.
I've since learned that the house was built in 1960, and I confirmed that it hasn't been updated since then. So I was pretty close in guessing 1958.
This is where we cooked before the spread of planned obsolescence. It was a simpler time, when cocktail parties featured potted shrimp pate, mushroom strudels and deviled ham. It was just after our country had added Alaska and Hawaii as states, a couple of years before a young chef named Julia Child made her TV debut. That beach house's kitchen was old, but the fact is, it worked fine.
And now I wonder: why do we update? What do we truly need?
I had packed provisions, because God help you if you don't. But the granola bars and drink boxes were long gone from our day at the beach. As I surveyed the kitchen, I saw at once that my dinner plan was doomed. There was no working grill. No toaster. And the only oven was a decaying Hotpoint probably dating back to when Eisenhower was president, when there were only 48 U.S. states.
The kitchen was frozen in time. I was making dinner in 1958.
Before the Pre-Internet Age
Picture it: a kitchen that was created and then never updated. It had somehow escaped almost every modern innovation, from the electric can opener to the microwave. All around were relics—dilapidated things that you'd find in a museum.
There was an ancient fire extinguisher, made by a company called Badger in Methuen, MA, that read: "DRY FOG, patents pending." In a drawer, there were spotted aluminum measuring spoons with almost illegible markings. The Hotpoint oven, however, was the real gem. It was a cartoonish silver, like the robot from the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still." You could spin its dial and specify the desired number of "HOURS TO COOK." (Who spends hours cooking these days?) The inside was blackened, bringing to mind the Looney Tunes episode in which Bugs Bunny detonates a bomb inside an oven.
I suddenly needed to know how old these things were, and the Internet was no help, even with serial numbers. The closest thing to the fire extinguisher that I could find online was on a site called oldfirestuff.com, which sold vintage fire helmets, badges, and other memorabilia, including an undated Badger dry chemical fire extinguisher, "unusual design, original condition," that was offered for $75. No luck with the Hotpoint oven, either, since—as an appliance-dating website told me—it was far too old for the Internet to care: "Products made before the mid-1970's are unlikely to be able to be dated using this service."
What I Made
So what can you cook in such a place? I rifled through some cabinets, found a nonstick pan, and fired up the stove (an electric Magic Chef of indeterminate age.) Grilled cheeses all around. Carrot sticks and sliced strawberries on the side. Meanwhile, the oven actually worked. It heated right up, and cooked a frozen pizza to perfection. Nary a complaint from the kids.
In fact, the oven worked a little too well. Hours after dinner, when the kids were in bed, I opened the oven, just to be sure it was off. It wasn't. The coil was still on, and plenty hot. Its off switch evidently wasn't working, so in order to shut it down, I had to go to the electrical panel and kill the power to the entire kitchen.
I've since learned that the house was built in 1960, and I confirmed that it hasn't been updated since then. So I was pretty close in guessing 1958.
This is where we cooked before the spread of planned obsolescence. It was a simpler time, when cocktail parties featured potted shrimp pate, mushroom strudels and deviled ham. It was just after our country had added Alaska and Hawaii as states, a couple of years before a young chef named Julia Child made her TV debut. That beach house's kitchen was old, but the fact is, it worked fine.
And now I wonder: why do we update? What do we truly need?
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