American Suburban

Cast an eyeball at that crazy kitchen countertop. Doesn't it send you into orbit? Isn't it the most? Well, it probably was in 1960. This chrome-banded countertop was paired with the de rigueur pine cabinets in a house I saw Sunday afternoon. Morris & I enjoyed another afternoon of free entertainment exploring some of the open houses in town, and I wanted to share a few Sunday photos.

I also want to say Happy Anniversary to my pal Scott in Texas! He will quietly celebrate 7 years of sobriety today, and start working on his eighth year of living in gratitude & wonder. He's an artist with considerable talent, and you can see some of his work by clicking here. Thanks for being there, Scott!

Sunday was a beautiful autumn day, and I took the picture below outside the library that's around the corner from my home. A cold front came through with high winds Tuesday night, so a lot of the colorful leaves have been stripped off the trees, so I'm glad that Morris & I took advantage of the lovely day Sunday. We looked through ten homes in four hours!

Before we get to the few pictures I took while fake-househunting, let me tell you about Weird Pizza Night. On Mondays, I usually go to a meeting that I helped Jiffy start in Carytown, which is a stretch about a mile long of shops & restaurants in town. After the meeting, the two of us went to Mary Angela's, a casual little place that serves some of the best pizza in Richmond.

We were seated in a booth toward the back of the restaurant, and we noticed that we kept getting occasional but pervasive whiffs of something quite unpleasant - not a good thing in a dining establishment. It was the unmistakeable smell of good old-fashioned B.O.

And it was really, really strong. My first reaction was that of most people: OMG, is it ME? But Jiffy assured me that it wasn't, because she had just sat in a small meeting room with me for an hour. Through careful analysis, we came to the uneasy realization that it was one of the two servers. Ew! More evidence proved that it was both of the servers on duty that night. Ewwwww!

We were so happy when our pungent pizza arrived to fragrance our table. The pie had been baked on the surface of the sun, whisked to our table, and I (unaware) immediately scorched the roof of my mouth on the first bite. I hate burning my mouth, but in this case it did distract me somewhat from the wafting body odor of passing waitresses. Jiffy found another distraction...

I had noticed that whomever was seated in the booth behind us seemed restless. There was a rhythmic jostling I could feel at my back, because all the booths were attached, tabletops & seats, in a long line down the wall. I could also detect a heated discussion from the next booth, although I could only hear one side of the conversation. Soon, Jiffy was looking over my shoulder with a curious expression.

There seemed to be a pesky bit of crust stuck in my mouth, and as I worried it with my tongue, Jiffy whispered that the lone diner behind us was having an argument with her magazine. The page featured a full-face shot of some blond celebrity, and our neighbor was jabbing at the photo vehemently - that was the movement I sensed. It was a two-way conversation in our neighbor's head, however, because there would be pauses in her discourse as she listened to her glossy adversary.

By now I came to the sad conclusion that this was no wayward pizza crust in my mouth. The roof of my mouth was sloughing off and tickling my tongue. This made me as nauseated as the circulating body odor. We asked for a box for the remaining pizza, and made our way to the cash register. I fought Jiffy for the check & won, and she asked how much she should leave for the tip. "Three dollars and a bar of soap," I said, sotto voce.

But not softly enough. The woman at the register looked at our ticket to see who had served us. I felt bad initially, but decided that a manager would want to know about a situation like that before they start losing business. I'd rather put up with a burned mouth or a nutty patron at the adjacent table than a server with horrible body odor. And you know how it is if you've ever found a tick crawling on you? You itch all over. I kept having a sense-memory of body odor even when I got out into the fresh air.

Okay, the picture up there is of the Murder House that Morris & I toured Sunday. I don't think anything bad really happened in this particular house, but when a house is devoid of furniture, you seem to notice every stain in the carpet. This home is in an established, upscale neighborhood, and was surely a showplace of modern living...in 1960, the last time the house saw improvements. There were four bedrooms, two with horribly stained & burnt carpeting, all for less than $400k. Plus, the mod kitchen with original fixtures & appliances. The little Air-Wick in the sunroom was no match for the strong mold scent that fogged the windows.

This has been my week for strange smells.

Also, you cannot imagine from the picture how steep that driveway is. I thought I was going to have to crawl up it on my hands and knees. It must have been a barrel of laughs last winter when sheets of ice & snow lingered for weeks on end. The entire lot was on a hillside, and I expected to see Heidi & Peter herding goats through the yard.

Here's a view of the split-foyer staircase from the living room of the Murder House. The killer must have really gone to town in here, because the carpet had to be replaced.

Next up are two bathrooms in a fabulous 1960 oversized brick tri-level. This place was top-notch all the way, with big rooms and custom details. Each bathroom had deluxe built-in features.

I love the tissue dispenser in the next one. The sink appears to be an original American-Standard Dresslyn Lavatory. All of the American-Standard bathroom sinks from the era have a "-lyn" suffix; Dresslyn, Gracelyn, Circlyn, Ovalyn, Spacelyn, Lauralyn, Ledgelyn. Toilets were named Carlyle, Luxor, Cadet, Glenwall and Norwall. Have you named your sink & toilet?

The next picture from the same tri-level shows the master bath, which was small but efficient. I nearly fainted with excitement when I opened a hatch near the floor and discovered a bathroom scale. The whirl-out toothbrush holder in the wall took me near the edge, too. I don't know whether the corner sink has a Lyn name, but I'm sure it didn't come with the undersink cabinet.

Morris & I had a grand day out. We saw some very interesting homes, ranging from 1939 to brand new. I love seeing the way households have changed through the years. For example, in the early to mid-part of the last century, homes were usually compartmentalized, with specific functions for each room. Later homes had more of an open flow, sometimes to the extreme when we got into the Great Room era where everything happened in one big, happy room and you wouldn't have been surprised to see a urinal hanging off the wall beside the fireplace.

We'll close the shop today with a picture from my mom's kitchen. Here's my dad's glowing birthday cake, so bright it took two of us to blow out the candles. In the background is Mom's stove, one of the appliances she mentions waxing as part of her housecleaning regimen. American Suburban, circa 1965.