A Parlour for a Plague

This...

This picture is so incredibly perfect.
The drapes, the cigarettes, the suit, the eyebrows.

I'm seriously having a flashback.

Caption:
Aunt Marie waiting for the goddamn kids to get a move on so they can get to church.

I knew a Croatian woman who did that to her furniture. Supposedly to protect it from the children. Which was odd, seeing as how they were never allowed in the living room.

Come to think of it, when I was younger (under and 10), my mother who was of Polish heritage, had our sofa and comfy chairs covered in plastic. ....except when expected visitors came by.

Plastic was popular in those dwys. My grandmother even had plastic curtains. No, not like a bathroom shower curtain liner. These were sold as wimdow curtains. Dark green.

...she had the same sofa-bed for some 40 people years.

Wow!
plastic curtains. whoo wee.


Anyway.

****.

Tomorrow was going to be the day I would take my tile cleaning machine and do all the tile. It looks clean because it's like faux wood, but not so.

When I was here a couple of days, I spilled some water, so I threw a hand towel on the floor and mopped it up. The cloth was black.

Then I remembered that the former owner had a Jack Russel Terrier.
This guy actually seems like he was pretty clean, but having a dog makes a difference.

So I get out the machine, it's really light weight, and go to pull out the 2 resevoirs for clean and soiled water.
One of them is missing.
Everything is unpacked so it must have been left behind.

I am going to get a new one, since it will be a regularly scheduled job.

I remember visiting the home of one of my elementary school friends. He lived in a "modern" post-war house with an enormous living room. But that room wasn't used much. Everything was either covered in plastic or draped with sheets. Even at a young age I considered this rather bizarre.

I didn't ever see this house back in the 1960's, but my bff told me about his house.
A totally different take.

His mother had exceptional taste and wanted high quality that would last.
So, when they moved into his childhood home, they furnished the bedroom and kitchen with what they wanted (father, mother, one child). They left the living room entirely empty until they saved up enough to get what they wanted.

He has memories of that room being the most amazing place to set up his Hot Wheels and other large enterprises.

They all just hung out in the kitchen and bedrooms.

We became friends when we were 15. They'd moved to another house. The living room furniture they had finally gotten when he was 10 or 11 was so beautiful. The main piece was this long C shaped sectional where 3 of us teens could lie end to end and space left for someone to sit.

They used this furniture joyfully every day. They just maintained it well with regular cleanings at at one point a repair.

When I visited his home (they'd moved several times) when we were both 55, that sectional was still in near perfect shape. The thing was ivory colored. It was just as beautiful and modern today than at any point in the intervening years.

The only reason it's gone now is because he moved to Mexico. He kept it in storage for a year or more, then finally decided to let it go.

I was really sad about that. He said he teared up too.

I'm sure that is why I have a love for sectionals. I actually looked for a C shaped one, but they were way out of my price range.

I love the thought of a couple of friends and me all napping on it together on a Winter day.

You sure hit the nail on the head there!

I knocked on the door earlier, around 1pm to ask him a small favor.

When he opened the door you could see all the whites around his eyes, and he was cranking his head around to see who might be behind me.

The neighborhood street was entirely empty.

I just blurted out "Are you all right?"

He just said "Yeah, I'm fine"

He did say he was on a zoom call but he'd come over at 4:30 to help me.
He did, he was very pleasant, just very.....On.

Great chairs!

Lovely to begin furnishing just for you!

Saw more furniture

Wow

My best friend as a pre schooler had a dad who was OCD about furniture and stuff. It got a lot worse after he had an MI. They moved a while after that and got new stuff.

The sofas had the plastic still on them until he died.

The carpet had rugs to protect them, then eventually plastic mats over the rugs over the carpet.

Man he was scary

Damn. You always lose something crucial when moving

Hey, I thought that was something only I did. Let it be said though, it is not for all carpeting. Just the living room.

...and no plastic covering anywhere. That's just weird... heck, I never even tolerated the plastic covering for toasters or blenders.


..or those hideous plastic table cloths.

How do you feel about those toilet paper cozies?

My God. Why? WHY?

It's insanity run wild!

Not to mention, in the bathroom with moisture and germs proliferating even if a person cleans twice daily. That cozy must be a friggin germ-fest!

There are plastic covers for toasters and blenders?!?!

What about the fluffy covers FOR TOILET SEATS!

My Mom had such a toilet seat cover. It was part of a set including a fluffy
cover for the top of the toilet tank and a little rug to go in front of the
toilet. All in pink. Yikes.

Oh yeah. They were tres chic back in the day.
This one let's you know what there so you won't miscalculate during those stressful moments when making a cake, and mistake it for the mix master. (which also had a cover)

Ah yes.

The little rug around the commode was great if you had brothers or other male visitors.

I forgot about the fluffy tank cover!
Yes. Pink was the favored color for that.

Now here's something I honestly would dearly love to have. Maybe I'll look for them for the guest powder room, as that's a place that lends itself to whimsy.
Those chalk fish, made by Miller Studios.
I whiled away many an hour in the bathtub, or other, gazing at them, wondering where they were going, wanting long eyelashes like that.

Ours had bubbles too.

This era really embraced the Disneyfication of the natural world!



Then there was the decal craze. I recall the fruit ones with special fondness.





You gotta admit, they look pretty nifty on this handsome kitchen canister set:



Then there was the Dutch thing; I remember seeing this Dutch motif used pretty commonly:





Somewhere I've got a few sheets of these things which I came across in small rural towns in NY and NJ in the early '70s. I should really try to find them. Most of them are the classic ripe fruit stuff but there are some stylized squirrels, rabbits, and chipmunks (almost as cute as the Dutch kids), as well as one of a French maid showing a modest amount of stockinged leg in one of those ubiquitous pinup poses also popular at the time. It might be worth buying a breadbox, maybe even a refrigerator, just to display them.