Grandma Dorward's Kitchen

This post originally written on 8/4/2011 trying to consolidate my blogs!

My Grandma Dorward was the best. Though she’s been gone many years I still have great memories of her. She used to live in an apartment in downtown Canton at the corner of Cleveland Avenue and Third Street. Just “cattywampus” from the Y and next to Walt’s diner. We used to play outside in the diner’s parking lot and I always thought it was neat that they left the back door open in the kitchen and we’d hear all the ruckus of the people working. I think about her every time I am downtown for one event or another. We spent a lot of time in that apartment. The building is still there, the apartments look rough now, but oh how I’d love to go up to the second floor one more time just to see what’s changed. And what hasn’t. 

There were two ways to get into her apartment, rarely did we go in the front entrance to the building and when we did, the place always seemed so hollow and scary. I always felt lost. Most of the time, we clambered up the open metal stairs in the back. I was always so nervous going up those steps because you could see right down into what seemed a bottomless pit, but in reality was just outside the basement level. If I close my eyes, I can still hear the sound of my feet clunking up cautiously, a big sigh of relief when I got to her floor. 

Gram’s apartment was in the middle, to get to hers, you had to walk past the door of the first apartment. I always scuttled a little faster when I got to this door. You see, Grandma’s good friend lived there and one time I heard the “adults” talking about how that lady had come home one day and found her husband hanging in the shower. How’s that image for a little scaredy cat child to have in her head? 

There was an atrium with gravel between the two apartments, blocked by a railing. It always looked like a fine playground to me, but we were never allowed to play in there. But no matter, once inside Grandma’s kitchen, the novelty of Grandma’s delightful apartment took over. Her kitchen was like a giant toybox to me. So many things that I knew I could count on to be there when we went to visit. 

Now of course, these are memories and they are going to sound really, really silly to the average reader. I suppose if one of my brothers, sisters or cousins ever read this, that perhaps they can relate. There were certain things that I always gravitated to in the kitchen. Weird things. Really weird things. Things that are so far in my past but yet still completely intact in my mind. Like her electric skillet, actually it was the lid of the skillet I found so intriguing, there was a sliding 4-opening vent on the lid that I liked the sound it made when you clicked it open and shut. And her bowl of fake fruit, I loved to squish the grapes, they felt so rubbery. Who knew I was such a tactile child? 

The fruit sat in a bowl that was on a white metal buffet. In the top drawer, you could always count on finding Grandma’s plastic leaf coasters. Again, I loved these things for their texture. Of course as kids, we never used them as coasters, but when Gram made us her homemade play dough, we would make imprints of leaves all day long. Funny how these “imprints” have managed to hang around for a lifetime!

Grandma’s play dough. I never had her recipe but I am sure you can find one online. Getting Gram to make us dough was the highlight of any visit. That smelly pink and green stuff was the best! We’d play for hours making “baked goods,” using her Cosco step stool as our “oven.” I almost forgot to mention our “rolling pins” that we used to carefully craft our baked items. They were these amber colored bottles without labels, I always thought they were so neat because of their distinguished shape. It wasn’t until years later that I recognized that bottle and its shape as none other than a Michelob bottle. Grandma drank beer? Shocking! Not really, my Gram was also a card shark too. More on that later. 

When it came time for snacks or lunch, Grandma served up her tasty lemonade concoction. She always had a bottle of Real Lemon on hand to make that treat for us. And the best part was sipping it ice cold out of her colorful vintage aluminum tumblers, the kind that came in a box of laundry soap. (For all you youngsters out there, for whatever crazy reason, laundry detergent makers felt the need to put “gifts” inside boxes of detergent. Aluminum tumblers, glassware and Cannon towels, oh my!)

I could probably go on and on just on the kitchen alone, but for now will wrap it up here. Don’t worry, there will definitely be more Grandma Dorward stories, we still have the rest of her apartment to talk about! So far, I am enjoying my trip down memory lane. Hope you are too!