Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 2.
The Handy Drawer
Lillian (Wilson) Walton
“A place for everything, and everything in it's place!" Show me a housewife who can boast of this, and l‘ll show you a tired person!
Every house must have one, a catch-all drawer. No doubt it has several names, a miscellaneous drawer, a junk drawer, or just an odd drawer.
This drawer contains all sorts of things. They get there because someone has left a pen on the dining-room table, or a shoe lace on the back of a chair. Did you ever turn a pair of work pants upside-down to hang up? l’ve had an avalanche of nails hit the floor! Of course the closest place to deposit these is in the handy drawer. I am guilty too; that one curler I forgot to take out of my hair, or the clothes-pin in my apron pocket, in the drawer they go!
If I want some thread in a hurry, I might have to untangle it from some string, a piece of ribbon, and what if I do prick my finger on a pin? I can find a band-aid there too, perhaps stuck to a piece of candy! All in this drawer.
“Mother, have you seen my nail-file?" daughter asks. Or a masculine voice may call out, “has anyone seen my red-handled screw driver?" (My thoughts for the latter were, “did he think I was doing to make a special trip down to his work-bench, after he left it lying on my kitchen counter a couple of weeks ago'?”)
“Look in the handy drawer, dear," is the only answer to these queries. The drawer I remember best was called, “the drawer beside the knife drawer." Not found in a “credenza", a “hutch” or a “buffet”, as today's names imply, but in a good old-fashioned sideboard, (antique today!) in my mother's kitchen. There were two drawers side by side halfway down.
My mother was Church Organist for over forty years at Cascades, and walked a short distance over a wash-board gravel road, four times on a Sunday, taking in two services. She couldn‘t resist picking up bolts, nuts, screw-nails, springs, etc., that she saw on the road, which had dropped off an old car, such as ours was then, and putting them in her drawer beside the knife drawer. She had always taught her brood of ten to “waste not!"
Today, gone is the joy of finding your husband in the back yard on a weekend, repairing some part of his car. With the new cars built so complicated, requiring special tools, he doesn't even fix a flat anymore!
On this particular Sunday my mother was at Church when we arrived for a visit. Back and forth my husband went to the drawer beside the knife drawer for some part he needed for the car. However, by the time she returned home the scene had changed. There on the grass beside our car was the “drawer beside the knife drawer", and hubby’s head buried deep within the car's interior!
Mother laughed, and was so pleased that bringing home the hardware was really worth while.
Yes, that‘s where you‘ll find it, anything you‘re looking for... just try that “handy drawer!"