My Old Kentucky Home New Zealand Style

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28414, 22 October 1957, Page 2

My Old Kentucky Home New Zealand Style

IBy "SUSAN"] Now I would like you (o know that when “My Old Kentucky Home” is played in these parts, everyone stands up. It does not have the solemn significance of our anthem exactly, but rather the shared sentiment of “Auld Lang Syne.” But no special reason is needed. It just spontaneously combusts.

Home does indeed mean a tre-l mendous lot in Kentucky, and, since most women are Jenny Wrens at heart and like to build a little nest wherever they alight for more than a couple of days, I am going to tell you today about our little old Kentucky home— New Zealand style. The other day we flew over the handsome red-roofed mansion, the picturesque octagonal carriage house and the beautiful leafy estate which first inspired Stephen Foster to write that deathless ditty. We were flying in a little Piper Cub and our friend the pilot circled so low that I almost grabbed a piece of moss from the chimney-pot for a souvenir. But our little home is nothing like that at all. It is a very compact “efficiency apartment” in a very large apartment block. No, I had better tell the whole trut,h. It is in full fact a “bachelor” efficiency apartment, which added epithet merely means that it is a small one and equipped for baching rather than for full-scale housekeeping. But the name always makes me feel as if I am lining in sin. A Night in Nylon

I Most of the neighbours, whom 1 [hardly see or hear, are penna- ! nent residents of this huge building. We appear to have been fortunate to find a flat only a mile from the city centre and at a rental which is reasonable by local standards, though I have not even dared as yet to think of it in pounds sterling. ■ We have a very comfortable living room with air-conditioning, central heating, television, telephone, five beautiful lamps and a big chesterfield that unfolds into a bed. Mattress and pillows were provided, but linen was going to cost so much to hire that I determined to buy some instead and post it home later. Both for quick drying and light posting, nylon seemed to be the answer, so off I went and bought us some exquisite pale pink nylon tricot sheets and pillowslips, the bottom sheet edged all round with tight elastic to grip the mattress. The “sexy sack” from Pans

is the current fashion controversy here, so I felt inspired to model this pink nylon “bag,” with such success that I warn you I may come home wearing it. Listen, have you ever slept in nylon pyjamas between nylon sheets? It is like trying to walk on ice in shoes made of soap. One turn and you spin round twice. One twist and you end up like a silkworm in a cocoon. Try to sit up and you shoot right over the end of the bed. Hilarious. Never a dull moment.

Off the living room, which really is a charming and friendly room, lead a well-fitted dressing closet, a large white tiled and mirrored bathroom and a kitchen so automatic that you begin to understand why the “bachelor” would not need a wife.

However, this “bachelor” was! stuck with one, and she was stuck with all this gleaming plumbing and refrigerating and instant heat, a few pieces of china and silver, a couple of pans and thousands of empty, empty cupboards. All I could find in our suitcases to put in the kitchen cupboards and establish my ascendancy there were three swizzle sticks and a bottle of vitamin pills. Hardly enough. i The refrigerator was approxiI mately three times as large as the one I manage with at home. Per-

haps they expected a very thirsty ■’bachelor.” But the thought of having to sally forth alone into foreign territory, stock up this monster and all these gaping cupboards. cook something worthy of this vastly imposing stove, and have some sort of hybrid Ken-tucky-New Zealand meal on the table when the man of the bachelor efficiency apartment came home, suddenly terrified me. The frig, was a frozen cage within the sterile cell f the kitchen within the lonely prison of our apartment within the huge redbrick fortress of the apartment building, which covered almost a city block and rose 11 storeys high. In something near sudden panic, I pulled the fibreglass curtains aside from the window to seek the only familiar things in this strange world—the sky and the sun. and the wind chasing the clouds. And there outside the window was a great proud oak. towering even taller than our building. And in the tree, quite close to me. quivering and chat-i tering and darting from twig to, branch, was a timid but curious little squirrel with an acorn in his, toothy mouth, stocking up his j cupboard against the winter’s! siege. “You be friends with me and TH be friends with you.” he said distinctly. If you don’t think animals can talk, by the way. you' should just see the television commercials. “And.” he added, “in case you don’t like acorns, there’s a supermarket just around the corner.” Shopping is Fun Silly, isn’t it. that a tall tree and a neighbour!}’ squirrel were all I needed to adjust my sights. From that uncertain moment I have just loved being an American housewife. Shopping is fun. because the supermarket puts in your hand all those enticing things you drool over in the glossy American magazines. If you want a pizza, an apple shortcake, an exotic salad dressing, you buy all the ingredients in one package. If you want to bake cornbread, you buy in one carton a foil pan and a plastic bag of mix into which you pop an egg and some milk, then squeeze it in your bands, pour it into the pan and bake. If you want an iced chocolate cake, you buy a carton containing

a packet of cake mix, a disposable foil baking tin and a packet of chocolate fudge frosting mix. Only a fool could make a mess of that. I managed to. by not reading the directions properly the first time. You do not have to be able to cook to be a good cook in America, but you do have to be able to read. To make a batch of scones or cinnamon pinwheels or nut rolls, you simply take from the frig, a slim cylinder containing eight or 10 fluffy pieces all ready to pop in the oven. If you want a cookie, you take a sausage-shaped roll from the frig., cut off a few slices and bake. They are done to a turn by the time the coffee has perked. No Faring Knife

The coffee is wonderful, needless to say, but my determination never to sink so low as a teabag was thwarted by the lack of a teapot. I just had to swallow my pride and admit that there is nothing wrong with a teabag if you insist on a heated cup and boiling water. But alas, the water here is chemically vile and. while coffee does conceal the ancient pondwater taste, tea is ruined by it. I just do not drink tea any more. Can you imagine it? Not if you know me. Every conceivable kind of meat, fish, fowl, fruit and vegetable is ready prepared in cans, jars, pies and foil packs. For a few cents you can even buy a can potatoes, whole, diced, sliced, or spiced; or a jar of potato salad, or a carton of frozen French fries, or a dozen different varieties of chips or crisps. As the wife of an “efficient bachelor,” I do not even have a paring knife in my kitchen. And believe me. I do not even miss it.

If a real American housewife should read this, as she may since I am writing for some American papers now, too, she might scoff at my implication that this is typical American housekeeping. As brief visitors who still eat out a lot in private homes and in restaurants, we are certainly saving dollars and having fun by living in an apartment rather than a hotel. But if we were raising a family in a suburban home. I know quite well that I would be cooking my fingers to the bone over a hot stove just as J do at home. And grumbling just as much. And loving it just as much. So perhaps I had better just pop along to the supermarket for a grain of salt.