Groovy

Betcha can’t guess out of what decade today’s grab bag special is pulled.

 

Did I hear someone say the 70’s?  You are most likely correct.  There is a slim chance it might have been taken in the early days of January 1980 when my Mom was celebrating her 29th birthday with brand new aluminum pizza pans and another gift done up in my father’s specialty wrapping – the newspaper.  But even if big hair, leg warmers, and Ronald Reagan were on the horizon the 1970’s were clinging on for dear life.

First, there is that wallpaper.  Seriously bold choice.  Although, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t our parents’.  They moved into that kitchen with it’s Formica, brown fridge, metal cabinets and the most decade defining wall decor ever manufactured.

And while they can’t be blamed for those decisions, it seems like they might have been sniffing the wallpaper paste in a couple other design areas.  You can’t see this very well, but the chair I’m sitting in was a padded, beautiful, Big Bird Yellow.   It matched the BBY Formica table underneath the brown and gold madras tablecloth.

The orange bowl to the left of the refrigerator, however, is not some super-trendy serving set my parent’s received off their “registry” at Ace Hardware.  That is the most important bowl in my Mother’s kitchen.  Always has been, and unless she comes down with a mean case of diverticulitis, always will be.

That is the bowl/lid of her Stir Crazy.  You know what a Stir Crazy is, right – those fabulous popcorn poppers that have a little metal rod that “stirs” the bottom of the hot plate where the popcorn kernels await their chance to pop like “crazy.”  When it’s all over you flip the entire appliance and the transparent orange lid becomes your snack’s serving bowl.

The man who invented it is a genius.  A genius who lives down the street from us, that is.  Yup.  You read that right – one of the men who designed the West Bend Stir Crazy Popcorn Popper lives just around the corner from our house.  He and his wife retired in Grand Rapids after, one can only assume, they went Stir Crazy in Wisconsin.

And if anything can convince my parents that it’s a good idea to move to Michigan it would be the example of my mother’s hero.  I sure hope when they do move this direction she’ll let me borrow that awesome cardigan.