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Sunday, October 5, 2014

The Happy Story of the Marriage of Margaret and Howard, 1935

“Setting Standards for Their Home” by Jane S. McKimmon, as published in the October, 1935, issue of the Carolina Co-Operator.

I once knew a 4-H Club boy and girl who married and set up a home of their own where all things seemed to work together for good.
The girl ran the machinery of the home quite as well as the husband ran the machinery of the farm, and three meals were on time every day. There was order in that household but not too much for comfort. There was cleanliness and arrangement for color effects, but it was no great sin to drop a paper near the arm chair or to leave cigarette butts in the ash tray. That home was made to live in and it spoke of relaxation and comfort.
Margaret and Howard agreed from the first that they would put into practice as far as they could what they thought most useful in the things they had learned in club work.
Cooperation was the first thing and keeping up good living standards was the next. Cooperation was shown from the homemade kitchen cabinet to the homemade library table and colorful chair cover which were fashioned with the man’s skill and the woman’s ingenuity and taste.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing with the amount of routine work each had to do, but Margaret tried to be dressed and fresh for Howard at the end of the day, and it was his part to get a plunge and change also before supper. They both agreed that nothing did more for the standard of the home than their own standards in dressing and good grooming. It made them feel more like getting out with their neighbors or taking part in community get-togethers.
It was a hospitable home which they set up where friends loved to come. There was not much actual money for entertainment, but there was plenty of home-grown food and even delicacies in the ways of fruits, cream, and butter which Howard had produced and homemade sweets which Margaret had made and knew how to use in most delectable dishes.
Friends were frequents guests at that table, and Margaret was the kind of hostess who planned so well that she could sit down with her guests without constantly running to the kitchen for things needed.
It was the tea cart drawn close beside her chair and other conveniences which Howard had fashioned from old pieces of furniture that made serving easy and with everything at hand for dessert and changing plates, Margaret could take her part in the conversation as well as provide for the comfort of her guests.
After all the big thing in entertaining is the hearty welcome and the charm of host and hostess. And who is it who charms most? Certainly not the people who spend all their time serving. It is the man and woman who can entertain as well as serve and who create the time and have the ability to read and talk about what is going on in the world who draw out what is best in their guests.
I believe this home is worth much to the community of which it is a part in its friendliness, its hospitality, and the standard it has set for itself. With the planting of shrubs tying the house to the ground and the trees which have been placed to frame the home, it furnishes an example of what can be done in beauty and makes homelike the spot in which one lives.
There are no children in this home as yet, but the desire of both boy and girl is centered upon a real family.

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