When earlier this year I ran a column entitled "What do you do?" a friend remarked, "You didn't mention Tri Delta."
It was true. And how could I possibly forget? First, there was my rewarding collegiate experience and sisterhood. And then, for more years than I can count, I served as the Delta Delta Delta Northshore Alumnae Reference Chairman, a role that required me, each recruitment season, to write what seemed endless recommendations. This lasted for well over a decade, tethering me to my desk for months on end during an era of pen and paper. Before long, I began to think it would last forever.
And it probably would have had it not been for the lovely daughter-in-law of longtime Franklinton family friends Marilyn and Dick Richardson. My neighbor deShea Richardson, wife of their youngest son James, stepped up to the plate. Desperately wanting to divest, I thanked my lucky stars for deShea, my Tri Delta sister. And I suppose this is why I forgot my sorority. I have not had to write, sign, or submit Tri Delta rec forms for some years now.
Yet, despite this close call with forever, I often perseverate on the notion that nothing lasts forever. And in most cases, that is the truth. But some roles, and inanimate things, apparently come really close.
Switching gears and location, moving from my desk to the kitchen, I have learned that appliances, as of late, do not last like they used to. My mother and father succumbed in 2011 and 1999, respectively, with a Hotpoint refrigerator that they had purchased early in their marriage, not long after World War II, still humming. While it had long since been banned to the garage, it outlasted its owners.
We would be hard pressed to find a present-day refrigerator that would survive as long which brings me to my General Electric wall oven, which in January gave up the ghost. Installed in 2004, it had partnered with me in fixing family meals for precisely twenty years. While I should be grateful -- two decades is probably a good run for a built-in oven these days -- I wasn't satisfied.
What I have learned is that wall ovens have escalated in price and in wait-time for installation which brings me to today's focus -- a 1958 General Electric Rotisserie Oven. And, as you might imagine, it belonged to my parents. Resting on a shelf in the pantry at our farm, it landed there after a move from their attic back in 2002 when my mother parted with our family home. More recently, the countertop oven made its way to our home in Mandeville where for weeks we were sans an electric oven. While my behemoth Vulcan stove does offer a gas oven, I am accustomed to electric for baking. And this is how I came to rely on a sixty-six-year-old contraption.
According to my late mother, it had been a gift from my father's youngest brother Charles Lindy Ellzey (1928 - 2020), who succumbed four years ago. Graduating from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York, in 1950, he worked for the Central Gulf Lines, as chief engineer. While I knew him as Uncle Charles, his engineering work on a ship is how he met my Aunt Helen -- Helen Gates Ellzey (1920 - 2007), marrying her in the early 1960s. From a prominent family in New Jersey, the longtime educator was on a cruise with a contingent of teachers when she met my Uncle Charles. Digressing, the couple subsequently made routine trips from their home in Bridgeton (New Jersey) to Franklinton to visit both us and my grandparents at their farm. They brought Aunt Helen's parents, Sheppard and Susan Gates, who became fast, faithful friends with my Ga-ga and Pa-pa, mother-in-law and father-in-law to Charles's two brothers Wayland and Cecil (my dad). A strong, however unusual, connection between the two elderly couples.
While Aunt Helen and Uncle Charles never had children of their own, they took great interest in, doting on, their nieces and nephews. And I was fortunate to be among them. Digressing, it was my daughter Betsy who, in childhood, introduced her Great-Aunt Helen, a former author of textbooks and workbooks for MacMillan Publishing, to Harry Potter. And it was Uncle Charles who, on his last visit to our home, introduced me to sticky buns. He was an exceptional baker which does not surprise me, in light of the General Electric Oven he gifted my parents back in the 1950s.
It was this ancient contraption that bridged the month-long gap, from the time when my own General Electric went dark to the arrival and install of our new wall oven. During the interim, which felt like an eternity, it worked like a champ, baking biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, and other such goodies.
While I did not give sticky buns a go in the vintage oven, I suppose that I should have. Food for thought…
This gem of an appliance, from 1958, made me ponder over longevity. Maybe I should think twice before writing, "Nothing lasts forever." Perhaps some things do.
