Old Stuff

Here's an essay I wrote for college a while back. I was taking an English course called "Writing Creative Nonfiction," which I very much enjoyed, and one of the assignments was to write about an object. I chose my refrigerator out of desperation and the fact that it was right there in front of me. Coming up with ideas of what to write about has always been the hardest part for me - if someone gives me a topic, I can talk for days, but making the choice on my own is impossible.

Emily Marlor

English 268

Prof. Steve Kuusisto

1/8/01

            It’s both common and unique; both a place and an object. From the outside it looks like an alien monolith, come to rest in my kitchen by mistake. I think maybe it was headed for Salisbury Plain to join its big brothers in Stonehenge and took a wrong turn somewhere. The unsettlingly ice-white exterior is camouflaged with old horoscopes and family photos held in place with brightly colored magnetic letters and crowded around Michelangelo’s David (today modestly clad in jeans). On the lower section I see more of the alphabet securing pizza coupons and a news article featuring a photo of my grandfather and his Jeep Wagoneer, all dressed up for Memorial Day. Also a rare magazine photo of Marilyn Monroe casually dressed and engrossed in a book, no cleavage in sight; this is one of my favorite images of the icon.

            The refrigerator is somewhat oracular for most Americans. We go to it when we don’t know what we want. We stand bathed in the chill and the 40-watt glow and we wait for some kind of gastric epiphany – we have faith that the perfect food is lurking there, just behind the pickles or last week’s mac and cheese. It will satisfy our cravings and fill our souls, we’re sure. Or at least we hope it won’t give us food poisoning. The challenge is to find just the right thing without upsetting the delicate eco-system that seems to appear in even the most regularly cleaned appliance.

            I remember when I moved into my little second-story nest, I was so excited to have a brand-new, real, grown-up-sized refrigerator. After the last one I had, with its less-than-reliable condenser and chronically constipated freezer compartment, it was so nice to imagine all of the gourmet leftovers I would be able to preserve in the gleaming depths of this new Frigidaire. But as I swing the door open from my unaccustomed position on the kitchen floor, contemplating the actual contents, I realize that the reality has rather a different look to it. The door seems to have some reasonably edible bottled goods – salsa, salad dressing, mustard, olives. But then my gaze falls on that jar of applesauce that moved in here with me two years ago and I’m now afraid to open, and I realize just why I eat at Wendy’s so often. The grape jelly next to the applesauce has a light green film on top, but I don’t have a biohazard suit, so there it will stay.

            The main compartment of the appliance is more crowded than usual due to an influx of groceries following the Christmas cash-giving season. I see a carton of actual eggs between the week-old take-out salad and the mysterious aluminum foil lump that may be something from the office holiday pot-luck. I’m proud to notice that I actually have produce in my “Fresh Produce” drawers – clementines and apples.

            The next shelf up supports the Kroger brand mayo that I’ve decided is just as good as Hellman’s because it costs about two dollars less. A bottle of peppermint schnapps keeps the black olives and beer company, right by the cherry preserves I got during last summer’s family vacation in Michigan at the height of cherry festival season. Something lurks in the depths of this least-visited shelf, but I’m afraid to look any closer. Let the mystery remain for a while. After all, look what happened to those overly curious people who looked into King Tut’s tomb...

            The most frequently used stuff is on the top shelf, so I don’t expect any surprises here. Still-fresh skim milk, cranberry juice, water filter, cottage cheese and month-old bread are the major players. Some fizzed-out tonic water stands forlorn in the corner, just hoping to hang on for a couple more days, maybe a week, before I get ambitious and start throwing things away. One unusual item is the jar of home-canned peach jam that was a Christmas gift from one of the bosses. For someone with no fresh bread in the house, I certainly have plenty of toast toppings.

            I have a friend who says you can tell who lives in a house just by looking in the fridge. When I had a roommate and a big kitchen, we always had at least four meals’ worth of food in our fridge and my friend would open the door and declare, “Chicks live here.” His own immaculate refrigerator contained no more than mixers for his cocktails and olives soaked in vermouth – sometimes there’d be leftover pizza, but only for one night before it was devoured. Chicks did not live there.

            When I go to my dad’s house, I invariably find myself gazing into his wall of food as if it has some answer that my callow young Frigidaire lacks. The fact that this was the source of countless after-school snacks and now harbors mid-western delicacies like stuffed peppers and pot roast that I can’t get at MacDonald’s seems to infuse the parental fridge with some kind of additional power. Like the stuffed animal my grandmother gave me on my second birthday and who still has a place at the foot of my bed (ok, sometimes under the foot of my bed), the old home refrigerator fills me with memories of a time when the most I had to worry about was whether Mom and Dad would try to feed me liver and onions for dinner.

            I find that there are some items that I always have, even though I don’t want them, just because we always had them around when I was a kid. It seems like my fridge, and its contents, link me to my past in a way I never noticed. I’m not even sure I like cottage cheese but, by god, I always have some in there.