There are clues that this photo was taken on a Sunday–the “good china”, the Pendleton skirt and sweater my mother is wearing, and the popcorn. Popcorn was the staple Sunday night supper at our house. Most weeks, we had a big Sunday dinner at noon (usually roast beef or ham) and once that was done, my mother would announce that the kitchen was closed. However, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t make us popcorn. Here she is using an old-fashioned popping basket on an electric range, with my sister Joyce in her Brownie uniform eagerly anticipating the results.
My mother was born at New England Sanatorium (later New England Memorial Hospital, now closed), near Spot Pond in Stoneham, Massachusetts. This was a Seventh Day Adventist hospital and thus the fare served was vegetarian. My grandmother was neither Seventh Day Adventist nor vegetarian, but she was particularly taken with the popcorn suppers they served at New England San during her stay there at the time of my mother’s birth. Over time, popcorn for supper on Sunday nights became a family tradition.