University Press (Beaumont, Tex.), Vol. 76, No. 19, Ed. 1 Friday, November 5, 1999 Page: 4 of 6
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University Press • Friday, November 5,1999 • Page 4
Appliances eased
Kitchen duties;
careers drew
women from cooking
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. (AP) — Rebecca Lovingood slowly pulled
open the oven door and let the air hitting her face tell if the temperature
was right to bake biscuits. She measured flour and sugar for angel food
cake by the feel of the ingredients’ weight in her hands.
This was 50 years ago, before most ovens had thermostats and when
recipes were less often used.
Little need for such skills now. These days, her automatic clock-
equipped oven can start dinner while she’s teaching college classes. An
electric mixer, a blender, a dishwasher crowd her kitchen.
As appliances developed, keen cooking senses became less neces-
sary. The muscle power to heave laundry water onto the stove was no
longer required. The patience to can hundreds of quarts of green beans
— who needed it?
Electrified kitchens and the lure of work outside home dra-
matically changed women’s roles over the last 100 years. Kitchen
work became less backbreaking, if perhaps less satisfying.
At 65, Lovingood has witnessed some of the major develop-
ments. What she has not seen, she’s studied as head of Virginia
Tech’s Near Environments department, a program that includes
home economics. And she does not lament the past.
“I don’t want to go back to the good old days,” Lovingood said.
“Really and truly, it was a lot of work.”
In 1900, kitchen tasks in many households included killing a
chicken in the backyard or gathering eggs. Even urban families
depended on home gardens for peas and peaches. TV dinners and
marinated kabobs were years away. Most homes didn’t have reli-
able refrigeration, save an icebox on the back porch.
“Back then the idea of convenience foods didn’t exist — if
there were any, it was fresh produce, an apple or a banana,” said
Jackie Newgent, spokeswoman for the American Dietetic
Association.
A tum-of-the-century shortage of hired cooks — once com-
mon in many middle-class homes — meant housewives sought to
expedite kitchen tasks.
Often the ideas for making kitchens quicker and slicker were
bom at General Electric in Schenectady.
“For Better Living — Electrically,” GE advertised. America
bought it.
By 1950, more than 90 percent of homes had refrigerators.
With fighting over every counter, self-defrosting refrigerators and a
plug-in gadget for nearly every task, modem kitchens require five
times the power they did in the 1920s.
People feel they are busier now than they ever were, creating
more of a demand for appliances, said John Drengenberg, of
Underwriters Laboratories.
Reflecting the American household, kitchen machinery gets
smaller and smaller. It’s also specialized.
“We see hamburger cookers for one hamburger and hot dog cookers
for one hot dog,” Drengenberg said. “You don’t need a big turkey roast-
er anymore.”
Of all the appliances that emerged, the microwave in the 1980s eased
women’s work the most, allowing kids to cook for themselves, said State
University of New York at Albany sociologist Christine Bose.
All of the so-called labor-saving devices lightened the nature of
kitchen work. But the promise of a more fulfilled home fife through
machinery largely proved empty, Bose said. Women still spend more time
cooking and cleaning than other family members in most homes. Plus,
equipment like crepe makers and electric pasta machines led people to
“end up doing stuff they wouldn’t have done.”
“Technology is not what freed women from the home,” Bose said. “It
; helped, it was important, but really what made a difference was women
, being employed.”
Die need for factory laborers during World War II gave large num-
! bers of women a taste for work and its wages, said Ellen M. Plante, author
of “The American Kitchen: 1700 to the Present.”
The feminist movement in the 1960s, and concerns about inflation
! and a need for two incomes in the 1970s and 1980s, drew even more
! women into careers.
In 1940, 25 percent of American women worked outside the home.
By 1974, half of married women with children were employed.
By the 1960s, Plante suggests, sheer boredom may have helped drive
1 women from kitchens to offices. “I can only imagine it had to be terribly
tedious being in the house day and night — when housework could be
done in a shorter time because of the labor-saving devices.”
Preparing food may be easier now than 30 years ago. Food proces-
sors make dicing and chopping a breeze. At the supermarket, decent
Alfredo sauce comes in a jar. Want tuna for lunch? Just buy the box with
canned fish, crackers and mayo in one package.
Sure it’s easy, but something has been lost in the progress, says one
of a younger generation of homemakers.
Christina Plaskonos, a 29-year-old mother of two in Raleigh, N.C.,
doesn’t long for an ice box instead of a modem refrigerator, but she
believes that all the gadgetry wrought lazy bodies and culinary ineptitude.
“Now we have to go to the gym instead of working on our own land,
making our own food,” she said. “People are so removed from food in its
This 1894 Montgomery-Ward
Western Windsor wood range
sold for the princely sum of
$24.84. It measured 22x22x13
feet. The purchaser could get a
cast iron stove pipe, weighing 50
pounds, for an extra $3.95.
Since the oven had no tempera-
ture control, recipes simply stat-
ed that a dish should be cooked
in a “hot,” “moderate,” or
“cool” oven. If you needed a
“cool” oven, you let the wood
burn down or sprinkled the fire
with water.
A 1927 Sears, Roebuck &
Co. pearl gray enameled
Peerless coal and gas
range cost $94.50.
Payment plan was avail-
able for $5 down and $5 a
month. The stove was 33
inches high, took a 7-inch
stove pipe and had a ship-
ping weight of 583
pounds. Cooking was by
both wood and gas. The
cook had some control
over oven temperature by
watching the thermome-
ter on the door.
By 1941, for only $2.30
a month, the modern
housewife could buy a
Montgomery-Ward
4-way electric range.
The range cost $134.95
(139.95 if you wanted
the “Bake View”
door). The “beautiful
all-white porcelain fin-
ish” boasted a “rugged
skyscraper construc-
tion.” The range mea-
sured 39 1/4 x 26 1/4 x
48 inches, and timers
allowed ovens to come
on and go off when
the wife was at work
or out shopping. Oven
temperature was con-
trolled automatically
by a built-in thermo-
stat.
natural form.... People think because it’s con-
venient, it’s better. It’s not.”
A friend has encouraged Plaskonos to
visit a farm where customers choose live chick-
ens for slaughtering. It’s an idea she’s consid-
ering —just so she and her family understands
the real work behind the fricassee.
So what’s in store for the next 100 years?
Lovingood envisions an increase of coop-
erative kitchens, like those now in retirement
communities. Because people are living and
working longer, and often alone, neighbors in
apartments or homes could rotate cooking
duties — or leave them to professionals.
It’s not a new idea.
In 1898, economist-feminist Charlotte
Perkins Gilman argued for cooperative
kitchens in her treatise, “Women and
Economics.” She believed such an arrange-
ment would improve life and love for both
women and men, married and single.
“Take the kitchens out of the houses,”
she wrote, “and you leave rooms which are
open to any form of arrangement and exten-
sion; and the occupancy of them does not
mean ‘housekeeping.’”
Scientists find what may be oldest known vertebrates
Associated Press
Scientists have unearthed two half-
billion-year-old fossils of fish-like crea-
tures that could be the earliest known
vertebrates.
The discovery of the 2-inch fossils in
China suggests that vertebrates — ani-
mals with primitive spines or backbones
— had already undergone considerable
evolution by the Cambrian epoch, from
about 490 million to 545 milfiott y^ars
ago. Many other major animal grfrcps
appear in the fossil record for the first
time during this period of rapid evolu-
tion.
Cambridge University scientist
Simon Conway Morris said the fish-like
fossils are about 530 million years old,
which would put them in the middle of
the Cambrian period.
Up to now, the oldest unmistakable
vertebrate fossil was about 480 million
years old, or from the end of the
Cambrian period.
Morris said the latest find means
that “the so-called Cambrian explosion
was more abrupt and dramatic than we
thought.”
Desmond Collins, a paleontologist
at the Royal Ontario Museum in
Toronto, said it is too soon to say if the
history of early evolution must be
rewritten.
He pointed out that no similar spec-
imens have been uncovered in the same
area, where tens of thousands of fossils
have been removed since the field was
discovered in the early 1900s.
“Why is there so little fossil
record?” he asked.
Two Chinese teams uncovered the
two fossils within the past year at the
Chengjiang fossil field. Morris and
researchers from China studied the fos-
sils and reported their findings in
Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
They argue that the fossils are clear-
ly early agnathans, a type of jawless fish
that includes the modem lamprey and
hagfish. Diey point to clear signs of
zigzag muscle patterns and gill structures
— both characteristics of modem fish.
One fossil shows marks of an early spine.
Philippe Janvier, a paleontologist at
the Museum of Natural History, in
Paris, said in a Nature commentary that
the new fossils “are probably the long-
awaited early Cambrian vertebrates.”
The Chinese-British team said the
fin-bearing animals would have been
active swimmers, making it less likely
they would have been buried alive when
storms stirred up sediment from the bot-
tom of the sea. This may help explain
why no other such animals have been
found this early in history.
Morris said the two ancient
agnathans appear quite evolved. He
suggested that the first vertebrates must
have developed much earlier, perhaps
555 million years ago or more.
Temple
rebuilding
causes
unease
NAUVOO, 111. (AP) — More than 150
years ago, Mormons fleeing persecution set-
tled here and carved a city from the wilder-
ness between a high bluff and a bend in the
Mississippi River. The centerpiece of that
community was a great temple on the bluff’s
brow.
The temple took five years to finish, but
by that time church founder Joseph Smith
had been slain and his followers were being
driven out by neighbors suspicious of the
new religion. Fire and storm later destroyed
the temple.
Today, the Mormon Church is planning
a two-year, $23 million effort to rebuild the
temple. And once again, the project is caus-
ing unease among neighbors.
“It started bringing up some of the old
vibes again,” said Nauvoo Alderman John
McCarty.
Nauvoo is a sleepy town of 1,200 people
that already struggles with more than
200,000 tourists who visit the Mormon his-
torical sites each year. Some people fear a
big influx of new residents and more tourists
drawn by the temple, which plays a central
role in the history of the 10-million-member
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. :
“The history of this temple is almost the ;
history of our people,” said Mike Trapp, a ;
Mormon and local expert on the temple.
Mormons from Missouri arrived in
Nauvoo in 1839. Two years later Smith
announced he had received a revelation that ■
a temple should be built. Smith’s followers
began building with limestone quarried near {
the river.
As the town grew and the temple walls ;
rose, the Mormons’ neighbors grew wary of {
the swelling religious community. A local 5
newspaper campaigned against the church, >
and anti-Mormon leagues were founded.
Trouble erupted in 1844 when Mormon »
leaders shut down a dissident newspaper,
leading to the arrests of Smith and his broth-}
er Hyrum. They were jailed at nearby 4
Carthage, 111., where a mob shot them to ' \
death.
Violence increased with attacks on out- i
lying Mormon communities. Smith’s succes-
sor, Brigham Young, eventually struck a
deal to abandon Nauvoo. Mormons began ;
leaving in 1846, three months before the
temple was finished. Many followed Young,
taking the temple bell with them and even- '
tually founding Salt Lake City.
The temple was damaged by fire in
1848, and a tornado finished it off two years
later. The stone was used in other buildings.
In the 1930s, the church began buying
property around the original settlement. In
the early 1960s the church began building a
replica of the settlement to offer a glimpse
of early Mormon life.
No past restoration approaches the scale
of the 50,000-square-foot temple, with its
165-foot tower. As with all Mormon tem-
ples, it will not be used for daily worship but
rather for special ceremonies.
It was here that Smith wrote much of his
“Doctrine and Covenants,” which outlines
ceremonies for sealing marriages for eternity
and baptizing dead ancestors. Though the
Nauvoo temple was the second built by
Mormons — after one in Kirtland, Ohio —
it was the first where those services were
performed.
Trapp said many Mormons have ances-
tors who were at Nauvoo, and “almost
everybody feels a relationship with this tem-
ple.”
Townspeople appear unsure how the
temple will change their relationship with
the Mormon church.
Maxine Wedel, who has spent all of her
76 years in Nauvoo, said a five-block drive
down Nauvoo’s main street already can take
as much as 20 minutes during the busy sum-
mer tourist season.
“The town isn’t large enough to handle
anything that is going to be much more than
what they handle right now,” she said.
A hotel tax raises about $40,000 a year
but can’t be used to support roads and other
infrastructure because state law earmarks
the money for tourism promotion. Also, the
Mormon Church owns about 36 percent of
Nauvoo, and many church-owned properties
are tax-exempt.
City officials initially balked at issuing a
building permit for the temple. They relent-
ed last month after the church agreed to pay
more than $471,000 for infrastructure
improvements, conduct parking studies and
provide the services of a city planner for two
years.
“It’s a very small city where a very large
temple is going,” said Loren Burton,
spokesman for the Mormon-run Nauvoo
Restoration Inc. “The fact is, most of the
things we are doing will benefit both the
city” and the Mormons.
mm
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Stevens, Shontta. University Press (Beaumont, Tex.), Vol. 76, No. 19, Ed. 1 Friday, November 5, 1999, newspaper, November 5, 1999; Beaumont, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth500862/m1/4/?q=Lamar+University: accessed June 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Lamar University.