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The little lean-to room built onto Eliza's kitchen was a room of infinite variety. I spent an afternoon there when I painted this picture. She had arranged quince in a battered milk strainer. They were placed in a sunny window on a tall oak bureau that was shoved between the window and a crude shower. The sun-warmed quince filled the room with a pleasant ripe apple fragrance, which is what I think she had in mind when she set them in the sunshine.
The flowered wall under the window appears to be wallpaper, but it was not. Eliza had salvaged some very old-fashioned, traditional Christmas wrapping paper that had tiny red poinsettia and green holly print. It was tacked to the wall to hide the painted, exposed 2 x 4's and painted boards. When Christmas came, Eliza didn't buy a tree. She went to a redwood tree in her yard and cut a big bouquet of branches that she stuck into a bucket of damp sand. She also collected redwood branches to run her iron over when she was ironing and the iron was sticky.
There was a long-legged electric range from the 1930's at one end of the room. She cooked there when the weather was too hot to burn wood in the iron kitchen range. It was a replacement for lhe rusty kerosene stove that sat as an ornament in her backyard.
A trapdoor to the basement was cut into the floor. It was lifted and hooked to the wall when she went down the rustic wooden stairs to the basement. Her chemical toilet was also in this room. Eliza may not have been wealthy but her surroundings were always clean and orderly.
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