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Sarah
Albritton
Working in the Kitchen
Sarah Albritton:
Working in the Kitchen
For about twelve years, I
decided I was going to open a canning kitchen, so I started buying
equipment a little at a time, and finally I bought the land and
the building [an eighty-year old house she had moved] and renovated
it. When I started, I had three tables, . . . And then I had
a door for a counter to cook on. And for some reason I had a
lot of people coming, and I didn't have a place to seat them,
so I decided to put tables outside, so I did for a number of
years. And can you believe it, the Lord did not let it rain at
twelve o'clock until I got the other part of the building, and
that's the truth, so that was angels still watching over me.
But really, when I opened the kitchen, someone talked me into
the notion of cooking, because I had quit cooking; you know,
I did banquets or parties or something for somebody around here,
but they talked me into cooking, and I had to give up my canning
because I couldn't cook and can at the same time; that's a no-no
anyway. . . .
The kitchen is different.
I like primitives [iron cookware, etc.], so it's filled with
primitives and people like primitives too. . . . And a history
of Uncle Clem (we have a Clem Wright wall in the kitchen) and
different articles that go back to 1920s. . . . I wanted to do
something different from anybody else. I wanted to be totally
different. There's no service here; you have to serve yourself.
. . . And then on the outside, I love flowers. . . . And I decided
that rather than have a bathroom, we would have an outhouse,
so we have an outhouse, and it's a lot of fun if you're old enough
to know what an outhouse is. . . . [The kitchen opened in 1987;
March 3, 1996.]
From On My Way: The Arts
of Sarah Albritton, Susan Roach, ed., Louisiana Tech University, 1998 (see Unit
XIII, Lesson 1, Resources), p. 37.
Sarah Albritton:
Working in the Kitchen (detail)
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