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 Angels Watching Over Me, Susan Roach, ed., Louisiana Tech University, 1998.
