Room Divider

 

Room Divider

The house where we lived in Bangor (Michigan) had two large rooms in the front of the house -- one to the left and one to the right of the front door entryway. The room on the left was I suppose what would have been called a "parlor" back in the day. There was a very small bedroom behind it. The room on the right was very large, from the picture window at the front of the house all the way back to the kitchen.  My dad built a "room divider" (well, that's what we always called it) to separate the living room from the dining room. The back side of the room divider was a cabinet with several doors about 3 feet tall, and shelves inside. From the top of the cabinet to the ceiling were open shelves. My dad loved working with wood. It was one of his life-long hobbies. Here is a picture of the back of the room divider. Those are Christmas cards hanging from the shelves facing the living room. Looks like we were getting ready to have a party when this picture was taken.

The painting in this photo I believe was a paint-by-number kit that my mother did. (Or maybe my uncle Ron did it, I'm not sure -- because Mom could have painted the horse head without the aid of a kit, but I don't think she had started painting yet when this picture was taken.)

In this photo, on the left, you can see through the dining room into the kitchen -- you can see the refrigerator and the window of the back door. That door led into the laundry room, and there was another door in the laundry room, to the left, which led outside to the back yard.

I do have one specific memory about this room divider --

One evening when my parents had gone out, we were in the house with our babysitter, Janice Haynes, who lived across the street. Suddenly there was someone pounding on the front door and yelling. It was Janice's boyfriend (or maybe ex-boyfriend). She took me and Ricky into the dining room and we hid behind the room divider. Our phone was on one of the shelves of the room divider, so Janice got the phone down and called her father. He was a truck driver, a big burly guy, not afraid of anything. Ben (Janice's father) walked over to our house and got rid of the guy. I don't know if he threatened him or threatened to call the police, or just what he did. But the boyfriend left, anyway.